This is one of my favourite of my dad's stories. Some of the best ones I don't have recorded because they kind of pop up in conversation when you least expect them. This is a real classic. I think it's safe to say he was the only man in 1950s Rome who couldn't identify a cathouse. 

And yes, that is a picture of cats eating spaghetti. What of it? 

The Most Holy Whorehouse

A segment I made for a series called Skint City, based in Dublin, Ireland. This one is on a song club with a leftward-leaning bent. 

Cle club-09 June08

A piece I made for the series Skint City, for Phantom 105.2 in Dublin, Ireland, and funded by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland's Sound and Vision Scheme. This is Ye Olde Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio, with Pat Herbert and Tony Breathneach. Apologies for the dead air at the end.

Ye Olde Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio

Colin Morris and I made this. It is just over one minute of what was really going to be a proper project where we made music out of found sounds in various city habitats. Our first one was "aul wans". The hi-hat was recorded in the Boyers restaurant, and the lady speaking was the self-styled "Mayor of Broadstone". 

It's terrible what the kids do

Odranhait Ansbro's modern classic, a twist on the Twelve Days of Christmas, which underwent some unfortunate adjusments and is thus truncated. Sorry folks, we're all in this, etc, etc.

A Bailout From The IMF (The Adjusted Days of Christmas)

This is a story from Jimmy Duggan, one of my favourite people I've ever worked with. He gave me my first TV research job, on Soviet na hEireann. The theme of this Chaos Thaoghaire was We're Sorry For Any Inconvenience: Stories about Journeys. Jimmy tells us about uzis, bad brakes, and inflatable sheep, all on his way home from the pub.

Jimmy Duggan at Chaos Thaoghaire

This is a terrible quality recording, but it's the sound of the wind turning the Boland's Mills building on Grand Canal Dock into a giant musical instrument. 

Bolands Woodwind

This is an unedited piece of audio during which you hear my kind of nutty family playing one of our favourite games, "stump the moral theologian". The 'fly' you hear about came from a conversation that my husband had with my dad about whether you could still take communion if you accidentally swallowed a fly. I can't remember which bishop he wanted to punch in the face. The eucharist-in-the-bra story is on another recording somewhere. I guess she had to stand on a cloth and jump up and down in the sacristy after mass, in the hope that the wafer would come out and land on the cloth instead of the floor.

Gluten-Free Christ

This track opens with my dad describing ye olde timey television. I had to cut out my grandmother's love of wrestling, but that'll be back in some form when I finally get around to editing these all together and giving them a narrative. For background, he spent seven years in Rome, returning to the US in 1961, and when he left the priesthood in the late 1960s, he was at Catholic University in DC. Anyway, I thought his ideas about what's wrong with the church were interesting, the way it infantalises people. 

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