I don't play music, I play with music! :) 

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In 1998, one month before his death at the age of 80, retired civil servant and man of few words Paddy O’Grady had a sudden urge to talk. Using a portable cassette tape recorder, he recorded 15 hours of material: stories about leprechauns, aliens and lonely pharmacists; absurdist political satire; musings on life, love and death; radio shows with advertisements for products that never existed; ballads and poetry; and memories of life as a civil servant.

Paddy O'Grady was born in 1917 in Glanafosha, 3miles outside Tuam, Co. Galway (Ireland). After he finished secondary school (St. Jarlath's, Tuam) he worked on the farm with his father and took on different jobs including once working for an egg-delivery business. He had been 'doing a line' with a woman called Birdie O'Connor from Caherhugh, Tuam but they had an argument one night at a dance. Not long afterwards he went to London with his brother and got work in a pub. 

When World War 2 broke out in 1939 his brother went home to Tuam but Paddy remained and, without telling his family, joined the British Army serving as a Private in the North of France (he was one of the rescuees at Dunkirk) and as a motorcycle courier in Cairo. After the army he came back to Glanafosha. From the time his brother left him in London in 1939 and until he turned up in Tuam in 1941 nobody knew where was. He didn't speak about his experiences in the army until he was well into old age. He also served in the Irish Army after he came home. 

In 1946 he moved to Dublin and joined the Civil Service, starting in the Department of Agriculture. Birdie O'Connor, in the meantime, had been in England herself working as a nurse in Bolton. She had returned to Ireland after the Emergency and her and Paddy were reacquainted in Dublin in 1946. They became engaged and married in Dublin in 1948, bought a house in Kilmacud and had three children (Thomas, Padraig and Mary). Paddy worked his way up in the Civil Service and went to work for Aer Rianta. In 1968 he became manager of Cork Airport and the family moved there until 1973. After that they moved to Bray and for the last few years of his working life he worked in Dublin Airport. 

When he retired in the early 1980s Paddy and Birdie bought a house in Headford, Co. Galway. In 1987 they moved to Mountrath, Co. Laois to live with their son Thomas and his wife Brenda and their children Emma and Luke. Paddy died on 17th July 1998 in Mountrath, Co. Laois after a short illness and was buried at Claretuam Cemetry, Co. Galway. Birdie died in April 2014 aged 98 and is buried with him.

Paddy’s granddaughter, Emma O’Grady, later discovered he had written plays, poems and short stories in the 1950s and until now his work has been without an audience. 

Emma, a Galway-based theatre-maker, created a show based on the tapes called What Good is Looking Well When You're Rotten on the Inside? which premiered at Galway Theatre Festival in 2017, supported by the Arts Council, Galway City Council, Laois County Council, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray and Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr. The show had a 15-venue national tour in Ireland in 2018, supported by the Arts Council and toured again in May 2019 as part of the Age and Opportunity Bealtaine Festival - Celebrating arts and creativity as we age. The show will tour in Ireland and internationally in 2021. TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q05dkL8a6Q

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