Declan Lynch: ‘The grilling of Jim Gavin was an amazing piece of radio for a couple of reasons’ | Irish Independent
Flor Lynch
Declan Lynch: ‘The grilling of Jim Gavin was an amazing piece of radio for a couple of reasons’
Phil Spector appears in court during his murder trial in 2007. Photo: Reuters
Former Dublin football manager Jim Gavin. Photo: Sportsfile
Phil Spector appears in court during his murder trial in 2007. Photo: Reuters
Former Dublin football manager Jim Gavin. Photo: Sportsfile
One evening about 10 years ago, I was listening to Newstalk’s Off the Ball (Newstalk, daily, 7pm) where Colm Parkinson was grilling Dublin manager Jim Gavin about what sounded to the layman like a terrifying scene at a “friendly” match between Dublin and Armagh, played behind closed doors.
Even Parkinson, no layman himself, but a former Laois county star, seemed concerned as he described injuries received by Dublin’s Davey Byrne which had put the player in hospital – a closed eye, a broken nose and 10 stitches on his forehead.
Oh, and one more thing – these injuries were sustained before the game started. Just at the getting-to-know-you stage of this “friendly” encounter.
The grilling of Gavin which ensued was an amazing piece of radio for a couple of reasons. It only sounded like a “grilling” because unlike many interviews in the regular current affairs style, Parkinson just kept coming back to the original point when the answers he was getting were unsatisfactory and, as a result, Gavin delivered a stonewalling performance for the ages.
It lasted for just over five minutes, yet it seemed to go on forever. Gavin’s initial response went something like this: “Subsequent to the game, both players have spoken to each other. They regret what happened and both are now just concentrating on their inter-county careers...”
Gavin was insisting that everyone wanted to move on, but because Parkinson didn’t want to move on, Gavin just kept saying the formula again and again. After the fourth or fifth time repeating this line about frank discussions between the players and wanting to move on, you thought: he can’t possibly keep doing this. Yet he went there at least eight times.
According to legend, to every journalist’s questions, Ben Dunne Sr had one response: “Dunnes Stores better value beats them all.” Here, Gavin was making Dunne sound like raconteur supreme Peter Ustinov in a particularly expansive talk-show mood.
Bearing in mind that he was maintaining this code of GAA omerta about what was, after all, an extremely violent episode, I remember thinking at the time: ‘If Jim Gavin ever decides to run for the Presidency of Ireland, a tape of this five long minutes of stonewalling may well re-emerge and cause much anxiety among the civilian population.’ Yeah, I called that one. Or maybe we’ll just have frank discussions about it, and move on.
Phil Spector appears in court during his murder trial in 2007. Photo: Reuters
While few things in life are quite as dangerous as a “friendly” Gaelic football match behind closed doors, working with Phil Spector was always a high-risk game. Pat O’Mahony’s new series on RTÉ Gold, For the Record (RTÉ Gold, Sundays, 6pm), is a kind of Desert Island Discs made on location, as it were, with the first show featuring film producer David Puttnam reminiscing and rummaging through his magnificent record collection at his home in magnificent west Cork.
Talk turned to the day Puttnam met Spector for lunch in a Chinese restaurant in LA. It was the early1970s and Puttnam wanted to use Be My Baby as the opening track on his second movie, Stardust. He wanted it so badly, he was prepared to sit down with the maestro and to ask him very nicely – a ploy that didn’t work with Phil, who of course pulled a gun on him.
I say “of course”, because we’re reaching the tipping point in showbusiness where the amount of people who had a gun pulled on them by Phil now exceeds the number who didn’t. The enduring trauma is that Puttnam didn’t get to use Be My Baby.
Tom Dunne oddly enough never had a gun pulled on him by Phil, but he lived through punk rock in Ireland and was celebrating The Blades in particular during his weekly chat with Kieran Cuddihy on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays, 4pm) – a kind of ongoing history of Irish music and culture.
Dunne made the important point that Northern Ireland got punk before the south, but that we ended up with a broader movement. Indeed I recall U2 doing a benefit gig for the Contraception Action Programme. Above all, Dunne remembers The Blades at The Magnet was “a special place to be”. I can verify this.
With that Jim Gavin interview still haunting me, I can say that none of us regret what happened, we’re not moving on. And The Blades are still playing.