We present an extract from Pure Gold, the new book from Eamonn Carr.
In the late 1980s Horslips lyricist and drummer Eamon Carr began his journalistic career by conducting interviews with an eclectic mix of famous people. Told in Carr's immediate, entertaining style, Pure Gold is a portal to a time before practised TV chat show performances and the churn of social media sound bites, providing honest and sometimes introspective insights into the private lives of global stars and national treasures, such as Jack Charlton, Eartha Kitt, Shane MacGowan and Malcolm McLaren.
September 1989
I ring Jack Charlton's hotel late on a Sunday afternoon and realise to my horror that I’ve just woken him up from a nap.
'Come up to the room,’ he says blearily. ‘And we’ll do the interview.’
‘I’m not at the hotel yet,’ I reply. ‘I’ll be with you in thirty minutes.’
It might be difficult for people today to understand the cultural gear changes Ireland would go through as Jack Charlton streamlined the national soccer team. At the time, Gaelic football and hurling were firmly considered Ireland’s national sports. A long-standing rule banning Gaelic players from playing or attending ‘foreign games’ hadn’t been abolished until 1971. As a result, soccer was the poor relation, a bit raffish – perhaps not to be trusted.
In the late 1950s, when local lads had formed a soccer club in a small town in County Meath and organised dances in a marquee to help raise funds, sermons were preached from the pulpit forbidding parishioners to attend this ‘occasion of sin’.
You can’t fight City Hall. The club struggled and young lads in short pants joined their older friends in picking the stones off a local field to create a football pitch.
These lads and other Irish football fans would look on enviously as Northern Ireland competed in the World Cup finals in 1958 and 1982. Maybe one day the Republic of Ireland would get to the finals of a major tournament. But, back then, the nation wasn’t holding its breath.
The appointment of Jack Charlton, a former England player, as manager of the Republic of Ireland team had been controversial. Just over 16,000 turned up to watch Ireland play Wales in his first game in charge. Even fewer paid to see the next match against Uruguay. The FAI lost money. But Jack was already shaping a team to fit his philosophy of football. We didn’t know it then, but Ireland were going places.
***
The Irish football team had never qualified for the finals of a major international before the arrival of Charlton. Other managers had come close, but it was ‘Big Jack’ who delivered and got the team over the line for the European Championship finals in 1988. In doing so, he proved he understood his new environment better than most, although not everyone liked his approach or the style of play his team deployed.
However, my first interview ‘in which personalities from all walks of life bare their inner selves’, as the blurb puts it, hasn’t got off to a good start. And things appear to be getting worse when, at the hotel, the Ireland team’s physio miraculously materialises to cut across me and tell the receptionist that the team manager isn’t to be disturbed. Just then, over Mick Byrne’s shoulder, I spot Jack (54), looking taller than in photographs, arriving in reception.
There’s a lot hanging on this interview. In desperation, I barge past Mick to greet the man who had become a national icon following Ireland’s heroics in Germany the previous year. It was an epic adventure. The campaign, which saw Jack’s team defeat England and draw with Russia, captured the public imagination. The ecstatic homecoming celebrations staged by the people of Ireland were unprecedented and remain unsurpassed.
Watch: Jack Charlton on shedding tears at the end of his time as Ireland manager
‘Ah, there you are. Pleased to meet you,’ says Jack, fresh-faced no doubt from just having had a shower. My first thoughts are that he’s more youthful-looking than I’d believed from press and TV.
‘I’m just going in for a bit of dinner,’ he says. ‘Come in and we’ll chat.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t interrupt a man when he’s having his dinner,’ I reply. ‘I’ll have a cup of tea out here and we can have a quick chat when you’ve finished.’
‘F**kin’ ’ell, you’ll come in and ’ave your dinner with me,’ insists Jack. New to the game, this was starting to look like an obstacle course to me. In the dining room, we join Jack’s assistant manager, Maurice Setters. As we sit down, Jack enquires, ‘Is Stan in yet?’
‘I don’t know boss,’ says Setters. ‘He’s in the bar,’ I venture, hastily adding, ‘drinking mineral water with his parents.’
A brief conversation follows about Steve ‘Stan’ Staunton, the young Liverpool full-back who’d made his debut for Ireland in a friendly against Tunisia a year earlier. While chatting, I recount a monstrous free-kick Staunton had taken from the Havelock Square corner in the old Lansdowne Road stadium during that match.
‘It was Yugoslavia,’ corrects Jack testily.
‘No, Tunisia,’ says I.
‘Yugoslavia.’
I haven’t even begun the first and most important journalistic interview of my career and already I’m contradicting international football’s most notoriously spiky manager. But I’m sure of my ground. I clearly recall both Charlton and Setters conferring in admiration as Staunton’s notable piledriver lofted past their dug-out heading for the opposite corner that’s closest to the Dart station. At a poorly attended match, I was sitting in prime seats behind them with my mates from The Hill pub. And I’m certain it was Tunisia because the blokes behind us were the staff from our local kebab shop. I play the diplomatic card.
‘Sorry Jack. You’re the boss. If anyone should know, it’s you.’
Charlton turns his attention to Setters. ‘Well, who was it?’
‘The lad’s right, boss.’ ‘Right,’
Jack snorts. ‘Have you got a tape recorder? Put it up on the bloody table and we’ll start.’
Ninety minutes later my tape runs out with Jack still going strong. I’ve had the time of my life.
Pure Gold is published by The Merrion Press
