Broadcaster and author reflects on an unusual childhood in Cork, constant low-level anxiety and presenting Winning Streak without understanding the rules
John Creedon: ‘I was always being sent away, not because they didn’t love me, but because they couldn’t cope’“Try living with me,” says John Creedon.Retrofit grants for older homes: a guide to the new pilot schemeThe Shandon bells ring out. “I’m like J Alfred Prufrock measuring out my life in quarter hours with those bells,” he says. He remembers bringing his four daughters up there to ring them when they were children and they were all living in Dublin.
Creedon grew up living at the Inchigeelagh Dairy shop in the inner city with his parents, 11 siblings and assorted lodgers and aunts. His mother, Siobhán, ran the shop while his father, Con, drove for CIÉ. She grew up the daughter of a poor farmer. His father was “merchant class”. They were kind people, he says. “I was totally unaware of class growing up ... My mam and dad didn’t see the difference.
In the book much of what he’s just described is presented in the form of funny childhood stories. The tone is upbeat, but it’s hard not to feel the melancholy underneath. In a section about being beaten and humiliated by priests at school he says his anxiety became a “knot” in his stomach that never went away. “That’s true, I guess,” he says. “I would say I have a slightly fast-forward streak in me anyway. I’m always thinking of the next thing ... There is a kind of a propulsion in me.
When was he in the shit? “There were a few disappointments along the way,” he says. “There’d be a few times where you’d find yourself between contracts ... And over the years, I suppose, I did things that weren’t really me.” “If you can scratch a toehold and some sort of bob coming in, you can plan a way forward,” says Creedon.A little later a younger man stops. He says, “I was watching you on TV last night, thinking ...”“No, that you love the same things I love, and that’s messed up because my mam walked me into that building years ago.” He doesn’t specify what building. “I never kept up the hurling. I never kept up the music.
Cork John-Creedon Rte University-College-Cork-Ucc Pat-Kenny Gay-Byrne
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