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Anne Clarke

Fun and frivolity.  We had buckets of both in Derry.  Just as those caught up in WW2 report grabbing life by the throat and wringing what joy they could from that awful time, so too did we, as we lived our way round and through The Troubles.  Was this fecklessness or simply survival of the spirit?  I think the latter, as many of us were doing our own small bits in our own little spheres to promote tolerance, understanding and communication.

Fancy dress events were thick on the ground and the costumes we assumed allowed us to step outside of ourselves for an evening.  Two of these occasions stand out in my mind – one ridiculous and one poignant.

The first was a debating society one in Redcastle.  A group of us had hired out a minibus and a room to change in.  I’d sprayed my hair blonde and borrowed a vintage evening dress in the vain hope that I’d pass for Marilyn Monroe or Lana Turner.  I knew the zip was broken and had armed myself with needle and thread.  Anita sewed me into the dress beforehand and I proceeded to dispel any illusion of elegance by getting stuck into my halves of Bulmers and my fags.  A good time was had by all and we swayed back to the room to change into our civvies for the journey home.  Now to get out of the dress.  Did anyone have scissors?  No-one had scissors.  Too tiddly to figure that hotel reception could probably come up with the goods, the gallant Trevor Robinson proceeded to bite me out of my gown.  Anita loved to tell that story.

The second memorable event was just before Christmas one year in the Guildhall and features the wonderful Paddy Rice, who fetched up as a local yokel.  He had on the most voluminous mid-calf white shirty thing tied at the waist with rope.  Add a flat cap, a blackthorn stick and hob-nailed boots and he really looked the part.  When I asked where he’d got his smock, he told me it was a shroud.  His father had been an undertaker I seem to remember.

A few days later, we had a New Year’s Eve party.  Paddy and Doreen had been invited but didn’t show.  They were sadly missed, not least because it was one of those knees-ups where everyone brought a dish and we were a dessert short.  We were joking about the fact that it was the ‘Rice pudding’.  Imagine my guilt, and our horror and sadness, when the phone rang to tell us that Paddy had just died in a car accident.  And then, not long after, my photos of the fancy dress plopped through the letterbox.  The hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that the only print which was over-exposed was the one of Paddy and Doreen.  When I hear traditional Irish music, I often think of Paddy, as well as that other well-loved BBC presenter, Tony McAuley.

Many of the people who attended that party are now dead.  Anita and Trevor, Áine Downey, Ollie McGilloway, Liz Erskine, Gerry Anderson, Cecilia Kennedy, Peter Mullan, Dáithí Murphy – all good people who made the world a better place when they were in it.  They live on in the hearts of those of us remaining.  We creak on and continue to seize happiness where we can – with our arthritic fingers and halting gait – but always, always buoyed up by wonderfully fond memories.

Like the time two young lads tried to hijack my car in the Bogside and I told them to get home to their mammies.  But that’s another story……………………..

Anne Clarke

It’s no exaggeration to say that being involved with Radio Foyle had a profound effect on the rest of my career.  As a direct result of working/playing there, some doors opened immediately and others further down the line.  One early joy was being asked to write for ‘Radio Times’.  I’m not sure that the tale of how this came about can be conveyed as well on paper as in speech, but I’ll try it anyway.  


My first series for Foyle focused on my own full-time job and was most originally called ‘Teacher, Teacher.’  Just before the first programme was due to be aired, I had a call from a very posh-sounding gentleman in London called Chaaahles – Charles to you.  He told me that ‘Radio Times’ had commissioned Sean McMahon to write an article on my upcoming series and could I please contact him.  ‘Can’t I write it myself?’ I asked.  No, I couldn’t he said because I was too close to the material and they wanted a more objective viewpoint.  But was I interested in writing for them?  Yes, indeed I was.


And indeed Chaaahles took me at my word.  A few days later, his plummy voice came down the line again.  Was I still interested?  I was.  Did I know anything about peegs and hawses and kys?  Sorry? Peegs and hawses and kys.  Pardon?  After excuses about a bad line etc. I finally cracked it.  Pigs and horses and cows.  No, I didn’t know a lot about farm animals.  Apparently that was fine and I was charged with writing 1,000 words about a future outside broadcast from Enniskillen Agricultural Show.


I clapped my hands with delight at this fresh opportunity.  Dismay and consternation soon followed.  I’d rushed out to buy an armful of farming magazines, but neither ‘The Progressive Farmer’ nor ‘The Small Stock Journal’ nor ‘Grassmen’ nor ‘Practical Pigs’ was throwing up any inspiration.  How to get a handle on this?  How to make it interesting?  Anita was as much use as a chocolate fireguard.  She wouldn’t even deign to think about the subject.  Farming, muck, ugh.  She shuddered and not a hair moved.  In the end, I based it on fair days in Cushendall.


My mate Chaahles loved it and more commissions followed.


What was it about those times?  There was such optimism and trust abroad.  Russell McKay offered me a job without ever meeting me (possibly because he’d never met me), Ian Kennedy gave me, and so many others, the wings to fly on air and here too was the bold Chaahles, who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground – hardly spoke the same language - assuming I could write just ‘cos I said so.  And there was me, making so many forays out of my comfort zone.  Probably because I didn’t have the wit to do otherwise.


Those were definitely the days, my friends, and Derry was the place to spend them in.


Lovely as the village and people were, everybody in my birthplace, Cushendall, knew the other’s business and I felt constrained.  Then we went to Belfast, where few knew or cared and I felt isolated.  And then came Derry with the best of both worlds.  A city with the heart of a village, a place to participate when the mood took you or withdraw when it didn’t.


I felt free and empowered in Derry.  I did a prodigious amount of work there and (I don’t know what it is about brushes) but I was frequently as daft as one too.  Nowhere else would I have dyed my hair green for Paddy’s Day, nowhere else would I have spent a day with the bin-men and nowhere else would my late and bearded husband have reveled in dressing up as the Sugar Plum Fairy.   But that’s another story…………………………………..


Michael O’Donnell, editor of A Game of Two Halves: The Terry Harkin Story, says Derry City's revival wasn’t just about the rebirth of a soccer club - it was about a lost city finding its voice again.


It was 1985. Ulster said no.

The Irish League, the League of Ireland and UEFA said yes.

In our part of the world it is impossible to keep politics out of anything and football is no exception. There were political reasons for Derry City’s expulsion from the Irish League in 1972 and that murky world needed to be navigated if the club was to again take its rightful place at the top table.

The story of how this happened is brilliantly covered in Kevin Harkin’s biography of his father Terry, ‘A Game Of Two Halves’. The inside story of how a casual chat over a cup of tea saw Terry float the idea of Derry entering the League of Ireland.

Terry, Tony O’Doherty, Eamon McLaughlin and Eddie Mahon, made it happen.

It is remarkable that within 18 months their dream became a reality. Even more so to realise that five years from that chat between Terry and Eddie, Derry City completed the first, and to date, only, clean sweep of League of Ireland trophies, 1989’s unique Treble.

But football is merely a subplot to the story.

This is about a city finding its voice. A city tormented by years of crippling unemployment, under investment, gerrymandered elections. Seeing our streets on the television was a daily event, the pictures festooned by the familiar voiceover words “shooting,” “bombing,” “killing,” “murder,” “condemnation.”

The narrative was changing.

I was eight years old when Derry left the Irish League. I was 22 when on September 8 1985, Home Farm wrote its name into our history as our first League of Ireland opponents. And, decent types that they are, they obliged us by losing 3-1.

What happened next I never saw coming. The way the city was consumed by football. We had our own heroes, our own players to sing about. Even our own songs.

This has never been better explained than by one of our own, the late Ryan McBride when he said “Young boys grow up dreaming to move across the water to Man United or Celtic, but my dream was to play for Derry City and to captain them.”

He did play for and captain Derry. And with such distinction they named a stadium after him.

This is what the club brought but not just to the sporting arena.

Hope. Ambition. The realisation that good things don’t just happen to other people in other places, peaked over the horizon.

People now had something positive to hang on to, a sense of purpose, togetherness, a shared aspiration. Even those who had no interest in football, found themselves in the middle of it. Nothing brings out the sandwich making expertise in Derry women than a good wake or an away match.

Following Derry in those days was to take a Master’s Degree in Irish geography, with fans able to proclaim with commendable confidence, how long it would take to get to EMFA, Newcastlewest, or Cobh if you left at 10.30 on Saturday morning, with allowances made for traffic entering Ardee, (it could bottleneck sometimes but they did have lovely floral arrangements to admire), and bathroom breaks.

It was during those moments that Derry’s greatest export, its people, became a living breathing advertisement for the city.

Thousand would descend on these towns and villages, drink their bars dry, fill their hotels and bring an unexpected financial boon. Footballs fans’ reputations at this time was poor, hosts were initially wary, however it took but a short time to see the truth, families travelled together to watch their team and have a good time.

There was never any trouble, it was, if you will, like games at Brandywell without the need for the local constabulary, policed by consent. No-one stepped out of line.

It’s a sobering thought that it is now 37 years since Derry joined the League of Ireland.

Our city, geographically, politically, culturally, and economically, can be viewed as an outpost by outsiders.

We disagree.

This is the place that produced two Nobel Laureates, chart topping singers and songwriters, award winning actors, and many, many internationally sports people.

The talent seeps through the barriers put in front of us.

We never stop.

We never give in and we never give up.

The success of Derry City is a huge manifestation of that attitude. Our football club was taken away from us and robbed generations of players of the opportunity to play the game ay senior level, and who knows, follow their predecessors Jobby Crossan, Fay Coyle, and Terry Harkin, and their successors James McClean, Shane Duffy and Paddy McCourt across the water and into the international game.

The motto of Barcelona “Mes que un club,” More Than A Club, travels well. It sits comfortably with Derry City.

As Felix Healy said after he scored the winner in the 1989 FAI Cup Final to secure the Treble.

“This particular day was more than about football. It was about a community. It was about a community that was wronged and forgotten about. It was this community saying ‘look at us now.’”

He’s right.

Look at us now.

Just look at us now.

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