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very well, but he did extremely well. I think that was another thing they thought I could become—an insurance salesman. For a circus performer who never looked for a net, that’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s a wonderful thing—I have to tell you—to come out of an environment where you really didn’t have to achieve anything, isn’t it? It’s usually the opposite from that. But, God bless them, I was a very unruly kid. And when my mother died, that turned into rebellion. So I can’t really blame my father for not seeing my future as being bright, because he saw me setting fire to myself. I wasn’t interested in school, though I was pretty good at it. It’s really funny, youknow, my grades were at the top of the class, until this period. Also, most of the people I was hanging around with weren’t interested in school. So I don’t want to hold him to too much blame.
    Because you were trouble.
    Yeah, that was really it.
    Eventually you went to university, though.
    Yeah, I did. Because my school friends were going. I was even interested in ideas then—I’ve always been interested in ideas. I mean, I was in university for two weeks, doing an arts degree in English and history. I would have loved that.
    How do you mean “two weeks”?
    I had falsely matriculated, they told me. In the National University, you are supposed to speak the national language, and I didn’t. I had flunked Irish, and they found that out. They threw me out of college, even though they had accepted me on my other results.
    How did your relationship with your father evolve after your mother died? I guess you’ve gone through various stages until his recent death.
    After my mother died, I think I tortured my brother and my father. There were three men living alone in a house. There were some awful times that we shared, really, about as low as you can get for three men. I remember, physically, my father trying to knock me out. I never returned fire, but it was hard. Mostly, they were comical moments. He worked out some of his own anxieties by so-called “worrying about me.” I’d be seventeen, and I’d be going out to punk rock gigs, and coming back. He’d be waiting for me atthe top of the stairs, with some heavy artillery. [laughs] It was like an obstacle course for me and my gang of friends: how to get back in the house without waking him up.
    I guess you gave the poor man many a sleepless night. Do you remember a particular episode?
    I used to climb up the two floors on the drainpipe, and then I would reach over to the bathroom window, cross to the window—quite a tricky maneuver—put my hand in the window, open and get in, and go down, and let my friends in, so we can hang out some more. I remember, like, four in the morning, just as I’m making the most difficult part of the maneuver, my father wakes up and goes [impersonating] : “Is that you? Is that you?” And I’m outside his bedroom window, hanging out over the housing estate. I’m going [mutters, putting his hand over his mouth]: “Mmmmh. Yeah, it’s me, yeah.”—“Hurry up! And go to bed”—“Mmmh. Yeah, OK . . .” And he doesn’t know I’m actually hanging outside his window like, fuck, I’m about to fall off and break every bone of my body. [laughs]
    You make it sound like he frightened you a lot.
    Not really. I guess it was just a combative relationship. We were very unusual, our community. Not every father has two kids calling for their son, wearing Doc Martens, sporting a Mohawk and an occasional dress. Or sometimes Guggi would call to the door on a horse. Because we were surrealists from a very early age, we thought this was very funny. Once, when we fell out, in my twenties, my mates came to wrap my car in tissue paper—the entire car—with dozens and dozens of eggs, turned it into