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Mick Byrne, with his local knowledge, might have had some legitimate concerns.
    He spoke with passion about various fish-kills which were happening at that time. Fish-kills were big in Ireland in the 1980s, most of them caused by farmers releasing vast quantities of slurry
into rivers and lakes which were once pristine fishing grounds but which were now destroyed. He argued that farmers found guilty of such hooliganism should have the land taken away from them.
    Naturally, I would write up this interview in longhand, on sheets of foolscap. Because we wrote such long interviews at Hot Press and because most of us were little more than children,
our typing skills hadn’t developed to a stage where we could rattle off 3,000 words to deadline. In fact, the practice of writing in longhand would remain with me for many years, almost until
the turn of the century, even when I had learned to type properly — I had become so used to thinking in longhand, I felt that a piece always read a bit better if I wrote it up first and then
typed it.
    To recall the methods we used at the time at what we assumed to be the cutting edge of the media, is to realise that despite our modern notions about getting football managers from England and
the like, we were still not far removed from medieval ways.
    When I first started writing for the Irish Press and then the Sunday Independent , where typed copy was a minimum requirement, Jane would do the typing for me and I would carry the
precious sheets down to the DART . I would read through them on the train, crossing things out and adding things in with a biro. I would hand this attractive offering to Anne
Harris in the Indo , or to Eoghan Corry at the Press .
    I didn’t say ‘in’ the Press , because I would always meet Eoghan, who was one of the gentlemen of the game, in Mulligan’s of Poolbeg Street. I would have a pint of
Fürstenberg and he might have a pint of Guinness, and he would read my article there in the pub and hopefully at some point he would start laughing or otherwise indicate his approval. Then
Eoghan would take my copy up to the office and he would be gone for a while, editing his features. But soon he would return and we would have a few more pints of Fürstenberg and maybe a few
more pints of Guinness and a few more laughs.
    It seems now that the newspaper business in Ireland was run amid a veritable Niagara of alcohol. An angry reader once wrote to Eoghan complaining about something in the Irish Press which
had annoyed him, giving an address which indicated that he was an inmate of a mental institution. In fact he stated in his letter, ‘As you can see from my address, I am mentally
disturbed’.
    Eoghan wrote back to him, under the Irish Press letterhead, with the opening line: ‘As you can see from our address, we, too, are mentally disturbed.’
    And yet, fantastically, it seemed to work. Two newspapers a day and a third on Sunday somehow emerged from Burgh Quay, along with a lot of interesting people of the kind that you don’t
find any more in ‘the media’, in these good-living times. To quote Houlihan again, the modern newspaper office has all the atmosphere of a suburban pharmacy.
    Not only were they interesting, as I look back on it, but I marvel at the general levels of kindness and understanding which these highly experienced professionals displayed towards the likes of
me, arriving into their world without their ancient skills such as shorthand, and without much intention of learning it either.
    And we didn’t have a phone in the flat. The phone was in the hall, one of the old black pay-phones, with Button A and Button B on it. Jane and I and Roseanne were at the back and the hall
was round the front, so you would hear it ringing in the distance and if no-one had answered it after three or four rings, this would mean that Liam wasn’t in, and if it kept ringing, it
meant that other tenants such as Pat McManus, the lead guitarist with the