Plastic Paddy

Celebrating St Patrick's Day in my Asian home, The Unnameable City, is a bit of a problem. There are, to my knowledge, only two Irish bars here, and neither of them is very good. When I went to check one of them out on this night a year or two ago, I was greeted by the incongruous spectacle of a Filipino cover band singing 'American Pie'. The Guinness (which, I think, has to be imported from Malaysia) is pretty average in taste and pour..... and prohibitively expensive.

So, not much cod Irishry for me tonight.

I am, though, I freely admit, a terrible 'Plastic Paddy'. My Irish heritage is limited to my surname - my father was pretty thoroughly 'English', his father having moved to England as a young man at the turn-of-the-century (and then having died young - a delayed effect, as I am told, of wounds received in the First World War - leaving my dad and his brothers to be brought up by an English stepfather); and yet, and yet..... show me damp green fields, wave-lashed coasts, a freckled, red-haired colleen, or a nice glass of stout; mention The Hunger or Bloody Cromwell; or let me hear the plaintive strains of a fiddle or the Uillean pipes.... and I feel a stirring in the blood, a shiver in the bone-marrow, a wistful tear forming in the corner of my eye.

A decade ago, when I was living in Toronto, I had the good fortune to have three of my musical heroes descend upon the city in quick succession in the last couple of months before I left: John Otway, Eric Bogle, and Shane MacGowan (I actually delayed my departure date by a few days to catch Shane, who was playing with his post-Pogues band 'The Popes'). Perhaps the most interesting of the lot was Bogle, who I'd never seen before and had only started to learn a little of when The Pogues had covered his 'And The Band Played "Waltzing Mathilda"....' for the last song on their landmark 'Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash' album in 1984. He played a fantastic little gig (a Sunday afternoon show, in the rather staid surroundings of Toronto's Anzac Club!) which has kept me on the lookout for his stuff ever since.

Bogle, a Scot who emigrated many years ago to Australia, is a folkie (not really my thing), mostly in a comedic vein, although he does do more serious stuff too, including some notable anti-war songs such as 'Mathilda' and 'The Green Fields of France'. However, the reason I mention him now is that the song that particularly caught my attention that first time I heard him was this:

Plastic Paddy

He's just a Plastic Paddy, singin' Plastic Paddy songs
In a Plastic Paddy pub that they call The Blarney Stone.
There's plastic shamrocks everywhere, there's Guinness and green beer,
And a sign in Gaelic above the bar which says "God Bless All Here".

His guitar sounds like a wardrobe, and it's out of tune at that.
His singin' voice it ranges from A-sharp to A-flat.
He's just desecrated "The Holy Ground", ripped apart "Black Velvet Band",
Sang some nights drunk, and now he's sunk "The Irish Rover" with all hands.

'Cause he's just a Plastic Paddy, singin' Plastic Paddy songs
In a Plastic Paddy pub that they call The Blarney Stone.
The publican's a Proddy Scot by the name of McIntyre
Who does not allow collections for the men behind the wire.

He's done awful things to "Molly Malone" and "The Farrows of Tralee";
He's murdered "Carach Fergus" and poor old "Mother Machree".
He's just thrashed his way through "Galway Bay" and "The Wild Irish Rose";
And if he starts singing "Danny Boy", I'm gonna punch him in the nose!

He's just a Plastic Paddy, singin' Plastic Paddy songs
In a Plastic Paddy pub that they call The Blarney Stone.
There's Aer Lingus posters everywhere showing pretty Irish scenes:
All peaceful and idyllic.... and very bloody green!

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "The Mountains of Mourne":
In a central Celtic cliché, the man has left no stone unturned, '
Til he embarks upon the harp once heard through terraced halls,
Accompanying himself on the bodhrán, which takes a lot of... courage!

'Cause he's just a Plastic Paddy, singin' Plastic Paddy songs
In a Plastic Paddy pub that they call The Blarney Stone.
Now he's just sung in his mother tongue "The Ancient Irish Curse",
And cleared the pub completely by the forty-second verse!

'Cause he's just a Plastic Paddy, singin' Plastic Paddy songs.
He's started singin' "Danny Boy", so it's time that I was gone.
And just one thought comes to my mind, as I stagger through the door:
Where are you when we need you, Christy Moore?
Where are you when we need you, Christy Moore?

Eric Bogle