Why New York’s Most Literary Cab Driver Won’t Go to NY’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Ok, since we are in the St. Patrick’s Day marching season, tell me why you won’t be among the 100,000 marchers or the one million spectators who turn out for the city’s biggest parade marching up Fifth Avenue on March 17th.

It goes back to 1981. I was in Ireland working on my uncle’s farm in Donegal–the northern most county in Ireland which oddly enough is not in Northern Ireland–when the hunger strike started. I was back in New York for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Myself and some of my friends had signs that said, “Save Bobby Sands” and “Support the IRA Hunger Strikers.”

The New York parade, which is always a year to two behind the times, kicked us out because they don’t want political banners in the parade. Now if you see the County Antrim banner, today, it has a big picture of Bobby Sands. But where were the parade people when it would have done him some good while he was still living? I go to the Woodside parade, St. Patrick’s Day for All, and I’ve had one of the organizers, Brendan Fay, on my show many times and helped him get on other shows.

[Ed note: Bobby Sands, was a IRA man imprisoned in HMS Maze Prison outside Belfast when he started a hunger strike on March 1, 1981, pushing for political POW status for IRA prisoners. The British wanted to treat IRA members as common criminals and branded them as terrorists and insisted the IRA had little support among the nationalist, largely Catholic, community in Northern Ireland. But then Sands was elected to the British Parliament for the County Fermanagh/South Tyrone seat while on a hunger strike unto death and nine other IRA prisoners followed him and fasted to their deaths before it was called off. McDonagh was a regular on the daily picket lines outside the British Consulate on Third Ave in New York for much of the summer, which at their peak drew over 10,000 protestors.]

Tell me how you landed the radio show with WBAI?

I had been back to Ireland for some of the funerals of the IRA hunger strikers. I remember Joe McDonnell’s in particular. The British did not want the IRA to give a military funeral by firing shots over the casket as they did for Bobby Sands so they attacked the mourners. I remember the casket was dropped and during the graveside service a British Army helicopter swooped so low over the crowd you could barely hear the speakers. I thought geez, they won’t even let us bury our dead.

When I got back to New York again, WBAI knew that I had a lot of connections with the Irish community here and had been to some of the funerals, so they asked me if I wanted to do a show. I called it Radio Free Eireann, and I’ve been doing it ever since, over 40 years.

And how did you come to team up with Malachy McCourt, the last surviving of the famous McCourt brothers. (Brother Frank McCourt is a former Stuyvesant HS teacher who went on to write the mega bestselling Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. He and Malachy were regulars at the Lion’s Head, and had a touring two man play entitled “A Couple of Blaguards” and Malachy for awhile owned a pub in the Village called The Bells of Hell and was the front man for an earlier one called Malachy’s. An actor and raconteur, Malachy also had a bestselling memoir of his own about the family’s hard scrabble upbringing in Limerick, Ireland and NY called A Monk Swimming

About ten years ago, WBAI asked me about doing a Wednesday show and I asked Malachy if he’d like to team up with me. Malachy had his own show and is a great raconteur and he usually did his as a one man show. I like having someone else to play off. And to my surprise Malachy said “yes.”

The show now airs on Sunday mornings from 11 am to noon. How has it been teaming up with Malachy?

It’s been great, if I ask Malachy a question, I won’t have to talk for another 20 minutes. Just don’t ask him about growing up poor. Nobody does poor better than Malachy. If you tell him you grew up poor, he’ll say. ‘You grew up poor, did ye? Did ye have indoor plumbing?’

And the how did you come to pick up the nickname “Johnny Two Pints?

I was driving a cab early one morning, and a young customer from Ireland didn’t have the cab fare. It was in the days before cabs could take credit cards. He said, “If you ever get to Dublin, I’ll repay you with two free pints at Gaffney & Sons Pub that I run with my father’.” He signed the back of the trip sheet. For some reason, I kept it.

After I wrote the play, Off the Meter, which was going to have a limited run in the Sean O’Casey Theater in Dublin–where I talk about becoming the local guide to British actor Stephen Fry and Richard Hammond, the radio host of Top Gear that I took to Katz’s Deli--I figured I’d drop in on Gaffney’s. And I figured, I’m going to be there for a week, this could be a fun story. The Irish Mirror jumped on it with a full page story. Once they did, the RTE and the BBC picked it up. Gaffney's put up a big sign out front welcoming me. It was a long way to go for a pint–the air fare alone on Aer Lingus was $750–but because of all the publicity the play sold out for all three nights. Guinness emailed me and said “if you’re available we’d like you to come and tour our facility at St. James Gate.” And I thought, ‘if I’m available?!’ That’s like the pope asking you, ‘are you available to visit the Vatican?’

Once I got back to New York, everyone from the [weekly Irish American newspaper] The Irish Voice to Fox Channel 5 had picked up on the story. Once local Fox did the show, it went out on the national network, Piers Morgan started talking about it, somehow Melbourne, Australia started hearing about it. And that was how I picked up the nickname “Johnny Two Pints.”

When are you going back to Ireland?

I’m going back in May to line up places for the play in September. It won’t be a major money maker, but I hope it breaks even. I asked Guinness if they wanted to sponsor. Nothing. I went from “Johnny Two Pints” to “Johnny Who?” Fame is fleeting. But I still got my day job.