MJH: For one semester, in 1996, I studied at the University College Dublin. One mizzling day, when I was sitting outside Roebuck Castle (yes, the School of Law was housed in a castle which looked down at the rest), I was reading The Van, and I thought: Roddy Doyle studied here, and I wondered then, as I wonder now, what kind of student you were?
What were your days at university like? What kind of student were you? Did you have pockets stuffed with money? Or, did you live in a bed-sit without gas heating, and eat lots of tinned tomato soup?

RD: If Christy Mahon, in The Playboy of the Western World, was ‘a middling scholar only’, I was behind him in the class. I was less than middling. I scraped through, never more than a few marks above what was required to limp into the next year. This was never choice or timing; it was ignorance. I never really got the hang of exams or good study. I wish I had. But I had a great time. I wrote my first published pieces, for a magazine called – wait for it – Student. I saw people in the college café and on the bus laugh at lines I’d written. I was involved for a while in the Students’ Union. I witnessed the installation of the first condom machine in Ireland, in 1979, onto the Student Union wall – at least, I think it was the first in Ireland. It was a big, big – and, from 31 years distance, strange – deal. I also witnessed it being taken down a few days later by the college authorities – with a screwdriver. I think Ireland was on a different planet back then. I never had much money. I went abroad to work every summer, saved virtually every penny. Germany – canning factory; London – road sweeping. Those summers were important, the experience of working, the rhythm of it. I remember it every time I handle a brush. I lived at home, in my parents’ house. I wasn’t entitled to a grant and I couldn’t afford a bedsit. That came later. I loved the time at UCD – great friends, great books, the chance to read so much. But my real education began when I started teaching.

MJH: When did you know that you would be a writer?

RD: I suppose, people’s reactions to things I wrote led me to think, or hope, that there was something going on. And getting it wrong, writing something that people didn’t react to, was also a lesson. A couple of teachers, especially in primary school, let me know that I could write well. At UCD, I was given the opportunity to write once a month, for Student. I remember my father laughing out loud at one of the pieces I wrote. I think I finally realised that something was going on when I stood in the wings on the opening night of a play I’d written, called Brownbread; this was in 1987. The laughter was almost solid, like wind. It was wonderful. I think I knew I’d be a writer when I gave up teaching, in 1993. I couldn’t call myself a teacher anymore, so I had to call myself a writer. It sounds a bit daft, I know, but it’s true – and maybe even healthy. I didn’t realise I was a writer until after the publication of my fourth novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

MJH: Thank You



The photo in the headline of the article appears courtesy of Mark Nixon.

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