What do you do if you hate your life, your name, your family? Or most of them? Emmet McCrudden grew up in the small village of Carricktown surrounded by the Sperrin mountains, with 17 pubs and red-faced farmers.
The house was small, a plastic bucket for necessity when it was too cold for the outside loo. This was especially the case in the winter of 1963, which was the coldest to hit Co Tyrone in 200 years. And when the squares cut from the Mid Ulster Mail ran out, a cold dock leaf did the job...
Emmet was one of eight children, with a father who was a drunkard and a mother who ran away to England, leaving her sons and daughters to cope for themselves. There was no money, no council houses, no jobs to be had. The Stormont government considered Emmet and his like “dirty, lazy, thieving Fenian gypsy ba****ds” who didn’t deserve anything. Then in August 1969 - on the day before his 14th birthday - the British army moved in.
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For the young man it was difficult; he and his friend Mickey Peach were always getting up to no good and recruitment into the IRA beckoned. However, as a young teenager delivering Cantrell & Cochrane lemonade and paid £6 and 10 shillings a week, his post office savings book gradually filled until there was enough for a one-way ticket from Larne to Stranraer and a new life and a new name: Tom Joad.
Compelling Story
In his book Tom Joad and Me, author Owen O’Neill has painted a vivid picture of this young man’s life and how, like O’Neill himself, Tom became a bricky in London. We meet the people he met, the women he fell for, share his first pint, his passionate love life and - most disturbing of all - his journeys home and his brutal interrogation at airports.
“This is not autobiographical although there’s is some truth there,” says Owen. “The vicious treatment happened to a friend who told me the horror story when I visited him as he recovered in hospital.
“The characters are an amalgam of a number of friends and situations - although I did break into Hammersmith police station to get to a girlfriend, I wasn’t wearing shoes and the sergeant on duty lent me a pair of boots which I returned in a brown paper bag next day.”
That sparked a panic, he recalls: “They thought it was a bomb.”
Owen was born in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. One of 16 children, he now lives with his wife in London. After winning a BBC Radio 4 poetry competition he has completed three books of poems.
The characters are an amalgam of a number of friends and situations - although I did break into Hammersmith police station to get to a girlfriend, I wasn’t wearing shoes and the sergeant on duty lent me a pair of boots which I returned in a brown paper bag next day... They thought it was a bomb
— Owen O'Neill
He was a stand-up comic for nine years but now favours plays and has three on the go. First, a screenplay about an old man taking his money out of the bank before the banking crash of 2008, locking it in a safe which later he and his son are unable to open. Second, he’s also in the middle of a drama about a comedienne who can’t get work, buys a bus and takes tourists around Belfast, making it up as she goes along - there’s always humour in Owen’s writing. The third project features the controversy in Co Tyrone where a community is divided over the discovery of gold in the Sperrins.
Tom Joad and Me is published by Thirsty Books (£16.99) and Owen O’Neill will be appearing at the Aspects Festival in Bangor with ‘Hold Yer Tongue’ on September 27, aspectsfestival.com
Stephen Way Was A True Gent
Although Stephen Way had been ill for some time it was still a shock to hear of his death last Wednesday. He was devoted to his wife, Gloria Hunniford, and he made no secret of his love for her.
We met and talked on several occasions but one stands out more than the others. I was in London for an important luncheon in the Guild Hall. The day before I joined Gloria in her studio and sat in on her programme. I was going through chemotherapy treatment, feeling rotten and sporting a wig which I was told made me look like Rod Stewart...
After the recording, in her dressing room, as was her style Gloria quizzed me about my health, all the details, and we came round to the wig. By that time Stephen had joined us and she told me to take off the wig so she could see the regrowth of my hair.
“Now Stephen, Anne has a very important luncheon tomorrow, what can you do with her hair,” said Gloria. At once he invited me to his New Bond Street salon first thing in the morning, where his best hairdresser worked her magic and I walked tall, back out into London and on to the event looking normal.
When I wanted to pay I was told it was Stephen’s treat. What a gentleman. My love and sympathy to Gloria and her sons and grandsons; like so many others, a family experiencing heartbreak and sorrow.
