Howard’s Way

The brains behind the bro’

t was Ronan Sinatra’s alleged father who once said that comedy is basically tragedy plus time…

Which might just explain how Paul Howard knows how to bring the funny.

The man covered Irish sport for sixteen years.

Along the way, he won a Stanley Cup of awards, and by the time his Saturday spoof diary in The Irish Times of rugger bugger Ross O’Carroll-Kelly hit the ground gurning, the awards shifted too, Howard being named National Newspaper Columnist Of The Year in 2013.

This comic creation has been the subject of 21 novels and three books (and over 1.5m sales in this country), but Howard has been busy elsewhere too, with biographies on the tragic Guinness heir Tara Browne and, eh, Roy Keane’s dog, Tiggs, ghostwriting autobiographies of Steve Collins and George Hook, charting life in Mountjoy Prison with The Joy and revisiting the infamous clash between Mick McCarthy and the Keane lad in the lead-up to the 2002 World Cup with The Gaffers.

Also on the book front, Howard has stepped into the world of children’s books, with Aldrin Adams & The Cheese Nightmares plus a series of Gordon’s Game outings alongside former Ireland rugby player Gordon D’Arcy.

If all that wasn’t enough, there’s the stage too, with two puppet-based musicals (2012’s Anglo: The Musical and 2018’s Copper Face Jacks: The Musical), whilst the ever-popular Foxrock forward has stepped into the light for four outings, The Last Days Of The Celtic Tiger (2007), Between Foxrock And A Hard Place (2010), Breaking Dad (2014) and Postcards From The Ledge (2017).

Baby Paul with mum Laura

And now comes The Shit Table, Howard’s look at that cordoned off area at every wedding for the misfits, kids, singletons and simpletons.

Playing at The Whale on Friday, February 21st and Saturday 22nd, you can join the waiting list here.

In the meantime, we caught up with the former Greystones resident (think we might have been just a little too posh for the lad) to explore the soundtrack of his life. And when music first weaved its magic spell…

Peter, Paul & Mary Puff the Magic Dragon
My mother used to sing it to me when I was a baby, so I suppose it was the first song I ever knew. Some people think it’s about drugs. For me, it’s about the loss of childhood innocence. The line, ‘A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys‘, still brings tears to my eyes, even as I think about it now.

Bruce Springsteen Thunder Road
It opens like stage directions from a play by Tennessee Williams: ‘The screen door slams. Mary’s dress waves…‘ A man turns up on a woman’s stoop one night, says he’s leaving this town ‘full of losers‘ and asks her to come with him. I love the many live versions of this song that were recorded.

Roy Orbison Crawling Back
Roy Orbison is to me what Elvis Presley is to a lot of people. And quite simply, no one has ever sung a song as beautifully as he sings Crawling Back. It’s an operatic pop song with several tempo changes that builds to a powerful crescendo and then gutters out. It’s very good for a broken heart. I’d imagine.

Dusty Springfield So Much Love
Recorded for the Dusty in Memphis album, her voice is simply stunning here.

Van Morrisson Madame George
This song, reputedly about a Belfast drag queen, is simply one of the most beautiful songs ever committed to tape. Haunting and achingly sad. The whole of Astral Weeks was apparently recorded in a single night in New York. There was obviously some strange magic going on in that studio.

The Beatles Here Comes The Sun
A simple song about hope and renewal that could serve as an anthem for these uncertain times. Things won’t always be this bad. George Harrison wrote it while the Beatles were going through their long and painful separation. In the middle of yet another row, he stepped out into the garden. It was a sunny day. ‘Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting/Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been clear…‘ It’s a song that never fails to lift me when I’m down.

Luke Kelly Raglan Road
Patrick Kavanagh’s poem about love lost, set to the tune of The Dawning of the Day, and sung by perhaps the greatest Irish singer who ever lived.

Madness The Sun And The Rain
If a single song encapsulates my childhood, it’s this. When I listen to it, I’m twelve years old again, putting my dad’s Brut on my face before making my Confirmation. I adore this song.

The Beatles A Day In The Life
This song, which closes the Sgt Pepper album, inspired me to write a book about Tara Browne, the Guinness heir who grew up in Wicklow and whose death in a car crash at the age of 21 inspired the opening two stanzas. The day I listened to this song on my dad’s original vinyl version of the album was the day I discovered music.

You can find out more about Paul Howard here, and go join the waiting list for The Shit Table here. This article first appeared in December 2021.