Was ventriloquism a popular form of entertainment on the Irish variety circuit at the time?
Well no, not really. There were only about two ventriloquists around! So when I started doing it I had no idea that there was even such a thing as a ventriloquist. (laughs) Was it literally then a case of just getting a book from the library and teaching yourself? Well I actually started doing ventriloquism without a book at all. I’ve always mimicked and done voices and all that sort of thing, so it was a really just the next step from the other puppets I used to make…deciding to make a puppet that could move its mouth. So if that was the very beginning of your interest in puppetry, how did you then get involved in it professionally? Well, I was doing those concerts…and…you see my father died when I was 15 so I had to leave college, but I did go to the Tec for a few years, and I was always very good at making things with my hands. Then I actually became a fitter in Denny’s Bacon factory in Sligo, but I still used to do parochial concerts, and that, with the ventriloquism. Then I came t
