Secret Dublin live show with Tara Flynn, Tonie Walsh, and Terry Fagan

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 652 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Live from Dublin, the Irish Passport brings you the hidden history of the Irish capital. Comedian and author Tara Flynn discusses her favourite Dublin secrets. Tonie Walsh describes gay life in the city before the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and the furious anger at violence against gay people that fuelled the earliest Pride marches. Terry Fagan of the North Inner City Folklore Project recounts some of his favourite Dublin tales and takes us inside the lost red light district of The Monto. This live show was held at the Button Factory as part of the Dublin Podcast Festival. It was a double bill with our friends over at the Motherfoclóir podcast. You can hear their show and our crossover Q&A session here. Many thanks to Headstuff, to the brilliant Button Factory production team, and to Darach, Peadar, Gearóidín and Éimear. Season 3 of The Irish Passport podcast is made with the kind support of Biddy Murphy, online sellers of genuine Irish goods. Check them out on www.biddymurphy.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook: @PassportIrish.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When John O'Brien emigrated to Boston in the 1980s, he found his musical skills in high demand.
0:17.2	When playing at gatherings and wakes, he noticed a curious trend.
0:21.8	People would mark the occasion by burning a piece of turf.
0:25.8	I used to play music in America.
0:28.3	You know, you'd be playing at wakes or functions,
0:31.7	and people would be trying to light sides of turf on barbecues or something,
0:35.8	and they'd spend all night lighting it and
0:37.7	when it would eventually light it would smoke the place out of it.
0:40.4	Turf peat cut from Irish boglands was the traditional fuel of Ireland, used to cook and to heat
0:46.9	homes going back centuries. For many Irish emigrants, it was the smell of home. The experience
0:53.3	gave John a business idea,
0:55.8	turf peat incense. He moved back home to Tipperary and began working on how to bring the
1:01.6	nostalgic scent of a turf fire to all those who were far away from home.
1:07.0	Myself from my father spent weeks and weeks and weeks developing the product. In the bogs, you've dark peat and you've got light peat so we have to blend the two together to make sure that it lights. It's absolutely natural, no additives of any description. Just different blends of peat from a couple of different bogs we use. The Irish peat instance means you can get the smell of peat basically any place in the world once you light
1:27.6	one of these. Once they had perfected the blend of peat that would light easily and burn slowly
1:33.1	and steadily to produce that turf scent. John and his father developed an incense holder for it,
1:39.1	a miniature ceramic cottage. Once the turf peat incense is alight, the smoke rises up out of the cottage chimney.
1:47.0	Gabe Byrne launched it. Down the late late show back in 1996, I think it was, yeah. And he took to it
1:54.5	straightway. He loved it. He actually sang, Tura lura lura. We did a trade show the following day and we
2:00.0	were sold out. It was amazing in Dublin,
2:02.2	yeah. Then the letters began to arrive. From all over the world, Irish emigrants began to write
2:08.9	to the Turf peat incense company to thank them for giving them back the smell of home.
	...

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