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IMELDA MAY

Kissed by a Saint

You simply won’t find anyone in Ireland who doesn’t love Imelda May. I know. I’ve tried, and my extensive, if unscientific, research into the matter failed to unearth a single person who was less than smitten with the Liberties Belle.

So, what is that quality that makes Ms May such a darling bud?

Search me, but I know it instantly when I meet it, and in her case I first met it when she appeared on my other TV show, For One Night Only, in 2011. Her status as a “National Treasure” was instantly secured. For days afterwards people were stopping me in the street to tell me how wonderful she was. Not that I needed telling. I was pleased to discover, when we met again in October 2013, that she had experienced much the same reaction herself.

She should be used to it by now. The first time she felt that sort of adulation was when, as a small girl, she returned home to the Coombe from a family holiday in Rome, having been kissed on the cheek by Pope John Paul II. (You see, even he was smitten.) Neighbours queued up to touch the famous cheek, as if it were a relic of Padre Pio.

By the way, you didn’t misread me there. I really did say that the Clabby family — for such is her clan and maiden name — went to Rome on holiday, back at a time when no one from inner-city Dublin, and hardly anyone from Ireland, went “foreign” on holiday. (My own folks never made it further than Bray.) And this wasn’t the Clabbys’ only trip: all five offspring were annually shoehorned into the family Rover, under a roof-rack piled as high as the Liberty Tower with luggage, deck chairs and sleeping bags, and off they went, by road and ferry, to France, Spain or even Morocco, like the Griswolds on vacation.

It was from her parents, Tony and Madge, that Imelda inherited her unique voice — somewhere on a spectrum of russets, reds and golds that spans Judy Garland, Dusty Springfield and Amy Winehouse. They also gave her her “try anything, talk to anyone, fear no one” zest for life, her striking looks, her bold creative flair and her still rock-solid faith and values. Oh, and that accent, which should be preserved in aspic in the National Museum as one of Ireland’s aural jewels.

Tony was a painter — more of the Dulux than of the Rembrandt variety — but was not afraid to express his artistic talent in their two-bedroom home, the walls of which he adorned with giant poppies and dandelions to such a “mad” extent that neighbours used to knock for a gander. Madge still “drowns” him every night, as she sends out holy water in the vague direction of each of their children.

They are perfect role models for Imelda in her own marriage to her rockabilly soul-mate, Darrel Higham, and in her recent role as mother to young Violet. That Imelda remains close to her parents was either inevitable or a miracle, since she shared their bedroom until she was fourteen.

“God help me. I’m mentally disturbed because of it!” she shudders at the memory.

GB: Tell me about that home and what sort of a household it was . . .

IM: A madhouse. Really!

GB: Was it generally considered in the Coombe that it was a madhouse?

IM: Probably [laughs]. I just loved it. I thought it was great fun.

GB: And there was music.

IM: Always music, always dancing, always people. My dad was a dance teacher, so obviously he’d be playing music and practising his dancing at home.

GB: And does your mum sing?

IM: Mam sings beautifully, yeah.

GB: You were never rich, but you were never short?

IM: Exactly, yeah. My mam and dad worked very hard. We never had much, being so many of us, and my dad worked in the Corporation — the “Corpo” — as a painter and decorator. But we never wanted. Mam and Dad never smoked or drank, so they’d save their money, and they always wanted to bring us on a holiday. And so we went to France, to Italy and Spain.

GB: Very unusual, Imelda.

IM: Very unusual. I know. I remember we took a day trip to Morocco when we were in Spain. Dad saw a boat, a day trip off to Morocco, which nobody went to then — North Africa. And I remember Dad saying, “Right, here’s your choice. Do you want to eat tonight” — like, we’d go out for a meal — “or will we just get rolls and go to Morocco?” And we were, “Morocco!” and not knowing what it was.

GB: A day excursion.

IM: Yeah, it was brilliant. I couldn’t thank my mam and dad enough for the excitement we had.

GB: How much religion was there in this mad household, and how mad was this religion? I’m talking about holy pictures and medals and Mass and all of that.

IM: All of it. All of it. Very religious family.

GB: Family Rosary?

IM: Family Rosary, Angelus every time it came on, Mass, Grace before meals, night-time prayers . . . Yeah, all of it. Great really, yeah.

GB: How much of that has stuck to the present day?

IM: A lot of it, actually, has stuck. Not constantly stuck, because as a teenager I thought, I’ve had enough of this, and went mad like most teenagers and went off, did my own thing. But, slowly, I kind of came back to it. Yeah, not as intensely, I suppose, as Mam and Dad. They have pictures and Rosaries everywhere. And Mam drowns Dad at night with her holy water bottle. She guesses where various countries of people are and everyone gets drowned.

GB: So, now take me to school then. What school was it?

IM: St Brigid’s, Holy Faith, in the Coombe.

GB: Were you studious?

IM: I put my head down and got on with it. I wasn’t a brainbox and I wasn’t a dunce. Not that anyone’s a dunce. My mother was always good, and she said, “Do your best. Whatever your best is, do your best and you can be proud of yourself.”

GB: And the nuns weren’t particularly awful or anything?

IM: Some were awful and some were fabulous. Like anybody, nuns are people too! [Laughs.]

GB: Now, your mother is on record as saying, “We always knew she would be special at what she did after a trip to Rome . . .” — you certainly got around, girl! — “. . . with the Girl Guides ended up with Imelda being cradled in the arms of Pope John Paul II.”

IM: Yeah, and he’s a saint now, isn’t he? I got kissed by a saint. He kissed me.

GB: How did that come about . . . ?

IM: That was another one of the mad family excursions. I think it was my sister. The Girl Guides were taking a trip to Rome, and my family, being the way they were, would say, “Great, we’ll all go!” And it was great, terrific. And we went up to the front. And then he went past and just picked me up and gave me a big kiss and put me back, and then the whole of the Liberties rubbed my cheeks for ages after, blessing themselves . . .

GB: This is the spot that was kissed by . . .

IM: Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I was probably about six or seven, and they all kept rubbing my cheek and blessing themselves afterwards.

GB: It must become a bit of a bother.

IM: I thought it was very odd, yeah. [Laughs.]

GB: And at what stage did you realise that you could sing?

IM: I always sang at home. My sister encouraged me, Maria, a lot. And then, in school, they knew. They’d get me to do the harmonies. When I went into secondary school, I had Sister Hilda. She was brilliant. I brought my guitar in, she’d encourage it.

GB: And I know from your brother Fintan you got the tapes of Elvis and Gene Vincent and various other people, and you took to rockabilly at a time when it seems to me your gang would have been into Wet Wet Wet and Culture Club and Duran Duran and all of that sort of thing. What was it about rockabilly that got into you, as it were?

IM: The wildness.

GB: The wildness.

IM: I loved it. Yeah. I loved all the other stuff as well, all the Rick Astley and Bros and Duran Duran. But then I discovered rockabilly and blues and jazz . . .

GB: Billie Holiday . . .

IM: Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, Gene Vincent . . . Judy Garland I loved. That changed me. That moved something in me that I hadn’t felt before with music. It definitely got me. And I got it.

GB: Now, I’m also anxious to establish the fact that, for those people who think you arrived like a meteor already finished and ready, you slogged for fifteen years or thereabouts before you got there . . .

IM: Yeah, yeah.

GB: You must have had a ferocious conviction that this is what you wanted to do and nothing else.

IM: Yeah, I loved it. It’s exactly what I wanted to do. The making of music — I found a great fulfilment in it. And fire, yeah — passion and fire drives me a lot. I’m very ruled by my heart in many ways. And I just steamed ahead with it, because I couldn’t not do it.

GB: You couldn’t not do it.

IM: Yeah, that was basically it. It was never a quest for fame.

GB: But I know you cleaned toilets and you waited at tables and you did double shifts in the nursing homes. You were looking after old people . . .

IM: Launderette, garage, yeah, loads . . . I wasn’t making enough money doing it, so I had other jobs going along. But I always knew whatever job I had was a sideline, and I’d tell whoever I was working for. It was always shift-work, so I could change my shifts if I got a gig in. But making music for me, especially when I got into writing, that was, like I said, something that I found I had to do. And not so much a dream of, you know, “One day I’m going to make it.” I just wanted to make music. I loved being on stage as well. There’s a magic that happens between an audience and an artist, a singer or the band, and it’s just for that couple of hours, and it’s a huge joy. You can feel it, and it feeds back and forth. The happier the audience get, the happier the band get, the happier the audience get, and it feeds and feeds till the end of the night. And it’s just a little bit of magic.

GB: And when you look at The X Factor and similar shows, you see all these kids trying to fast-track to fame. How do you react to that?

IM: It saddens me.

GB: Saddens you? Why?

IM: I think they’re missing the point. X Factor things can be somebody striving for someone else’s idea of success. I think a lot of people are striving for fame. Some people might think it’s the answer to everything. But if you’re famous for nothing, what’s the answer? What’s the question? What do you do with your life? I think it should be about making music. It should be about fulfilling your potential. If you go on The X Factor for a thrill, great, go for it. If you’re going on to something like that to completely change your life around, what was so bad with your life in the first place? Secondly, why do you want it to change?

Because, for me, the journey is the joy. It’s the people you’re meeting along the way. It’s the music that you’re making. You’re talking about “meaning of life.” You have to enjoy your day every day. I like to enjoy each day.

GB: Now, speaking of the journey, let us move on to Mr Darrel Higham. He’s English, but we can’t have everything! Now, he must have been really kind of smitten, let’s face it, when we hear about the efforts he made to come from London to see you.

IM: Yeah. He chased me.

GB: He chased you. Yes, and . . .

IM: Yeah, we met at a weekend in London. It was all to do with music, of course, and it was a gig. We got on really well for the whole weekend. And I left him with a little kiss and then I said goodbye and I went home. And then he, all of a sudden, had gigs — loads of gigs — coming up in Dublin, funny enough, yeah. [Laughs.] And he was on his way over. And the story goes that he hadn’t got enough money for his ticket, so he sold his car. And the rest of that story is he’s always saying to me, whenever we have a row or anything, he tells me how much he misses that car. But there’s an end to that, because he just found the car on eBay.

GB: The car?

IM: The car, with the registration number, in someone’s garden, with a tree growing through the ground of it and out the roof, and he’s in the middle, him and his friend, of doing it up.

GB: I’d say your position is a very precarious one once that car comes back.

IM: Probably, yeah. I’m out, the car is in.

GB: Anyway, you remember the kiss that you left him with to go home. You knew then, did you? Come on, you knew . . .

IM: I’m not giving anything away. He says he knew. I like to let him think that . . .

GB: Did he say that?

IM: Yeah, he said he knew as soon as he saw me that I was the one.

GB: They all say that. Don’t believe that, for heaven’s sake.

IM: I don’t, but I like to hear him saying it! [Laughter.]

GB: Are you one of these people who believes there’s only one person in the world for you, and you’re the only one person in the world for him?

IM: Yeah. The honest answer: I think we are made, definitely, me and Darrel, are made for each other, definitely. However, if anything was to happen to me, I would like him to fall in love again. Not too much, just a little bit. [Laughs.] So, I think there can be somebody else.

GB: And do you think your mother would have the same attitude about your dad?

IM: No.

GB: No?

IM: No, no. There’s definitely just the two of them. I remember, once, we were messing around and said to Mam, “If you ever found out that Dad had done the dirt on you, like, would you throw him out?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“But,” we said, “what if it was fifty years ago and since then, you’ve had a great life together, what would you do now?”

And she said, “He’d be out the door.” [Laughter.]

I said, “Even now?”

“Yeah,” she said . . .

GB: Still!

IM: Yeah. And he roars laughing. He knows. But he’s not interested. He’s mad about her; she’s mad about him. It’s great.

GB: Come back to Darrel . . . and his touring with you . . .

IM: Yeah . . .

GB: How does that work out? I’m thinking of a little touch of claustrophobia or getting in each other’s hair . . .

IM: No, that works really well, actually. We love working together. We probably kill each other more at home than when we’re on the road. I can’t nag him about emptying the bins. [Laughs.] No, it works. It works really well, because there’s a bunch of us, but everybody gets on really well, and I want to make sure that everybody’s happy and that they all feel that they’re valued and treated well, because they are. So I’d be the boss . . .

GB: Of the band . . . ?

IM: Of the band.

GB: And now and then you have to crack the whip, do you?

IM: Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. Not very often, but every now and then they all laugh if they hear me going up to one of them saying, “I’d like to have a chat.” They all go, “Oooooh!” but I’ll make sure that I’ll say, “Is everything okay with you? You seem a bit grumpy. What’s going on? Can we, can I, fix it out?” Because it can be hard, especially, you know, you’re five weeks on the road, you’re in a tour bus, all together — there’s eleven of you in, basically, a caravan on wheels, missing home, missing their wives, missing their babies. It can be very hard and sometimes somebody can want to kill someone else. But Darrel runs the business with me and I couldn’t do it without him, so he’ll say, “You just go to bed. Put the baby to bed. You go on and I’ll sort that out.” And that’s heaven to me. He’s brilliant.

GB: Okay. Now, I was thinking, when the breakthrough did come, after all those years and so on, it certainly came at a fair old rush. I’m thinking of Later with Jools, your performance at the Grammys, spots on The Late Late Show and then duets with Bono and Jeff Beck and Lou Reed. Did any of that go to your head?

IM: No. No, how could it? You’re just meeting people. Everybody is just a person. Well, certainly my family would slap me down if it did, and certainly the area where I’m from, the Liberties, they wouldn’t take any of that. So, no.

GB: I’m thinking that, in the week that Lou Reed died, another great talent ruined by addiction and drugs and all of that, and you’re in the middle of that kind of world now, and yet you’ve remained stable and sane. And so has the band, and so has Darrel. Why do you think that is?

IM: I know exactly why that is.

GB: Yes?

IM: There’s a few reasons. One, there’s my family, the way I was brought up, you know. I’ve had a great, solid, happy upbringing. Secondly, my husband being with me on the road. He’s my rock, absolutely my rock. I couldn’t do it without him. Thirdly, that things happened when I was older. I made all the mistakes I wanted with nobody watching, so, musically speaking, you know, you could write a rubbish song, but there’d be only ten people in the audience, so it didn’t matter. [Laughs.] Fourthly, I have a great band and we’re good friends. And, fifth, I have very strong faith. You see, I always have my cross on me, miraculous medals and all, and if I have any worries I can … [taps her medals] They say I have a direct line.

GB: Because that brings me precisely to the next [point] . . . What is talent, Imelda, as far as you’re concerned? Where does it come from?

IM: It comes from your heart and your soul. Passion: talent is passion, I think. It’s all linked. I have a belief that everybody has something that they’re really, really good at. And it’s a question of finding out what that is. So, if you don’t feel that you have a talent that you’re really good at, you just haven’t found it yet. And I’d like to instil that in my daughter — that she has to find that — and I’m sure I must have got that from my parents, that I think everybody is really good at something.

GB: And is there any sense that you have that this is a gift from God to you?

IM: I heard somebody say, once, to me that your talent is a gift from God, and what you do with it is your way of paying him back. So, I like that. So I do think talent is a gift from God. It’s like the hundreds and thousands on top of life: it can make life colourful and interesting and sweet, you know?

GB: Come back to God. What is your image of God?

IM: I know it’s a man. I know that. Just ask any woman about labour and they’ll tell you that no woman would do that to another woman. [Laughs.]

GB: It was that bad, was it?

IM: Oh, God, yeah. And my religion came out then too.

GB: Yes?

IM: I was like a holy nut in there. I was screaming, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Somebody help me . . .”

GB: Oh dear.

IM: It was a tough forty-two hours. It was tough!

GB: Does that mean we are not going again under any circumstances?

IM: No, I will. Isn’t that mad? But they promised me it wouldn’t be as bad, because they know my history now, that I had a tough time. She wouldn’t come out. She got stuck . . .

GB: God love you.

IM: Yeah, I thought I was on my way out, actually.

GB: And what do you think happens when you die?

IM: Well, I’d love to think that you meet everybody that you’ve missed. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d like to think that you get peace and calm and a bit of fun. I hope it’s not dull, whichever end you go. But I do think you have to meet your maker at the end and maybe say a few sorrys and grovel a little bit, and then maybe meet everybody that you’ve missed. That’s what I’d love to think.

GB: So your image of God, when you were in labour and praying and crying . . .

IM: It’s a man.

GB: . . . what were you aiming your prayers at?

IM: I don’t have a visual image, but I do have a very strong connection. I’ll try to go to Mass . . . When I’m travelling it’s not so easy. I do try and go to church. But mostly, I thank him for day-to-day things: that I’m healthy, that my family’s healthy and that we’re all doing well. So, I do have a very strong faith. Most of my friends don’t. But it’s funny that I get a lot of them come to me when something’s wrong with them, and they’ll ask me, “Would you say a few prayers for such and such?” And I like that I can do that for other people.

GB: And Darrel, is he a believer?

IM: Yeah. Yeah, he is, but he wouldn’t go to Mass like the way I would. I very much believe in “each to their own.” You know, you often get people who do believe in God, [who] can be a bit smug with those who don’t, thinking that they know, and vice versa. I’ve had friends of mine who think they’re very intelligent, that definitely God doesn’t exist and only people who are a little bit backwards must believe in God. I don’t sit on either of those sides. I do believe it could be a very lonely existence if you think there’s nobody there, so I’m happy that what I have works for me.

GB: Now, the last two years have been comparatively quiet, because of the arrival of one Violet Kathleen . . .

IM: Yeah.

GB: I presume she has taken over the universe?

IM: Yeah. Yeah, she’s the boss. Everybody called me Boss, and now they’re all calling her Boss instead. Yeah, she runs the show, big time.

GB: And how would you say that motherhood has changed you?

IM: I don’t know. I feel like the same person, but the love that you feel for a child is overwhelming — for my child, obviously. The love that I feel for her is just, yeah, all-consuming. And my whole priority is her. And I feel so protective of her all the time, and everything is to make sure she is okay. And Darrel’s the same. We’re just mad about her.

GB: And may we assume that Violet will be brought up in the same faith?

IM: Yeah, I’ll do my best to. I won’t force it on her. I’ll do my best to give her the best grounding that I had. I’ll be telling her all about guardian angels and about God and Jesus, and I’ll tell her all of that. You know, I do believe in the Bible. I think of the Church — obviously there’s been a lot of troubles with it recently. I think there’s an awful lot of great people within the Church still that must be having a horrendous time . . . say, priests and nuns that I’ve met that are really good people. I know they’ve had a tough time. And I wouldn’t like to see them tarred with the same brush as the evil people that should be dealt with. So, yeah, my faith is very strong, and I will bring Violet up with, hopefully, a strong faith that she can lean on, when she needs it. And then if she doesn’t want it any more, that’s her choice, absolutely her choice.

GB: I promise you, this is the last thing, and it’s always the last question on our programme, and that is: When the day comes — which I think and believe is a far distant future — but when you finally pop your clogs and you’re up there at the Pearly Gates . . . You meet God, Imelda . . .

IM: Yes.

GB: What will Imelda May say to God?

IM: “Howya . . . ?” [Laughs.]

GB: We need a bit more than that . . . and so will God, I promise you.

IM: “I’m home!” No, I don’t know. It depends on who you meet.

GB: It’s God.

IM: No, I know it’s God, but it depends on how he is. Like, you hope to think that he’s very personable, do you know what I mean? [Laughter.] I’d say, “Thanks very much.”

GB: For what?

IM: “For letting me be born, letting me born into the family that I was born into, for my health, mostly, for meeting a great husband, for having a healthy baby, for letting me find my talent and letting me learn from my mistakes without being too harsh on me. Thanks very much for a great life.”

GB: Perfect.

IM: [Laughs.] Thank you.