He’d been a sailor, a bricklayer, a horse trainer, and for two strange years in the 1980s, a DJ on a pirate radio station off the coast of Cork. None of it had made him rich. All of it had made him interesting . He claimed to have once talked a customs officer out of searching his van by reciting the first three verses of “The Ragman’s Ball” — and the officer had ended up buying him breakfast.
He never married, but he was never alone. Women loved him for his gentleness; men loved him because he never tried to win. He’d settle an argument with a shrug and a grin — “Ah, you could be right. Wouldn’t it be terrible if you were?” — and somehow the fight dissolved into another round. Paddy O Brian
They found him one morning in his armchair by the window, a half-drunk cup of tea beside him, the radio playing a crackly tune from Galway. The coroner said heart failure. Everyone who knew Paddy said the same thing: his heart didn’t fail. It just decided it had told enough stories. He’d been a sailor, a bricklayer, a horse