Woman in the Making: Panti's Memoir (24 page)

He has also said in that interview (and later defended his remarks in another interview) during a discussion about adoption:

Leaving aside the bizarre leap to incest, it is, of course, a facetious and pointless argument as the same question could be asked about a brother and sister but, more importantly, it is a perfect example of an attempt to reduce gay people to a sex act. Gay couples aren’t in loving relationships, like everybody else, they are merely buggering each other. And the choice of the word ‘buggering’ is deliberate, too, as it’s a blunter, cruder term more likely to offend than the usual ‘having sex’.

So,
the question remains: why did these journalists and commentators threaten to sue? Why, with all the platforms at their disposal to refute my remarks, did they come after RTÉ and me with legal threats? And do it while at the same time claiming that I was the one trying to stifle open debate by using the word ‘homophobia’.

Of course I can’t know why they did it, but I can hazard a guess. I think they did it partly because they thought I’d be a soft target. They dismissed me as a bloke in a dress who doesn’t really have a voice. And perhaps thought, correctly, that RTÉ would be a soft target, too. RTÉ had only just been through the Father Kevin Reynolds case where the station’s flagship current affairs programme had falsely accused the priest of fathering a child through rape. When it was eventually proved that the allegations were entirely false, after Reynolds’s reputation had been destroyed, it was forced to apologise and pay substantial damages. It was a low point for the broadcaster, and in the aftermath it was skittish and easily frightened by a solicitor’s letter claiming defamation.

Clearly RTÉ was the real target. Oh, I suspect they didn’t like me – I imagine they still don’t! – but RTÉ was the big fish they wanted to fry. Iona was well aware that the country would no doubt soon be heading to the polls to vote on same-sex marriage and I believe they decided they couldn’t let RTÉ, the national broadcaster with the power to have a huge impact on the result of a poll, allow the word ‘homophobia’ to be introduced to
the debate because, they figured, if that happened, the game was up for them. They couldn’t allow people to suggest that their arguments against marriage equality were simply based on a dislike of gay people.

I was so furious about RTÉ’s apology that Andrew sent them a letter threatening to sue them, claiming that their apology had in fact defamed me with its implication that RTÉ had no real role in the débâcle, and that I had ‘gone rogue’ on the show, with RTÉ only an unfortunate, innocent broadcaster. Their apology, we said, was injurious to my reputation: it suggested that I couldn’t be trusted and posed an enhanced risk as a media guest. I had decided not to actually follow up with my threat, but I thought the spineless eejits could do with a shot across the bow. But the substance of my complaint was true. I meant it, and it was soon to be borne out: for a long time afterwards, whenever I was interviewed on radio or TV, nervous producers would insist on a pre-record – until eventually I put a foot down and refused to do pre-records on principle. Even now, I always get an embarrassed producer or researcher mumbling that ‘Eh, you know … just … If you could just make sure not to mention any names.’

The moment the apology was broadcast, things started to move up a gear. People were outraged. The online debate escalated, with RTÉ being denounced as having given in to censorship and bullying. And the apology pushed the whole affair onto the pages and into the airwaves of the
mainstream media. They couldn’t continue to ignore the story when an apology had been broadcast.

Then I got a phone call from someone in RTÉ. They told me that the staff was in an uproar about it. There had been meetings in which the management had attempted to explain their position to an unreceptive audience, and memos had been sent to all staff. The most interesting thing they told me was that the gossip in RTÉ was that the six complainants had also received a substantial payout: rumour ran that it was close to a hundred thousand euro.

I was shocked. Surely that couldn’t be true. Could RTÉ really have been that easy a pushover? And almost a hundred thousand euro? It
couldn’t
be true! I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I’d heard that RTÉ had paid out a small nominal sum – a hundred euro in the ‘poor box’ as a token – but
that
sum? Could people like Quinn, O’Brien and Waters really be that tone deaf to public opinion? These people were media professionals. Hell, the Iona Institute’s
raison d’être
was to influence and manage public opinion. Could they really have so misread the public mood? Because I was certain if this turned out to be true, and if it became widely known, then lots of people who had previously been apathetic about the whole affair would be pushed firmly into my camp.

Any money RTÉ paid out was licence payers’ money. And a payout would make the complainants look money-grubbing and greedy. They’d already got their apology
so why go after the money? But the person on the phone insisted the gossip must be true. RTÉ was a small town and everybody knew everybody else’s business.

I knew that if it turned out to be true it would be a big help to me. I had already realised that I had very little in my armoury to fight this, and the one hope I
had
had – that RTÉ would be on my side – was already long gone. My only weapon was noise. I needed to make as much noise as possible. I needed to kick up a storm and get as many people as possible on my side – because otherwise I was fucked. I knew that if it became public knowledge that RTÉ had made a substantial payout to powerful people – people who had other options than legal ones – then that would make a lot of noise.

I couldn’t verify if it was true or not but I didn’t need to. Someone else could do that. I sent a text to a couple of journalists I was friendly with, saying what I’d heard, knowing damn well they’d be sniffing round RTÉ before I’d even hung up. And for good measure I sent out a vague tweet saying that I would be shocked if the rumour regarding a payout was true. I knew that would be enough.

The next day it was front-page news (€85,000 was the generally accepted figure) and the Iona confirmed it with a statement on their website. All hell broke loose.

The internet exploded with indignation. The story led the news bulletins. RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority were flooded with complaints. Questions were raised in
the Dáil. It was discussed and debated and dissected on radio and television, and I was fielding calls from what felt like every reporter in the country. They were still having some trouble getting much beyond the bare facts past their legal departments but they were trying. And, of course, the other radio and TV channels were delighted to kick RTÉ when it was down. And I was happy to talk to them and appear on their shows because all this noise, this cacophony of outrage, would, I hoped, enable me to get across my side of the story.

The whole sorry saga had touched a nerve. It chimed with a public mood and a particular point in the country’s evolution on LGBT rights. People saw it as an affront to the LGBT community generally. We weren’t being allowed to call, as they saw it, a spade a spade. We were being put in our gay place. But, more than that, ordinary people saw a group of powerful people – establishment people, people with access to national platforms – telling everyone else to shut up and pocketing their money while they were at it. Although it seemed to come as a shock to them, these people weren’t universally liked, but most ordinary people had been previously too polite to say so. The people who took the money didn’t realise quite how far out of step they were with most regular folk. Most Irish people have a gay brother or a lesbian daughter or best friend, and they took umbrage on their behalf.

Two thousand people turned up to a hastily organised protest in Dublin city centre on a grey Sunday afternoon
to denounce ‘homophobia and RTÉ censorship’. I stood at the back, somewhat embarrassed and astounded that so many people cared.

The other consequence of the apology and the payout was that it probably meant it was less likely that I’d end up in court. After all, they’d fried their big fish: what benefit would it be to them to come after me? I had nothing to give them. I had a bar that had managed to scrape through the recession but it had Panti’s name above the door and would be worthless without it. Not ending up in court would suit me just fine so Andrew and I decided to change our planned response to the initial letters. Instead of responding forcefully and vigorously, we would respond with a
slightly
more conciliatory tone. I wouldn’t apologise (that was still my line in the sand) but there was no need to poke a wounded tiger. Andrew sent a letter asking their solicitor if his clients ‘believe they have achieved satisfaction in this matter’. We received no reply.

I had appeared on
The Saturday Night Show
on 11 January, and two weeks later, on the twenty-fifth, Brendan O’Connor read out the apology that would explode the story out of the internet and onto the front pages. In the middle of that week, while I was trying to keep my head above water in the boiling cauldron of public opinion, the Abbey Theatre invited me to speak.

F
IACH
M
AC
C
ONGHAIL IS THE
energetic, astute, glad-handing, mischievous director of Ireland’s national theatre. He’s a doer, the kind of man who could have been a Celtic Tiger property developer cutting a swathe through Dublin with glass and steel if he’d wanted, but he was interested in developing the arts, not offices. He’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, either. He has a touch of the P. T. Barnum about him, and he delights in the Abbey’s history of provocation. No doubt, had he been director in 1907 when people rioted in protest at the theatre’s production of
The Playboy of the Western World
, Fiach would have stood at his office window and congratulated himself on a job well done. I suspect he regards ruffling the occasional feather as part of a national theatre’s job.

When he first invited me to address the audience at the end of the final performance of the theatre’s production
of James Plunkett’s
The Risen People
, my first instinct was to say, ‘No.’ I was in the eye of a media storm while at the same time trying to get on with my regular work. My hands were already full and I was tired. I didn’t have the time or the energy to start thinking about making some kind of speech at the national bloody theatre! But I did give it some thought, and I changed my mind. And while it would probably be a little over-dramatic to say that that decision changed my life, it is certainly true that it had a greater impact on it than I could ever have imagined.

It was definitely one of the best decisions I ever made.

I agreed to do it partly because I know the people at the Abbey and they’ve always been good to me. I had done various things there over the previous few years and, only a few months before, my show
All Dolled Up
had run there for a week on the Peacock stage. However, the real reason I agreed to do it was that, up until that point, I had been talked
about
a lot, and guardedly talked
to
with nervous lawyers and producers hovering over my shoulder. The Abbey would be different. This would be my first opportunity to give my side of the story, directly, without the filter of skittish lawyers or heavy-handed producers. Of course, I imagined that the only people who would ever hear what I had to say were the people in the auditorium that night, but that was enough: I was doing it for
me
. In the midst of all the madness, this was a welcome opportunity to speak my mind, and Fiach assured me I could say what I wanted.

The
Risen People
is a drama set among the grinding poverty of Dublin’s tenements in 1913, during the general strike known as the Lockout. The production had been running for the previous two months and, at the end of every performance, a different person had ‘answered the noble call’. The Noble Call is an Irish pub tradition, like a party piece, where everyone must sing a song or recite a poem, and the Abbey had invited a long list of artists, musicians, writers, thinkers, polemicists and more to take to the stage and respond in any way they wanted to the production. Mine would be the very last Noble Call, after the cast’s final performance. Two nights before, I went along to see the production with my friend and collaborator Phillip. I knew that I wanted to speak about the ‘Pantigate’ affair but I wasn’t sure until I saw the production how that might relate to the play.

That night it was the turn of socialist politician and activist Richard Boyd Barrett to answer the Noble Call. Richard is a smart guy and, no stranger to public speaking, he spoke engagingly and recited a long, difficult poem from memory. However, the audience had just sat through a two-hour play and so were perhaps a little too tired to engage fully with his fairly intellectual choice. His address was livened up somewhat when he was heckled by an expensively dressed posh-voiced woman, who was in no mood to listen to a socialist on her night out at the theatre and grumbled loudly throughout, much to the rest of the audience’s amused disapproval.
Watching Richard, I decided I would be better off doing something more personal.

The next day I let it percolate in the back of my mind and thought vaguely about what I might want to say as I tried to keep up with the continuing media storm. That night when I went to bed, I lay there and started to put some order on my thoughts. At one point, I sat up and tapped a few notes into my phone.

The next day was Saturday, always a busy day for me. My dog Penny needs to be walked first, and then I have to prepare for my regular Saturday-night show in Pantibar: make a running order, talk to the guest performers about what they’re doing, pick the tracks and scenes I’ll be doing, put the show’s tracks onto my computer, maybe learn some lines or go to Boots to pick up nails or hairspray. So, I didn’t have a lot of time, but in the afternoon I sat down for a couple of hours and wrote a speech. I didn’t labour over it because I knew essentially what I wanted to say. I was really just getting some things off my chest, and was hoping to remind people what this whole kerfuffle was really about: I was frustrated that the media were becoming bogged down in a kind of school-debating-team-style discussion over the dictionary definition of the word ‘homophobia’. I didn’t write out the whole speech, word for word. I wrote a solid framework but left myself room just to speak, rather than remember. It’s how I work best. As long as I hit the key points and the rhetorically important
sentences, the rest would look after itself. I ran through it once or twice in my living room in front of Penny (she seemed unimpressed), then went to Pantibar to get ready in my dressing room there.