You’re a model for a coddle if you toddle up the Poddle

You’re a model for a coddle if you toddle up the Poddle

15 Feb 1979

Does your mother know the Poddle?
Will she take a dish of Coddle
The oul’ dish that Dublin ate
When days were thin ..:, ”

THUS HEAD Lee Dunne’s invitation to a coddle reception in the Parliament Inn last night to announce details of his own production of his own dramatisation of his own novel, Does Your Mother, which opens at the Olympia on Tuesday night next. It is against my principles as a Munster man to partake of that most revolting of dishes, no matter how trendy it has become.to do so. I feel about coddle as a French chef of my acquaintance felt when, shortly after his arrival in this country, lie was introduced to mashed turnips. “This,” he exclaimed, “is an excellent food—for cows.”
But Lee Dunne is the most unpretentious of men, and he is the author I most like meeting on these rounds. His work arouses great passions, and his last theatrical venture sent the Dublin drama critics into a tizzy of rage and vituperation.
“They really put the boot into me, and I was quite hurt by some of the things that were said,” he told ‘me last night. “But it was great for business, and, with God’s help, they will have an even bigger go at me this time.”
Goodbye to the Hill was slammed by the critics as one of the worst plays ever staged in Dublin. But, Dublin being Dublin, the punters loved it, and.it was one of the box office successes of 1978. That was at the 300-seat Eblana. Now Lee and his Trio Productions are moving to the 1,200-seat Olympia, where the rent is nearly £400 a week. Add to this an initial bid of about £10,000 to get the show of the ground, and by Dublin theatrical standards you are right into the big time. Lee and fellow directors John Rushe and Vincent Smith are confident. “We promise a good evening’s entertainment, and we won’t let the people down,’ ‘says Lee. “That was our promise with the Hill, and the people responded to it.
Lee has himself bid goodbyes to the hill in that the lease of his house in the Dublin mountains has run out. He is now living in Co. Wicklow and writing steadily eight hours a day, six days a week
“..ger shall flourish, the native shall perish.” This became one of the most quoted lines in Limerick, used whenever ‘anyone from outside the city boundary was picked ‘to play for Garryowen,. or when a nonlocal achieved high office in the gasworks. I can reveal that RTE is soon to announce the appointment of local boy Kevin O’Connor as their Limerick correspondent. As there are two journalistic Kevin O’ Connors from Limerick, I had better explain that the RTE one is not him of rugby and tennis fame, but the author of The Irish in Britain” and the 1976 Dublin Theatre Festival play, Friends.” RTE Kevin is a city boy who was active in amateur theatricals around Limerick in the late 1950s, spent some ten years in London, and returned to Ireland to make a name for himself as an RTE producer.

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