Roddy Doyle’s latest novel, The Women Behind The Door, finds him revisiting the world of Paula Spencer, the fascinating working class character the Dublin author first introduced exactly 30 years ago in his acclaimed TV series Family. With each of the four episodes focusing on a different member of the Spencer family – the stories of kids John Paul and Nicola sandwiched between those of Paula and her abusive husband Charlo – the series proved controversial for its raw look at the darker side of working class life.

Still one of the finest Irish TV dramas ever, Family explored some of the terrain Irvine Welsh was starting to document in Trainspotting and his subsequent work. For Doyle, Family proved a necessary, starker counterpoint to the more comedic nature of his earlier output, with Alan Parker’s bravura cinematic adaptation of his 1987 debut novel, The Commitments introducing his writing to an international audience.

A rip-roaring account of the rise and fall of a young Dublin soul group – who even advertise for members in the pages of Hot Press – both the novel and the movie of The Commitments were comedic masterpieces. Overseen by wannabe impresario Jimmy Rabbitte, the band – and the extended cast of the fictional Dublin suburb of Barrytown – proved a memorable collection of characters.

But with the Spencer family, Doyle felt there was deeper emotional territory to mine.

“I’d written scripts for adaptations of the Barrytown books, and I wanted to write something about the next door neighbours, not literally, but metaphorically,” reflects the affable author, now 66, during a visit to the Hot Press offices. “A household that wasn’t in as good shape emotionally as the Rabbitte household had been. It was on the back of a decade-plus of observations from my time as a school teacher.

“Not invading anyone’s houses or anything like that, but realising that in a class full of sparky, bright kids – a lot of them eager to be heard – you’d see the one or two grey-faced kids. They’d look exhausted, undernourished; they’d be wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in a long time. That kind of opened my imagination.”

The idea for The Women Behind The Door initially came to Doyle as he left the Helix in DCU after his first Covid vaccination in May 2021. He wondered if, finally, we’d collectively turned a corner after an exceptionally difficulty time, and felt it would be an opportune moment to revisit Paula Spencer. Having previously been at the centre of the The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) and Paula Spencer (2006), her story had proved an interesting way to track the changing face of Irish society.

“Literally the day I had my first vaccination, I began to wonder about her,” recalls Doyle. “I was really impressed with the way the whole vaccination centre was run. There was another added thing to it, where I’d had a play based on The Woman Who Walked Into Doors in the Helix.

“When I got into the Helix, I wondered, ‘How is this all gonna operate? Is it all gonna be in the foyer?’ And then I realised, ‘Jesus, it’s all up on the stage.’ And I’d seen a play that I’d written on that stage. So I think that’s probably what put Paula into my head.”

In The Women Behind The Door, the now middle-aged Nicola comes to Paula for help amidst lockdown in 2021, with her own relationship having just disintegrated. This is the cue for both to revisit the family’s past, when they were under the malevolent shadow of Charlo. In the process, all manner of mutual resentments surface. The story takes some dark and uncomfortable turns, but for Doyle, such an approach was necessary to allow the characters exorcise their demons.

“It’s honest,” he shrugs. “From my point of view, it’s getting away from the notion of the mother as a saint. The blessed virgin – Jesus, what a model, for fuck’s sake! As a parent myself, sometimes the last thing you want is the kids’ company, because they’re now adults and up and running. ‘Feck off and leave me alone!’ Who as a parent, even with young children, doesn’t wish, ‘Oh Jesus, I wish I could just go out for a pint!’

“This notion of perfect motherhood, where the mother devotes her entire time to children and never, ever resents it or regrets it. Or when she bends down, she feels pain because she’s given birth to four children. And her youth and her beauty has been taken from her way sooner than might have happened. You don’t think in the back of her mind she thinks, ‘Oh Jesus, I wish I could smother them!’ It does happen, there’s no doubt.

“In a way, Paula is just a slightly more extreme version of most people. Most people, luckily, don’t get beaten up by their life partners. Although when I say ‘most’, it’s not that ‘most’ if you know what I mean. It’s not a tiny percentage who endure it.”

Touching on the movie version of The Commitments – there was also a West End musical that launched in 2013 – it remains an enduring favourite, and indeed gets my vote for greatest Irish movie ever. At the core of the movie is Doyle’s hilariously foul-mouthed dialogue, as inspired as anything by Tarantino or Scorese.

“With the novel, it became quite deliberate that it’s virtually narrator free,” says Roddy. “It’s as close to the characters as it could possibly be, that’s why there’s so much dialogue. I remember when I started it, I said, ‘I’m going to make a it a big band, not just three or four young lads. Get in horns and exotic things like that.’ I remember seeing The Blades once, and although there were three guys in the band, on this occasion they had a trumpet player. I thought, ‘Fucking brilliant.’

“The ska band The Beat also had that elderly – well, I say elderly, he was probably about 40! – sax player. The Specials had Rico Rodriguez, who stood out from the rest of them, because his dreadlocks were grey. He was a middle aged man in the middle of these kids bouncing up and down, and it was extraordinary. So I thought, I’d love a bit of that, to make it more than just your standard rock band. It’s Jimmy Rabbitte’s story to an extent, but if you like, I wanted to keep the camera right on his shoulder, so that we don’t see what he looks like.

“We’re not interrupted by physical descriptions, or what the bedroom looks like, none of this stuff. It’s just straight into what he says, what she says back and so on. And it began to really roll. I remember at the time, people said, ‘Oh, it’s clearly a play that he couldn’t get made, and he made a novel of it.’ That was a load of bolloxology – it was a novel. I’d come up with exactly the type of form I wanted it to have. The plot was always very easy: band forms, band breaks up, with a career in the middle.”

In the movie, Alan Parker also extracted magnificent performances from a young cast that included then-unknowns Glen Hansard, Bronagh Gallagher and Maria Doyle-Kennedy. Doyle acknowledges the director’s vital importance.

“Once Alan became interested, the whole thing began to roll,” he notes. “It wasn’t something that might be made; it was something that was going to be made. Also what was great was, because of the clout he would add, the language and integrity of it would remain intact.

“The big question for me was, ‘Will it be set in Dublin?’ Also, ‘Will there be stars?’ Cos if there were stars in it, that would warp it completely. The answer that came back was, ‘No, he’s going to scour Dublin looking for actors.’”

Roddy Doyle. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Away from fiction, Doyle has also had some fascinating assignments, including co-writing The Second Half, the memoir by Irish soccer icon Roy Keane.

“It was absolutely brilliant,” says Doyle of the experience. “It was a pleasure, although it was really hard work – it was really like entering the adult world. Fucking hell, it was a really tight deadline. Basically, most of the work was done between January and May, and it was really heavy going, because it was coming out in October.

“We took it in turns – I would go to Manchester, and we’d work on a new chapter, and go over an old one. The next week, Roy would come to Dublin and we’d do the same thing. But while my father was in hospital, even on a day when I was in Manchester, I’d go collect my mother and bring her up to Beaumont to visit my father. And I’d be able to tell him about what we’d done that day.

“He loved Roy as well, he thought he was brilliant. Even though it was sad obviously that my father was dying, it was really brilliant to be able to do that. The thing is that Roy is a really sound guy as well. He’d be of the soundest, most rock solid people I’ve ever met.”

Elsewhere, Doyle has also co-written a book with boxer Kellie Harrington, who this summer completed the astonishing achievement of winning back to back Olympic gold medals.

“The sheer resilience and tenacity of the woman is unbelievable,” he marvels. “What I thought was particularly impressive was that, it was quite clear if you were going to win a fight, it had to be obvious that you’d won the fight. It had to be absolutely clear that she’d won all four fights, and it was. She didn’t falter, I thought it was extraordinary.

“It’s like how they say, a good football team can win the league, but a great team wins it again. That’s what makes her great – the fact that she had the strength of personality to go back and win something she’d already won.”

The Women Behind The Door, published by Jonathan Cape, is out now.