There is a Smith that never goes out

News of the cancellation of this year’s Fleadh came as a huge surprise to the many London-based Irish folk I know who thought the plug had been pulled on Ireland’s annual summer party in Finsbury Park several years ago. Au contraire, Shane MacGowan headlined last year’s hooley, a big day out that now looks to have been consigned to history as yet another addition to the surprisingly long list of people and things the seemingly indestructible Pogues front man has defied the odds to outlive.

In an interview with the Irish Post, Mean Fiddler impresario Vince Power lamented its demise: “This is our fourteenth year. We have always been OK but sometimes it has been really hard to find a headliner. There is no band coming through like U2. I always said I would get them on the way down but it looks like when they can do it they will be too old.” So them’s the breaks, it seems: U2 are still too big, while burgeoning crowd-pleasers such as JJ72 or The Thrills aren’t yet big enough.

While ruminating over the Fleadh’s demise, I had an epiphany of sorts, an all too rare good idea. Now while I would never claim to be able to tell a man as moneyed as Vince Power how to do his job, it occurred to me that surely a festival whose very essence involves Irish turns performing for Irish people could probably get away with having somebody who isn’t strictly Irish on top of its bill. It’s occurred to Vince too, which would explain why artists such as Neil Young and Crowded House have closed proceedings in the Fleadh in previous years without the organisers being pulled up for providing sham-rock.

One man who certainly qualifies for Ireland under the parent rule is Morrissey, one-time front man with a searingly brilliant guitar combo from Manchester you may have heard of called The Smiths. Currently gigging about with ne’er a record label to call his own, Morrissey would almost certainly fill Finsbury Park to bursting point and could probably do with the heart-warming ego boost that goes hand in hand with playing before 60,000 drunk people who would happily sell their mothers up the river for the price of a ticket to come and listen to you sing of a balmy midsummer’s evening.

Of course there’s every possibility that Vince Power did ask Morrissey to headline this year’s Fleadh and Morrissey said no. He strikes me as the kind of chap who probably gets asked to do a lot of things before politely turning most of them down. Nevertheless, it’d be an awful shame if this year’s Fleadh was cancelled simply because nobody in Vince Power’s office thought to fax and ask him.

I say fax, because ringing him wouldn’t have done any good. Morrissey doesn’t “do” telephones. This was one of the more interesting nuggets of trivia unearthed about the great man on a recent Channel 4 documentary entitled The Importance Of Being Morrissey, that claimed to have had six months unprecedented access to its subject at home in LA and out touring on the road.

Despite this unparalleled access, it was reassuring to see that the makers of the programme still found room in their disappointingly brief show to air the thoughts of journalist Miranda Sawyer on the enigma under the spotlight. It would appear to be written into the statute books that production companies everywhere are obliged by law to include the opinions of Miranda Sawyer in every single nostalgia-mentary that gets made about anything: Big Brother, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, or Mancunian songwriters with a keen eye for a zinger lyric and a trademark quiff. She’s always there, remembering spangles, remembering space hoppers or remembering The Smiths in their heyday.

And while there’s no real harm in it, seeing as she lends such occasions infinitely more glamour than fellow regular Johnny Vegas, and invariably gives good quote, I must confess to shaking my head in disbelief when she turned up to add her two cents on this particular occasion. When you’ve got six months access to someone as famously elusive as Morrissey (my sister lived in the flat above his for several months during his mid-90s sojourn in Dublin without ever laying eyes on him), you can probably get away with foregoing the musings of Miranda and her rent-a-quote ilk. Having said that, Bono, Noel Gallagher and Will Self all got their spake in too, all fondly fawning over one of the few men in the world it’s perfectly acceptable for heterosexual blokes to lust after.

Unsurprisingly, although Morrissey had plenty to say for himself on The Importance Of Being Morrissey, he gave precious little away: he lives on a hill in LA, he has a dog, the only thing he can cook is toast, he occasionally takes afternoon tea with his neighbour Nancy Sinatra, and he loathes former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, airports and the killing of animals for food or fun.

All in all, the picture painted was of a good-humoured, affable, interesting fella who is never happier than when he is in his own company, admiring himself in the mirror. Very little we didn’t know already, in other words, although the look on the face of the young barber handed the responsibility of coiffing pop’s most famous quiff was worth the price of admission alone. Short of trying to find Fleadh headliners at the last minute, experiences don’t get more hair-raising.