Gavin Duffy – Entrepreneur, Media Coach, Dragon's Den Presenter, Public Speaker

This week we have seen evidence of the great urban – rural divide in our country as the Green Party, lead by John Gormley, tried to force through their bill to ban stag hunting. 

I was brought up on a farm. Sometimes that involved helping my Dad to sheer horns off cattle and to cut lambs tails. By the time I was ten I had seen a lot of blood. So, naturally, I have a different view of hunting, shooting and fishing than people brought up in Dublin, Cork and other cities, who have little or no contact with agriculture or the countryside.

In fact if you asked today’s city kids where does meat come from, they’d probably say, ’Tesco’. In the era of vacuum-packed meat, the city consumer doesn’t have to bother themselves thinking about all the work the farmer has to do calving the animal, rearing it, sending it for slaughter and so on. The farmer is overworked and underpaid so the city person can enjoy their protein as part of healthy, natural, balanced diet. The dairy farmer works 365 days a year so the city person can open their fridge to get their tetra-packed milk.

The Dublin media is asking how come this Green Party initiative to ban the country’s only stag hunt, the Ward Union, has been so divisive and difficult? They have wondered how, last week, an unprecedented seven Government TDs from Fianna Fail condemned their own legislation on the floor of Dáil Eireann but less vocal whilst supporting cuts in social welfare, or committing us to billions to bail out of the banks?
And here’s the answer for our city cousins.
 

It is called people power. The campaign to save the Ward Union stag hunt, RISE, which stands for, Rural Ireland Says Enough, has united the countryside. All who live in rural Ireland know that they cannot sort out the economy overnight or fix our appalling health service by making a representation to their local TD. However they realised quickly they could lift the phone, talk to their local TD and say if you vote for a ban on stag hunting we see it as the thin edge of the wedge and we won’t be voting for you come the election. Thanks to this issue a strong message has been sent to all political parties – don’t take rural Ireland for granted.

A State Visit.

So the Queen of England is coming to Ireland – here’s a true story.

My Aunty Peg has been a lifelong Bushmills whiskey drinker. Her tipple is Black Bush and despite consuming copious amounts of it over her lifetime it seems to have done her no harm, she is still with us, hail and hearty at eighty. When she was celebrating her seventieth birthday as a treat her daughter arranged a trip to the Bushmills’ distillery in the North.

Her best friend and partner in crime, my mother, Anne, accompanied her on the big trip across the border. My mother had just received a new, fangled thing that she was a bit frightened of – a mobile phone. Let’s say she didn’t adapt too well to the new technology. She really never got the mobile aspect of it. We’d ring her but never get her as, when she went out shopping, she always left the phone at home on her mantle piece. But on this day of the big trip up North, and wanting to show off to Peg how thoroughly modern and with it she was, she brought the mobile phone – a big mistake.
As they crossed the border, my Mother’s mobile phone made a noise, a text alert, and my mother fetched it from the bowels of her very large hand bag. She read the text and screamed in horror. The message simply said, “Welcome to the UK”.
My mother, normally a very dignified, diplomatic and deferential lady was highly insulted. She demanded to know of my poor cousin, who was the driver, how come the British had the effrontery to claim jurisdiction in what God and the world knew was Ireland?  My mother was apoplectic. How did the spies of MI5 know that she and Peg had just crossed the border, a border that in her mind should have never existed? Perhaps Peg wasn’t as upset but saw it as an opportunity to suggest that in order to recover from such an awful shock and insult they must stop at the very next pub for a strong coffee – a black bush.
This week my mother said she’d like to see Queen Elizabeth come to Ireland. If my mother accepts it, then I know the vast majority of the Irish people have matured enough to say ‘Cead Mile Fáilte’ to the British Monarch who comes as an equal, acknowledging our little nation has joined the nations of the earth.

‘Celebrity’ Bainisteoir

I think I have become a media slut. I seem to be constantly on the telly and now it is official, I am to be a Celebrity Bainisteoir. My teenage kids are cool enough about my role in Dragons’ Den but they are really excited that Dad is doing the reality show where eight celebrities each take over a team in their county in a knock out championship – all televised.
Of course I don’t believe I am a celebrity, in fact the programme should be called, yeah I think I vaguely recognise your man or woman who is now a bainisteoir. Having said that, the reception I got when I first met the team was just overwhelming.  My team is Roche Emmets, from the parish of Faughart, in County Louth, literally immediately south of the border from Armagh. So it is a real, rural community with the spirit and togetherness you only get in parishes in the Irish countryside.
Of course the TV production company like to keep it a secret as to who is going to be the “celebrity”. I was dealt a cruel blow. Though they deny it, the producers put out a rumour that the team was going to get music goddess,  Andrea Corr of The Corrs as their Bainisteoir. So you can only imagine the disappointment of the testosterone filled, athletic, fit, young men in that dressing room. There they were waiting for the dressing room door to open and Andrea to enter, no doubt, in a short, figure hugging, summer dress and – shock – they got me instead. To their eternal credit they masked their disappointment superbly and instantly made me feel at home and so very welcome.
Our first game is against Kilconly of County Galway and their Bainisteoir is Breffni Morgan who starred in last year’s The Apprentice and this summer’s Celebrity Salon. With Louth in its first Leinster final in fifty years this could be the wee county’s year so come on the Roche Emmets!