Some typically patronising Hollywood fare dished up yesterday by the American President in the Irish Republic for the poor who never got away.
Reminds me of a scene from James Young's early Seventies Saturday Night TV series on BBC Northern Ireland when Hank and Mary Lou Effincracker from the States arrive in the terraced Terence O'Neill Steet in South Belfast to find "The Real Ireland". They knock on Lily McCondriac's door in search of leprechauns in her yard to be told that the only thing in her yard is the IRA, the UDA and the British Army and that all the "leprecorns" died swimming to America.
Young is such a unique yet sadly almost forgotten figure now outside the remit of certain older Ulster generations. The owner of the Group Theatre in Bedford Street beside the Ulster Hall, his one-man shows commenced in the mid-to-late Sixties and his albums outsold The Beatles in Northern Ireland. These contained a mixture of comedy songs, sketches, straight stand-up and monologues.
The monologues in particular focus on life, death, poverty and bigotry in industrial Belfast and - although perhaps overly sentimental to the modern ear - are an incredible mixture of pathos, humour and reflection. Even when the Group Theatre closed down in the early Seventies due to the scale of violence he took his one-man show separately to each divided community - while performing the exact same material - right through to his death in his mid-fifties on 5th July 1974 in North Belfast. He suffered a fatal heart attack in his car on the Shore Road on the way to a friend's funeral.
In the midst of such a testosterone-driven city James Alexander Young certainly stood out that's for sure. I have an aunt in Australia who can remember him out "shapping for his messages" in Donegall Pass in his house slippers and wheeling his wee basket behind him.
The one residual problem to a certain extent when listening to Young these days is that he clearly did have a statist conception of Northern Ireland. Thus Catholics were construed as essentially "the other" within his material - albeit according to the strained societal norms of the period within a Protestant community considering itself historically "under siege". It is difficult to avoid this and I say that as a huge admirer of his work. Nevertheless in the depths of truly terrible times he was one of the rare voices in civic society cautioning reason, rapprochement and the acceptance of a shared identity of sorts.
The BBC series of 1972 and 1973 - which always ended with Young encouraging and emboldening the Ulster people with a "Wid yiz stap fightin'" plea - was obviously produced on a microscopic budget and the comedy songs are hideously dated in the main. However some of his most famous monologues have certainly stood the test of time: Why I Am Here, Slum Clearance, We Emigrated, Wee Davy, I Married A Papish, Salute to Belfast, The History Lesson, The Stranger, I Believe In Ulster, The Oul Black Man, The Feud, This Is Us and the final and incredibly moving We're Here For Such A Little Time.
James Young's comic talent, warmth and humanity allow us glimpses into a vanished Ulster society and a now decimated urban industrial culture. With only two books having considered his career to date - and that including a Blackstaff Press overview published the year after his death by his partner Jack Hudson - he remains a criminally overlooked figure in British and Irish social history.
Equally lost to time alas is the heartbreaking recollection that the no-doubt religiously-mixed Saturday Night Belfast audiences - even in the North's darkest hour - would always enthusiastically join in with Young's final admonitions for peace in Ireland from the studio floor.