The Customer

A long time ago I wanted to be a DJ. Reluctantly Dave Baker gave me a job in a discotheque he was managing  called Le Disque in Molesworth Street. I worked on Saturday nights and in 1972 I moved up to become manager. We opened up during the day for lunches, soup, chicken and chips and a coffee for thirty pence. The business grew and on a good day we had fifty customers. It was like a conveyer belt and there was a real buzz to it. I got to know some of them well enough to say hello and exchange a few words about the weather. One was a very tall man with glasses. One of the girls saw him coming out of Leinster House and we wondered who he was. At the time there were daily demonstrations  outside the Dáil. Nothing changes. One day I was standing on the steps of the building looking towards Kildare Street, wondering if that day’s demonstration was going to get rowdy, when I saw the tall man coming towards me. He was deep in conversation with another man, but when he got close he looked up, saw me and said hello. The other man looked up to see who he was talking to. As I nodded to him, I realised it was Charlie Haughey. It was shortly afterwards that someone told me that our customer was PJ Mara. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.