NELL MCCAFFERTY GIVES TV3 HER MOST INTIMATE INTERVIEW

TV3 GROUP RELEASE
IMMEDIATE: Friday 23rd April 2010

For 40 years Nell McCafferty has taken on the powers that be, asked questions that people wanted to avoid and looked into the darkest corners of Irish society. Combative, uncompromising and never far from controversy– you just never know what Nell McCafferty might say.

Now, in her most intimate interview ever, she reveals her deepest secrets to Ursula Halligan.

Famed for her blunt honesty “This is Nell McCafferty” – at her most frank and she doesn’t spare her own blushes, describing herself as “bad tempered” and “a little white bull”. She also talks movingly about the impact of her childhood experience with domestic violence.

The renowned civil rights campaigner tells Ursula about her romance with journalist and author Nuala O’Faolain – the “love of her life” – their fifteen year relationship and for the first time, reveals the real reason behind their split.


Nell: “Fifteen years and overnight we just met and I was … it was the Holy Grail, it was Shangri-la, it was …

” Ursula Halligan: Was she the love of your life? Nell: The one and only - and completely. UH: Were you happy together?

Nell: We were happy and sexually exciting to each other and romantic – it was a “home” life. We’d both come in … out of the cold. We were at an age – I was 36 and Nuala was 40 – to want to go home, really.

UH: You weren’t lonely any more. Nell: I was not – I was complete and I was filled. It was great, it was great.

· So great was her love for Nuala O’Faolain, that years after their acrimonious break-up, she offered to help her avoid a painful death from cancer - in an assisted suicide.

Nell: I did offer Nuala euthanasia. I said ‘I’ve got morphine in place, I’ve got it stashed around Ireland. The minute you want to overdose, let me know’. She said ‘no, no, the hospice people will take care of me when the time comes with drugs.’ Nuala held on ‘til the very end.

UH: You offered her morphine? Nell: Oh, yeah. I said straight away I had little caches in place. There are people in this world who will help you.

UH: You know this – in Dublin, in Ireland?

Nell: Absolutely

· She reveals that she offered to help others with terminal illnesses to overdose.

UH: Have you helped anybody else?

Nell: No, but it’s the first thing I offer people the minute they’re sick. I say: ‘would you like me to give you an overdose? (They say) ‘No!’ – Ok. I’m surprised the number of people who insist on living.

UH: But aren’t you afraid you might get into trouble for …?

Nell: But sure who’s going to know? Prove it!

· She tells of the wild promiscuity that swept political and media circles in 1970’s Dublin – and her lovers of both sexes.

UH: Did you have relationships with men?

Nell: Oh, sometimes you’d have to kiss them (rolls her eyes, and laughs). But it wasn’t interesting – it just didn’t do it for me.

UH: Did you have intimate relationships with men?

Nell: There were three men. I did actually have sexual intercourse with three … of the most glorious men in Ireland. Very well known and political and good-looking and all that.

· For the first time, she recalls the night that an on-the-run IRA man stopped her from sleeping with a sitting Government Minister.

Nell: One night a politician did walk me home.

UH: From the Dail? Nell: No, from that pub at the top of... Greene’s pub – Greene’s hotel…

UH: A politician in the Irish Dail, ‘though?

Nell: A politician in the Irish Dail – a Minister! Michael O’Leary – big tall fellow, with a face on him, thin …

UH: The Labour man? Nell: Yeah, and he walked me home and I knew I was going to my “execution”, and I was thinking ‘How am I going to handle this?’ We walked in the door, I thank God, there was a guy there from the IRA, on the run, who I had given the key of my flat to. The Minister looked at the IRA man, they said good evening, and the Minister went home. I thought “I’ve been saved!”

UH: He was the Labour leader, wasn’t he?

Nell: (He) went on to become (that), yeah – I laughed. He became the “Minister for Snow”, too. He was no more interested than I was. That’s just what you did in those days – “ah, ho-hum, we’ve had a drink, we’d better go home and have a shag!” But the three men I did sleep with were very disappointing. ·

In “This is Nell McCafferty”, Ursula Halligan’s subtle probing draws the sometimes painful answers from a woman far more used to asking the uncomfortable questions.

Tune in to This Is… Nell McCafferty – with Ursula Halligan on Monday 26th April 2010 at 10pm on TV3

ENDS.

For further information:
Maureen Catterson/ Ciara Byrne
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Maureen.catterson@tv3.ie
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