Mark O'Leary on Academia

If you are the rightful owner of this image and are not credited, contact us.
All About Jazz / Vision X Software is a DMCA designated agent.

About this image

Mark O'Leary on Academia. Can you tell me a little about your background. Well, what I can tell you is the greatest single mistake I made in terms of academia was my secondary school. It was actually ok for music and had good teachers that were good people, but for academia, I underperformed it was an unmitigated, shameful disaster, academia is very important to me. When I left, one of the teachers in paroxysms of laughter said to me, you came here a scholar and left us a dunce. Whatever I was on down there... I just couldn't get it together. If I went to the same school as my father, which I should and later I will elabourate on this, I would in all probability be the Prime Minister now. If Cillian went to my school, the only oscar he would have gotten near was the one with Felix in the Odd Couple. Oh, poor baby Mark... Well, with a proper education, proper food and a bit of polish I would, like the roman soldier overlooking the Tyber I say I would have surpassed, Rami and Rami was the measure of the man. Rami? OK, let me elucidate, I was in a youth club in my area, and we had a quiz competition, mastermind for children, I entered into it, we had a laugh, lots of jocularity and my team won, Ger, Tomas my brother and Banksy, whose Mum actually went out with Rory Gallagher back in the day, a stearns digression, my Aunt ironically was intrinsically instrumental in having Rory Gallagher in the film festival. So, Fat Tony who ran things at the club, basically informed us that we would be participating in a quiz competition on sunday, representing the area. So, we showed up on a; dark, dank sunday afternoon, full house, mastermind atmosphere, and we basically just had a laugh and we were down to our last question, get this wrong and you are out of the competition, gone, finito, over before its begun. So in a bout of jocularity I intimated to Ger, Ger, do you like winning? He responded, suppose so, yeah I do actually, well do what I say ok, just do it. Alright.. We went from the precipice of elimination, to winning the whole round outright, we went through to the next round. Fat Tony retorted, lads, I dunno how you did it, but...So we went on, to win the youth quiz competition for the whole of Cork, we were stars, we were feted as dignitaries by the Lord Mayor, brought in for a special reception and at that reception we were told, you will be representing Cork in Belfast against a crack Multi denominational team from the North. The main boffins from; Methodist college, The Royal Academy and two quiz champions from the combined nationalist areas of the greater Belfast metropolitan area. Ok, again, Belfast, well, we went up and won that also, came back as literal kings, photos in the paper, again into see the Lord Mayor in a special reception in his chambers and he was almost in tears of joy, pictures, congratulations and the youth club received the accolade and distinction of producing quiz kingpins. I was the team captain. Again, this is proof of academic nuance, I could never get near anything like that in secondary school. No school bank, no debating, a great shame, sport, sport, sport, I'm not a sporty guy, I am a championship Fencer, but besides that, no interest. But on the ancillary side, the chap I ended up working with, that had a penchant for economics, that had me living in Mayfair and being Chauffeur driven to work each day in a Bentley, was cognizant of it, every inch of the way. So, how did I get that job. Well, by triumphing in several kids quiz championships and prevailing in economics, as well as intellectual jousting with the brothers. My Mother is a Trump mama, if she's wrong, she doubles down, even triples down, but in all fairness to her, and she is a great woman, she accepts one verity, she erred when she did not send me to the same school as my father, and knows that it was an impediment to my academic achievement. I was completely on the wrong schilderwald, again, academically, I mean I speak sixteen different languages, have university level maths, am good at ; economics, philosophy and psychology inter alia, to leave secondary with such a poor academic record having proven that I am capable of so much more, not just in music, because as already iterated, with a little polish, good food and a decent education, Prime Minister would have been achieved years ago, in place of Bill Furlong, with white Adidas rather than wellies, and to paraphrase on of my songs; I'm not the only one. Unpublished extracts courtesy of O'Leary Irish Examiner

Uploaded: 2025-03-20
Size: 1,600 x 900 pixels