Seán McLaughlin chats to the ‘Journal’ ahead of Seán Fest 80th birthday bash

‘Seán Fest’ will see people descend on the Seaview Tavern for two days of music over June 2-3. Paddy Nash, Jeanette Hutton, Ard Rí, Foreign Owl and the best local traditional players are enlisted to perform.

As he approaches the big ‘four score’ Seán feels it a privilege to be celebrating this birthday at all.

“A couple of weeks after the last Seán Fest, my 70th, I got the bad news that I had prostate cancer and I thought I was never going to see my 80th. That’s why I thought this is a great celebration that I’m still alive.”

Seán is known to many as a musician, male model, actor, Game of Thrones and Derry Girls extra and wearer of the finest beard in the North West.

The ‘Journal’ caught up with him to chat about his first 80 years.

"My mother Mary was from Drumfries and my father Pat was from Buncrana but I was raised in Lewis Street. It was a lovely wee street, lovely houses.

"The thing about Rosemount was we knew everybody. My father and mother ran a pub. It wasn't our pub but we lived in it and managed it and we knew everybody in Rosemount, not just in our street, but in the whole of Rosemount. The pub was P O'Kane's.”

The family had a sweet shop in Rosemount and another pub in Fountain Street.

"We used to have to work in there as kids. We used to work in the bar as well. I was never asked had I done my homework.”

Seán was educated at the Rosemount school and St. Columb’s College.

“I didn’t like it at all. We used to get slapped by leather straps.”

Seán ended up going to St. Kieran’s College to train to be a priest.

It was in the seminary in Kilkenny where he first learned guitar.

"My first guitar was terrible. The fifth string you would use as a third string. I managed to learn how to play it. I got into trad in the seminary because there were fellows from Mayo playing it.”

He remembers his 21st birthday vividly: “I smuggled in a swiss roll and a pint of milk and I hid behind a shed and ate the whole swiss roll and washed it down with milk.”

Seán returned to Derry in 1966 but couldn’t get a job. “I went to the job centre. They told me to apply to join the British Army!”

He moved to ‘swinging London’ and got work in a Lyons Maid ice-cream factory making lollies. He came back to Derry in 1969 and got a job at Hoechst in Limavady and around this time started playing music in the Gweedore Bar and in the Drift with Dinny McLaughlin.

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“When I left Derry there was no trad at all that I knew of. There might have been trad singing, ‘come all ye’ stuff. In the bar, the same men used to sing every weekend. One of them used to cry every time he sang his song. There wasn’t a trad scene. There were a couple of boys from Rosemount who were playing traditional music. One was ‘Curly’ Coyle and one was John Harley. They invited me to play with them. We formed a group called The Villagers. We were in the Castle Bar up the stairs. We invited Jim Barr to join us, which made four of us and Bobby Mitchell used to sing as well.”

In 1971 Seán started a diploma in social studies at Oxford, before completing a degree at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich and a Masters at Warwick.

“Oxford was very different. A lot of rich people. The students were rich. But I got on well with them. It’s funny I got on really well with the very rich people. The middle classes I didn’t get on so well with. The working class and very rich people I get on really well with. I don’t know why.

“I got married to Mia [Werson] who I met at the UEA in 1977 in a registry office in Norwich. None of my family were there. I rang my mother up and said ‘hi ma, I got married yesterday in the university chapel’ – which was a lie – and what could she say? She took it alright. As long as I said ‘the chapel’.”

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The couple lived in Coventry where Seán had a top job as a social services manager. “There was an air of depression when I moved there. The car industry had disintegrated not long before. There were loads of men who had no work. The Specials song ‘Ghost Town’ encapsulated that.”

By the late 1980s Seán wanted to come home.

"My mother was getting frail. I thought I’m in England looking after all these older people and I thought my ma’s in Derry and she’s not getting looked after the way I would like her to be looked after. We moved to Malin Head in 1989. I was only there for one week and my mother died.”

He worked for a time as a social worker locally before retiring: “I enjoyed being back in Ireland. I was happy being back in Donegal and Derry and I still am.”

Twelve years ago Seán met his partner Dácil, a Las Palmas-native who speaks Irish and plays a mean bodhrán. “I met Dácil at a cultural event: Peadar O’Donnell’s. She loves the weather. I’m trying to persuade her to go to Tenerife. She loves Ireland, loves the people. She is learning Irish, working in an Irish language school, and plays the bodhrán very well.”

Seán is looking forward to welcoming friends to Seán Fest: "The whole idea is to have bit of craic, meet a load of people, be friendly. It’s free.”

Inistrahull Bird Observatory, Inishowen Traditional Singers' Circle and The Exchange are three of 13 Donegal projects to receive heritage funding

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