A coming of age tale of severe hardship

Unless you have been living under a rock back in the 1990s, The hit band The D11 Runners were the inspiration for the Roddy Doyle book, The Commitments, as it was widely rumoured. Pat opens the interview by asking George about his childhood growing up in the flats of Ballymun and South Finglas, the neighbouring districts in north Dublin.

"So you were one of the first families to move into a brand new Ballymun", Pat asks. Interesting question giving Fitzgerald's eyewitness account of a neighbourhood that would be later branded as one of Dublin's infamous areas. "So what was that like, George?"

"Ye, well in Ballymun we were only kids, we knew nothing else. However, there was a distinction among other kids, that we were from the flats." Fitzgerald's tale moves quickly on from his time in Ballymun to his family and the move to South Finglas in 1973. He states that he encountered a couple of challenges that brought about a great need for self-defence. He does not go into great depth on that subject but one can grasp his meaning. In short street fighting led him and his late twin brother into the world of boxing. By 1979 his twin brother Joseph and himself reached the final of the County Dublin Championships after they were pitted against each other. They weren't alone in that, because on the same night the same faith fell on the Carruth brothers. One of which was Michael, who would go on to win a gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

"How did The D11 Runners start, George?"

"We went to see UB40 in the National boxing stadium."

"Woe I was at that night."

"That's amazing Pat."

Fitzgerald goes on to tell how the band went on to score three-hit singles, play in front of 70,000 people, appear on The Late, Late Show, and fill the National concert hall. They were boyhood friends of neighbourhood kid Christy Dignam. Among the band members were his late twin brother, Joseph, and wife Sandra, the sax player in the band. The interview takes a dramatic turn when he talks about his books.

"Your books are getting great reviews but let us move on to your current book, The Promise Maker," Pat says. Fitzgerald 55 is a former boxing champion, member of the hit band an award-winning artist, a radio producer and broadcaster, and the director of the documentary, The Dublin Behind the History, and a writer. But it is in this part of the interview that it becomes striking as he reveals the history of Dublin' working-class history.

This is Frankie's story, a coming of age tale of severe hardship and difficulty, in the Dublin tenements of the 1930s. Frankie was born in the Lower East Side of New York to his mother Nelly. The man he believes is his father a Dubliner Paddy Smith is given to drinking bouts and violence. Together they leave New York and find a home in the Dublin Slums. It is a story of bravery and survival against seemingly unbelievable odds. In the tenement world, the young boy Frankie grows up. His boyhood friends are Harry-Boy and the evil-minded Slasher.

Fitzgerald draws the novel’s protagonist Frankie as a quick thinker in the cruel world he is thrust into. And giving the people that surrounded him he needed to be to survive.

His so-called Father's friend Buster. A murderous villain.

Harry-Boy, a child thief with a touch of innocence.

Slasher, the pickpocketing child on the way to deadly adulthood.

Daisy-May the alluring Madam with a cunning mind and a quick hand when it comes to every evil deed.

Jenny, the beauty that befriends him. They become childhood sweethearts.

The Morgans, his neighbours that become the saving grace in the young Frankie's life. Not forgetting Codswallop and Mary Apple Jaws and so many more.

The characterisation is one of the strongest points of the book. The book, the sequel to the Secret Life of Ashley Brown, had been described as Dickensian.

You can hear the full interview on Youtube - "The Dundalk show, Interview with George Fitzgerald.”