I was inspired by the formidable Irish women who worked in the London bars of my childhood

I spent an ungodly and, thinking back on it now, bloody unhealthy amount of my childhood in smoke-filled pubs in south London.

My father’s version of childcare was basic: the boy deposited at a corner table in the saloon bar, with crisps and lemonade, while dad and his cohorts discussed politics, intrigue and badmouthed any acquaintances who weren’t present.

Of course, these pubs were Irish. Dad was as likely to drink in an English establishment as mum was to take Communion in a Protestant chapel.

One of the positives about being a child growing up in the 1970s was that adults often forgot you were there. I’m not sure children today get to experience that invaluable level of parental neglect. What becoming invisible meant for me as a child was having a front-row seat to these men telling their stories, dirty jokes and gossip and singing their songs.

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I was fascinated by the tales I wasn’t supposed to hear, and by the curiously rich eloquence of how these men told them. The inventive turns of phrase and the mining for humour, the multitude of regional accents, all distinctly themselves but all uniquely Irish.

What these men said always seemed poetical or philosophical or wise, especially when set against the conversations of the English around us, which seemed flat in comparison.

This was a world of men. But there would be women, usually standing at the other side of the bar. These were the indomitable Irish barmaids who survived this male jungle by the use of often-cutting humour and an ability to put down any half-drunk patron who tried to smart them or, worse, tried to flirt with them.

These were proud, resilient women who, while they could be very scary, were also capable of kindheartedness, and whose backstory of trials and disappointments and disappointing men would only ever be hinted at.

[ ‘I no more decided to emigrate than one decides to get hit by a bus, or fall in love’ ]

My father and mother grew up in poverty, in Cork and Cavan respectively. Both left school at 14 and never had much chance to get into books or theatre. But they gifted me to be an audience to this unending and surprising theatre of dramas, intrigues, absurdities and comedies.

When, after years in journalism, I started writing plays, it seemed those voices were the things that came back at me. It just felt natural to tell the stories of Irish characters, even when many of those stories were set in England.

My latest play, Rita McGrinder Is Still Here, is a dark comic drama starring a wonderful Limerick actress, Mary O’Sullivan. Rita, a middle-aged barmaid in Monaghan, faces up to the facts of her life as lived through the tumult of Irish social and political changes of the last half-century.

I hadn’t quite realised it, but Rita was inspired by those Irish women from my childhood, particularly the indomitable barmaids who ruled the roost in the public houses of my youth. It was written during the pandemic when walking into a pub – Irish or otherwise – was impossible, and is in part a tribute to these formidable, unique women.

Martin McNamara’s mother was from a small farm outside Cootehill in Co Cavan. His father was from Cork city. He was born and brought up in Battersea, south London and has written stage plays, short films, radio dramas and documentaries on the Guildford Four, Irish rebels jailed after the Easter Rising and dysfunctional Irish families fighting fascists. Earlier this year, he adapted Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy for BBC Radio Four to mark Behan’s 100th birthday. His latest play, Rita McGrinder Is Still Here, which opens in Clapham, London, at the end of August, is a one-woman show.

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