GENEVIEVE CARBERYspeaks to Tommy Fleming, the singer
What’s your earliest holiday memory?
Our holidays were always in Enniscrone, Co Sligo and funnily enough that is where I live now. One of my earliest memories is very innocent. I remember buying a cone when I was six or seven. I thought I was a really big boy going up to the van on my own but coming away the top fell off and landed on the ground. I cried for about 20 minutes!
What was your worst holiday?
In 2003 we went to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. It lashed rain for nine out of 10 days. Then the sewers started to overrun, there were rats in people’s rooms and across the floor of outdoor restaurants. We also got destroyed by mosquitos and looked like we had the bubonic plague when we got back.
What was your best holiday?
South Africa, with my wife Tina (who became my fiancé on that trip). I went diving with sharks which was phenomenal. We also went to Cape Town, Table Mountain and Robin Island. It was an adventure more than anything. I loved the scenery, but to see the freedom people have, knowing how repressed it had been, was really hard to describe.
We were stuck in the resort with nowhere to go, no shops and one English language television channel playing repeats.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?
I’d love to bring Tina to north Africa and spend more time in Kenya. A trip with no worries, no phones and no responsibilities. I’d like to get a jeep and drive around with no luxury, just slum it a bit and stay in tents. I’d like to see the real Africa, like the Rift Valley and drive to Tanzania. Anything to do with wildlife or migration is phenomenal.
When I went to Sudan with Goal and when I worked in Kenya I fell in love with Africa completely.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?
Tina is the only one I like to go on holidays with. I tend to stay quiet when I go on holiday. I switch off completely and she doesn’t get a word out of me for the first week as I read my book and listen to my iPod!
What’s your favourite place in Ireland?
Clifden, Co Galway and Enniscrone, Co Sligo where I live. I love the ruggedness and the people in Clifden.
In Enniscrone it’s the big beach and the sea, the people and the freedom. I go to the beach, leave my phone in the car and either go surfing or running but am missing for two hours.
Your recommended holiday reading?
I love reading biographies. I read Alan Carr's biography on holidays last year. In Spain I read The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Searchby Martin Sixmith. That was an amazing heart wrenching book about forced adoption.
Where will you go to next?
To celebrate my 40th birthday I am taking time off next year. I want to get a camper van with some of my best friends and drive across America having the craic. No restrictions, no hotels and roughing it a little bit.
Singer Tommy Fleming’s Going Back CD and DVD are on sale and available to download and to follow the release he has announced his Going Back Irish Tour 2011