Conor O'Clery, Journalist

Being Irish sometimes means being patronised, especially in the United States. The response, "Oh my God, you're really Irish," has opened some doors for me as a journalist, so I've no problem with that. But being patronised comes in different forms. In Moscow, where I opened the first Irish Times bureau in 1987, the blue-rinsed mother-in-law of a British diplomat asked me incredulously at a cocktail party, "You're from the Irish Times? Are people in Ireland really interested in what's happening here?" Her idea evidently was that the Irish were all maids and labourers. Actually, if she only knew, they were just as curious about the fall of the Soviet Union as her bridge partners, a point brought home to me by an elderly farmhand with trousers tied up by string whom I encountered when on holidays in Leitrim, and who asked me, upon hearing where I worked, "Is it true collectivisation is fucked?"