School gave T P McKenna a love of music and poetry, but he left early to join the bank . . . until he got to know Milo O'Shea and Godfrey Quigley
I GREW UP in Mullagh, Co Cavan, which is a small village close to the Meath border. I attended the local national school until I was 13 when I was sent to boarding school - St Patrick's College, Cavan.
I had done well in my exams and I was put in class, where I found that the boys were very advanced at maths and some had done a bit of Latin.
I quickly fell behind and was moved to a lower grade but I was saved by a remarkable priest, Father Vincent Kennedy.
As a boy I had a soprano voice, and he chose me to play Elsie Maynard in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. The following year I played Phyllis in Iolanthe. This gave me quite a cachet at school, but unfortunately my voice lasted only until I was 15.
I was good at sport and played on the junior and senior school football teams, in the All-Ireland colleges' Final and for the intercounty minor team.
At school I was both a teacher's pet and a menace. I found Father Kennedy truly amazing. He had an enormous influence on my life. He was a superb teacher of English and music.
He was also an excellent concert pianist and had studied piano in London. He could play Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto by ear. In the evenings he would bring us up to his room where we would listen to symphony concerts on BBC radio, following them with the scores.
Thanks to him I have a passion for both language and poetry.
Although it was my ambition to become an actor, on a whim I joined the Ulster Bank and never sat the Leaving Cert. I imagined myself working in Belfast or Dublin, but to my disappointment I was sent to a small town - Granard, Co Longford.
Later I was transferred to Trim, Co Meath, where I became a prominent member of the music and drama societies.
Eventually I moved to Dublin and began to infiltrate the theatre world. I got to know Milo O'Shea and Godfrey Quigley, both of whom were very helpful to me.
Milo introduced me to the Pike Theatre, Godfrey to the Globe. It was when I was threatened with a transfer back to Cavan that I decided to take the plunge and leave the bank to work full-time in the theatre.
