An Irishman's Diary

WHEN HE lost an eye in a car crash and later converted to Judaism, Sammy Davis Jnr gave himself the punchline of a very good joke. It was teed up one day on the golf course, when someone obligingly asked what his “handicap” was. Whereupon he quipped: “I’m a coloured, one-eyed Jew. Do I need anything else?”

Fifty years on, a US teenager named Drew Lovejoy could update the joke for modern audiences. He has the colour (as Americans used to call it), on his father’s side. He’s also Jewish, thanks to his mother. And although both his eyes are in working order, he belongs to a third minority that at least some people might consider afflicted. His passion in life is Irish dancing.

He’s very good at it too. Last month in Dublin, he won a third successive All-Ireland title, this time in the 16-17 age bracket. His CV also includes a world championship, from 2010.

But like most top performers, he has suffered for his art. Not only does he spend several hours a day practising, or working out in the gym, or making the long trek to his dance school in Cincinnati.

According to the New York Times, his commitment to reels and hornpipes is such that he once persisted through an entire competition with “seven broken toes”.

He has suffered in other ways too. His home town of Greenville, Ohio, sounds like a good place to be an Irish dancer. But it’s not so much green as 97 per cent white, and politically conservative: a place where being black – never mind being a male dancer – can still cause problems.

His mother had to take him out of school because of bullying, since when all his formal education has been courtesy of an online programme. And it probably didn’t help him that his teenage years coincided with the rise of Barack Obama, one of his heroes.

The then 13-year-old Lovejoy was such an enthusiast for Obama’s campaign that he even helped canvass, by phone and door-to-door. But this is a Republican stronghold (Greenville is located, ironically, in a place called Darke County), and after one ugly response over the telephone, his mother put an end to the electioneering.

Even now, Lovejoy feels the need to be careful. The NYT’s profile of him – published on St Patrick’s Day – ran alongside a report about the investigation in Florida into the death of another black 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of a “neighbourhood watch volunteer”. For his own reasons, Lovejoy says he doesn’t “walk the dog after dark”.

NONE OF WHICH tensions, happily, affect his adventures in the various dance feiseanna. On the contrary, physical similarities with a young Obama have only helped make him a celebrity there. His triumph, after all, is a triumph for Irish dancing: the most dramatic proof yet of its global appeal.

Americans are often blamed for some of the excesses of the globalised feis – especially in the female section of the competition (about which Bernice Harrison was writing here only last Tuesday). As the father of an Irish-dancing daughter, I may even have blamed them myself on occasion. But I have to say that Lovejoy’s story goes a long way towards making up for the wigs.

Furthermore, with another World Irish Dancing Championships looming, I can’t help thinking that there’s a song to be written about this extraordinary teenager and his achievements. In fact, ideally, the song would be about more than just him.

Yes, it would celebrate the dedication of one young man as he overcame the apparent obstacles of colour, religion, and a Y-chromosome to follow his dream. But it would also celebrate the new Ireland: outward-looking and inclusive, if currently somewhat battered by its recent experiences.

Speaking of which, that same March 17th issue of the NYT carried yet another feature on our dreary pr*p**ty crash, with yet another Irish overseas apartment buyer confessing that “as a nation, we just went nuts”. All the more reason, then, for a counter-balancing song about one of Ireland’s enduring success stories.

Presumably, it would need to be written in the traditional ballad style.

And that being the case, Lovejoy’s dedication to dance may have given us a ready-made title, ie: “Seven Broken Toes”.

However belatedly, the result might undo some of the damage done to the national stereotype by the Dubliners’ infamous 1960s hit, Seven Drunken Nights, which made the top 10 in Britain, even though only five of the nights were deemed fit for radio.

But the Lovejoy story would, of course, need to be handled sensitively.

In short, this may be a job for an experienced song-writer with proven musical and lyrical talents, and a highly-developed sense of humour. If you’re reading, Christy Moore, the nation needs you.