A New Life Bill Mooney is a taxi driver with more than one trick up his sleeve. Elaine Edwards reports
Taxi drivers can tell some tales, but Bill Mooney's are more interesting than most. He's been driving a taxi for three years, but his background is in the entertainment industry - in the glamorous (but not always so), non-stop party world of nightclubs and circuses.
He claims something of a celebrity background. His mother, Sheila Mooney, now 82, had what he describes as "a crack at Hollywood". She told her story in her 1990 memoir A strange kind of loving. Ms Mooney is a sister of the late Hollywood actress Maureen O'Sullivan, famed for her role in Tarzan. Which makes Mooney a cousin of Mia Farrow, Maureen O'Sullivan's daughter. He's not sure whether or not to talk about it, but he concedes it's an interesting connection.
There are other things he's guarded about - he doesn't like to reveal his age and he's reluctant to put a timeframe on his work with the circus, partly for fear he'll unintentionally malign former colleagues.
Mooney's background wouldn't suggest he was likely to up sticks and run away with the circus. He was brought up in Sandycove in south Dublin and was educated at Blackrock College. His mother and father met on a blind date. She was then with the Abbey School of Acting, but gave it up when she met his father, Jimmy Mooney, a well-known Dublin dentist and yachtsman.
He was naturally drawn to an unconventional career, it seems.
"I wanted to do something in the entertainment world but I wasn't certain what. It must have been something in the genetics. I was always very interested in the organisation and the business side of it. I think I took after my dad in a lot of ways - determined and practical. When my dad died, I went to England and I was trying to break into it, but I didn't know which direction to go. So I did a series of jobs. I worked in a pub, I worked as a manager in a chain of bookshops and I was a runner for a film supply company."
When he returned to Ireland, unemployment was rife and he answered an interesting, but vague, ad in the Evening Press. It said: "No clock-watchers need apply." The job turned out to be work as an advance promotions manager with a major circus.
He also signed a friend up. When they were brought to their single-berth caravan on the first day of an eight-month season, they were in "shock and disbelief" at the accommodation, he says. Mooney got used to it and came to enjoy circus life. His friend didn't last the pace. "My determination, my typical Taurean stubbornness, got me through it. We had said goodbye to all our friends - and you can't go back home."
He ended up doing more than he bargained for. "They had me doing a stint in the ring - a magic act. The person who was doing it disappeared. I don't think he got paid! In the circus you have to do everything." He loved it. "They were the best years of my life." The hard work was offset by the social side and, he admits, there were some broken hearts and some "horrific drinking" along the way.
When he finally had enough, he started working on the nightclub circuit, managing a number of clubs, including the famed 'Saints' at the St Lawrence Hotel in Howth, where he met the woman he describes as "the love of my life". He "crash-landed" one night - collapsed from all the late nights and partying - and was warned by his doctor to change his lifestyle. The prescription was no drinking and no late nights for six months.
A nightclub venture went bust and his relationship of 12 years broke up. He ended up working for a transport company to pay the rent and was advised by a friend to get a PSV licence.
He believes his plate number, 3064, has been lucky for him.
His nightclub and circus experience is clearly useful when he's dealing with people who land in the back of his cab the worse for wear. "I'm used to drunks and disfunctionals after three years doing nights - I'm getting them at a worse stage than the nightclubs. I have a great range of music that soothes and calms all situations, from Thin Lizzy to Barry White. Music is amazing."
Mooney is currently trying to get his novel, Crack of the Whip, which is set in a circus, published. But he's also got plans for the taxi business. He says he wants to put the new yellow London cab, the TX2, on the streets of Dublin, and has written to Seamus Brennan suggesting its introduction as a way of standardising the fleet.
One of the questions a taxi driver is asked most often is whether he minds the long or the short journeys. It doesn't matter to him whether it's two yards or 20 miles, he says. "If the wheels ain't turning, you ain't earning."