Irishness was a synonym for bravery, foolishness and poetry, Garrison Keillor, the radio broadcaster and bestselling author of Lake Wobegon Days, told a Limerick audience this week when he recorded his show, A Prairie Home Companion, at the city's University Concert Hall.
Based in St Paul, Minnesota, Keillor produces a nostalgic show of live music performance, drama sketches and monologue which is heard by a US audience of about 2.8 million, and is also available, via the Astra satellite, on World Radio Network and NPR Worldwide.
His guests in Limerick were the Mulcahy Family Band from Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, the Co Clare accordionist Josephine Marsh, with Tommy Carew, Declan Corry and Paul O'Driscoll, and the Co Waterford singer, Karan Casey. Angela's Ashes came of age as it was parodied as Angela's Sashes on the theme of "life was lovely in Limerick . . ."
Keillor's show was first broadcast in 1974 to a live audience of 12 people, and, apart from a two-year intermission in the 1980s, has continued to evolve. In his captivating, languorous voice, he talked about his confined small-town upbringing in the Midwest, with its petty religious prejudices.
He was a member of the fundamentalist Sanctified Brethren in a community that was "half Norwegian Lutherans and half German Catholics". His Uncle George's buying of a typewriter to write the family history was put down to "the Irish in him".
The same typewriter later came into Keillor's possession, forming the basis of his radio and writing career.
In the meantime, having graduated to a laptop, he treated his audience to the travails of working with a computer to the tune of Sam Cooke's Wonderful World. Although told with humour, Keillor's monologue had a poignant tone to it as he told of a favourite cousin becoming pregnant and resigning herself to a hasty marriage. The Limerick show will be broadcast by Lyric FM at a later date.
A second Irish performance of A Prairie Home Companion will be recorded at Studio One, RTE, in Dublin this evening, to be broadcast on Radio 1.