IT ISN’T every day you get off school early to meet a genuine star – especially not one whose front door you pass on an everyday basis.
Luke Canning (9), from the Coombe, was understandably excited at the prospect of meeting Imelda May, “a famous singer from Ireland”, even more so because “I know where she lives”.
Friend Adam Norman of Phibsboro also had inside knowledge.
“She has black hair and she has a gold curl and her real name is Imelda Clabby,” he says, with some authority due to his close family connections. “Me Ma used to go to secondary with her.”
She doesn’t disappoint. Every bit the rock(abilly) star, May appears in a red scarf, red lipstick and leopard-skin print leggings.
Hailing from “two minutes up the road”, she is somewhat of a local hero, but still very much a local, and chats to her former neighbours in her Dublin drawl as they approach her for autographs.
Of course she knows the local kids too. “I was chasing after one of their uncles once upon a time. He turned me down.”
Bet he rues it now.
So is it strange coming back to the Liberties as a big celebrity?
“Ah, I am today but I’m not normally,” May says. “Normally they ignore you and you can go up the street, and everyone knows everyone anyway.”
It’s just two years since she was sky-rocketed to fame after an appearance on Jools Holland’s TV show. Since then she has performed at the Grammys, toured the world and had a chart-topping album.
Her mother, Madge Clabby, is very proud of her, but not the least bit surprised at her fame. “We always knew this was going to happen because she never had anything else on her mind.”
It has had its advantages locally too. “The people around here are saying, since she got famous, the house prices are gone back up again,” she says laughing.
Stuart Clark of Hot Press says May, who took “15 years to become famous overnight”, is the perfect person to launch this year’s Hot Press Music Show, at the RDS on October 2nd and 3rd.
The event will include talks by Bob Geldof and Steve Lillywhite and is expected to be attended by over 12,000 people.