"I THINK I am slightly embarrassed by the facile way that fame and admiration come the way of even untalented TV `personalities'," writes Mike Murphy near the conclusion of his memoir, Mike and Me. Though he waltzes away, with uncharacteristic ease, from including himself among the "untalented" it is clear throughout this book that this is an attempt by an RTE "personality" to de-personality-ise himself.
Even the title suggests a consciousness of psychological separation on the part of the author. There is Mike, the smooth, golfclubby, south-county TV presenter and there is a "Me" which is uncomfortable with the superfluousness of the Mike image. It is as if the presenter of Radio 1's The Arts Show feels a need to assert himself against another self, the compere of RTE TV's Winning Streak.
To some extent, I do regard Mike and Michael almost as separate entities," he writes early on. This is Michael, the "Me" of the title speaking, and it is the dominant voice of this memoir. It is the voice which recounts an emotionally difficult upbringing as the eldest child of a cold father and a manipulative mother. It is the voice which recalls the break up of his marriage. It is a voice which validates Tolstoy's dictum that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It is a post psychotherapy voice.
The voice of Mike the "TV personality" is here too, spinning anecdotes in the questionably cosy tones of the once swaggering RTE set. There is laddish bonhomie about other RTE broadcasters, golf and business pals and theatre types. But Murphy gives the impression that the smooth, professional Mike is not altogether respected by the traumatised, personal Michael.
The early chapters reveal a life shaped, not just by unhappy parents, but by the institutions, mores and conventions of south Dublin. There is, most notably on his mother's side, a viperish, petty snobbery. Murphy's father played soccer with Bohemians, Murphy - himself played rugby with Terenure College. Academically, he was a disaster, but he retained a kind of class confidence, which allowed him to surf the wave of the new bourgeois Ireland of the 1960s.
When he recalls throwing, at age 14 or 15, a knife at his father, he admits to hating him through those years". Yet Mike/Michael questions the source of his discontent. "How much of this unhappiness was my father's fault and how much my mother's, I will never know," he writes. Perhaps not. But the destructive emotional selfishness of his mother, always ready to act the professional invalid, suggests that the hated father was merely trying to protect his own sanity.
The mix of voices - the stark, post psychotherapy voice and the other, smoother TV presenter voice - creates, at times, an unevenness. Naturally, it is Michael who writes about his parents. But too often it is Mike who writes about RTE colleagues. Perhaps those so praised are all as talented and "delightful" and sophisticated as indicated. But their children might not think so.
To be fair, though, Murphy does not do a full PR job for RTE. He rightly attacks the organisation's "disgraceful treatment" of independent producers and in one, er delightful passage, he savages the Rose of Tralee festival. "It represents to me everything that is smug and hypocritical about this country . . . I learn for one of these young women to say that she is a lesbian, that she is long term unemployed, that she approves of divorce, that she has been involved in an unhappy affair with a married man (well, a lesbian would, wouldn't she?), that her family have had problems with alcohol ..." In other words, that all the young Mikettes would release their traumatised Michaelettes.
The question most to be asked about this memoir is "why?". Why did Mike Murphy, at 54, write it? He gives two reasons: he had reached a "cathartic moment" (marriage break up) in his life and his career as a broadcaster coincided with the "halcyon" years of RTE. Fair enough. But there is a strong note of assertion throughout, of an identity, hitherto masked from the public, demanding to be heard and to be taken seriously. Michael is not ashamed of Mike, but he may be explaining him, not just to himself and to us, but to his dead parents. Whatever the case, it is a memoir of commendable vigour when it is folly honest.