Brendan Glacken: The time, a day in the early 1970s. The place, Grafton Street before it was pedestrianised.
A toot on the horn of an arthritic Morris Minor, the winding-down of a window and a peremptory command: "Come to lunch. Upstairs in the Bailey. 12.30 p.m."
So you joined Gregory Murphy for lunch with maybe a dozen other guests. But first, a few drinks, for Greg abhorred the idea of eating on an empty stomach. A superb lunch would follow, with an ocean of wine and an avalanche of chat and blather, stories and insults. Greg would then pay the bill, more often than not with a third-party cheque acquired that morning.
You then said goodbye to the day, for you were now contractually obliged to drink along with Greg in the Bailey for the rest of the evening. Anyone who foolishly attempted an early departure - say about six o'clock - even after fulfilling the sacred duty of buying a round or three, was discouraged with torrents of abuse. It would have been a lot cheaper (and healthier) to have passed a more normal lunchtime, but never so much fun.
Speaking of the abuse Greg so famously dealt out, even its victims would usually agree it was spot-on. And Greg was a gentleman in the Wildean sense of never insulting anyone accidentally.
Coming from a modest background (not that one would have chosen to remind him), Greg was conscious from an early stage of his privileged position as a barrister. There were very many acts of great thoughtfulness and generosity in his life known only to the recipients and a few others.
His eminent legal career can hardly be separated from the stories - many of them unrepeatable - associated with it. One involves a night when Greg emerged from Doheny and Nesbitts with his great friend and colleague Colonel Liddy. A woman was being physically abused by a man on the street, and Greg commanded the ruffian: "Unhand that woman, you low cur" (or some such Murphyism). The abuser turned out to be a client of Greg's who responded, "Well feck me if it isn't 'Plead Guilty' Greg Murphy".
Greg particularly enjoyed the company of women, and every year he invited a number of his lady friends to celebrate his birthday in the Kapriol restaurant. He delighted in friends, in drink (gin and tonic in a tall glass please, ice and a slice) and in good food. If Greg was a dinner guest in your home, and your standards were sufficiently high, you could hope to be informed by him, as if by some contented Edwardian gentleman at the brandy and cigars stage, that you "kept a good table".
Greg went to Kerry every Christmas to walk the beaches around Castlegregory, where his father grew up. He was also a regular for years at the Merriman School, where on one occasion he was famously described as "the worst chairman ever" (political correctness was never his strong point). In fact he was a speaker and debater of
immense skill and presence, dating from his days at Rockwell College, and he won debating awards at Trinity College and King's Inns.
Greg was well known to a large number of taxi-drivers, and could make it from his home to the Four Courts in 10 minutes. Sometimes the speed of his preparations showed in his hastily-donned attire (usually a bespoke chalk-stripe suit from Maurice Abrahams) and not long after his marriage to Jean Pasley in 1986, one driver was heard to make the approving remark: "That wan did a great job on him."
Having chided many of his friends for their mistakenly "premature" marriages, Gregory was immensely happy in his own marriage to Jean, a fact evident to anyone who ever saw them together.
Dublin lost a great splash of its colour, wit and vibrancy when Gregory Murphy passed away two years ago last Saturday. Greg's good friend the barrister and poet John O'Donnell wrote the following poem, One for the Road, in his memory:
I'm choosing
(you'd love this)
a tie to wear
In Foxy John
Moriarty's,
the best shop
In West Kerry for getting
kitted out
For a funeral. Whether
you'd approve
Of what I've at last selected,
I doubt:
I'm almost sorry for
The Man Above
As you arrive, grumbling
about standards dropped;
How these days they'll let
anyone in here.
Still, it could be worse. I'm
certain you won't fail
To find some smoke-filled
corner to regale
With scandal, gossip,
good-humoured attacks
On petty vanities, delight in
getting people's backs
Up, and putting - in defence
- the odd good word
(Since your cloak sheltered
many a wounded bird).
So keep a space for me, as I
keep you in mind
Knowing there's no filling
the space you've left behind.