The Irish Sentinel is pleased to announce a new weekly series of audio download podcast radio show type things. They feature well known Dublin folk singer, poet and breakdancing champion, Ronnie McGrew.

Ronnie McGrew - old skool Dubliner

Ronnie made his name as the lead singer with rough and tumble folkies ‘The Stoneybatter players’ who later changed their name to ‘The Liffey swingers’ and later again to ‘The five lamps gurriers’.

Renowned for his gruff voice and for his side sliding one-legged airflare, Ronnie was born on Eccles Street in 1938. Traffic was diverted around the North Circular Road as the afterbirth proved too slippy for many horses and carts of the day.

He went to school in Synge Street before being expelled for selling scrumped apples. His first job was as an apprentice baker, learning to mill flour in Boland’s bakery, before he was fired from there for selling scrumped apples.

His love of music and the arts led him to study at the Gaiety School of Acting on Suffolk Street before he was expelled for refusing to mime the part of a tree, calling it ‘an exercise is bollockosity that not even Matt Talbot himself would countenance’.

It was in the Ainsley Arms, on Amiens Street, that he met Forbes O’Brien. They discovered a mutual love of music and Guinness and combining the two at every opportunity. Shortly after that ‘The Stoneybatter players’ were formed.

He has fourteen sons – Ronnie Jr, Brín, Gurcake, Dandelion, Daniel, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Chewbacca, Liamo, Arthur, Hailey and Catweasel – and a daughter, Anne-Marie-Kelly-Anne-Assumpta.

In this series Ronnie McGrew will look back on the Dublin of the past and deal with the Dublin of today, providing us a glorious contrast between now and the ‘good auld days’.

So, without further ado, here’s Ronnie McGrew’s ‘My Dublin’, episode 1, exclusive to the Irish Sentinel.

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