There might be still two weeks until Christmas but one Crumlin man is suffering for his attempts to bring Christmas cheer to his neighbourhood.

Steven ‘Dotso’ Doherty, 43, of Bangor Road has become well known for the lights outside his home. Over the years it has grown from a simple set of fairy lights in a tree, powered by the generator in his caravan parked in the driveway, to an incredible display so powerful it can be seen from space.

Tasteful Crumlin light display doesn't come free

This year he spent 3 months custom making glowing snowmen, a neon Jesus and Mary, a Santa made entirely from LEDs, reindeers powered by Maglite torches and a chain of lights which outline his house run from an iMac which displays in millions of colours. He switched them on on December 1st but was yesterday declared bankrupt in the district court after failing to pay the ESB the €55,000 it has cost to run since that date.

“I’m gutted”, he said yesterday. “All I was trying to do was bring the magic of Christmas to my fellow residents and now look. Don’t the ESB have any heart? Where’s their Christmas spirit?”

However, a spokesperson for the ESB said “This puts the grid for whole area under incredible pressure, especially when you consider how many other idiots, I mean fellow Christmas revellers, have decided to follow suit and have the kind of display outside their houses that you wouldn’t even see during a Chinese Olympic ceremony. Electricity is not free at Christmas or any other time of the year”.

So the lights are out at Dohertys and while the street may not be as festive as it was some residents are glad. One woman, Marie Doyle, who wished to remain anonymous, told us “I live opposite him and even though I have black-out curtains it was like the middle of the day in my sitting room. I’ve been going around with dark glasses on the whole time. Frankly it’s a relief that when someone calls to my door in the evening they don’t think it’s Roy Orbison opening it”.