Initials BB

Dermot Bolger on Brendan Behan.

The tragedy was that by 1958 Behan was becoming as well-known for his drinking as his writing; for being the ultimate dangerous live television guest; for unprintable soundbites and missed deadlines; for riotous scenes in hotels and airports; for the fact that – long before the age of celebrity – he became an international celebrity.

He became the George Best of writing: a man suddenly swept up inside a new world of temptations, with no predecessor to learn lessons from about how to handle fame. The world was at his feet and there is nothing more dangerous.

The discipline of being a writer locked away in a room might perhaps have saved him. But by 1960 he discovered the tape recorder. His final books were rambling dictated mishmashes – Brendan Behan’s Island and Brendan Behan’s New York.

Fame brought wealth and spongers and a descent into a nether world in which he was the writer who no longer wrote, the burnt-out mumbling raconteur.

This is the “Behan passed down in Dublin folklore over the past 50 years, a drunken genius, a man who acquired more friends the longer he was dead.