When it comes to early-90s Dublin thievery and skullduggery, Martin “The General” Cahill had nothing on me. Long before filesharing became the rage, I used to steal music. The radio station I worked at regularly gave away prizes, mostly in the form of Daniel O’Donnell and (get this) sub-Daniel O’Donnell CDs. Often the winners would come into town and pop into the station to collect their prize, and would be disappointed to be told (by me) that the disc in question couldn’t be found and that I’d personally dispatch a replacement directly to their front porch. What I was scrupulously careful not to tell them was that I’d stolen the CD, taken it to one of Dublin’s then-many record emporiums, made up a short entertaining anecdote about a generous but dotty elderly relative with a misplaced understanding of modern musical trends, and swapped it for some hiphop.
This went on for some time, during which I was able to amass quite a collection of the very latest releases from Redman, Mobb Deep, various Wu-Tang offshoots, and etc. To be fair, it was all just a means of feeding my family, although to be more fair my beloved sirelings all went by names such as ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx’, ‘Midnight Marauders’ and ‘Whut: Thee Album’. It was kind of a victimless crime in that a small record company would get to believe that their music was slightly more in demand than it actually was and some elderly Dubliner would acquire a nice anecdote about how they went all the way into town to pick up that CD they’d won and although it turned out they’d have to wait to get their hands on the prize they’d had a pleasant chat with a very well-spoken and charming Englishman with admittedly slightly shifty eyes and (unbeknownst to them) very sticky fingers.
Then there was the keg-of-Caffreys episode. Ah yes. Ahem. The 88-pint barrel of beer in question was the (as it were) prize prize of the year, as it was to be awarded to anyone who could (correctly) guess the winners of that year’s Caffrey’s Hot Press Irish Music Awards. There were numerous entries but they all shared two simple defects: 1) They were all sent and received before the winners had been announced and 2) The person who’d guessed (the ‘entrant’) didn’t work in the radio station which was hosting the competition. The radio station receptionist suffered from neither of these disadvantages and the fact that he seemed to be slightly eye-squiffy and wobbly on his feet every morning for the following month was not recognised as in any way connected to the seemingly above-board award of the (massive) vessel of ale to a (unbeknownst to them) pseudonymous version of his then-girlfriend.
Two things brought my budding criminal career to a close. Inevitably, after a certain point, my confidence, my hubris if you will, brought me down to earth, like an Icarus who had overestimated how many pilfered CDs and knocked-off pints of creamy beer he could take on his sunbound ride. One evening I happened to spot my boss walking through Temple Bar, which was a commonplace occurence as our office was just around the corner (at no. 3 Grafton Street, to be exact). The awkward thing was that at the very moment he waved hello I was sitting behind a pristine restaurant window with a fork halfway to my lips while a colleague-in-dishonesty gulped down the contents of one of many wine glasses. The fork and wine glass in question were both the property of a recently-opened dining establishment which had just the week before (via our radio outlet) offered vouchers for a slap-up meal for two to the first listener who could name the singer of Aslan (Christy Dignam). The vouchers in question had sadly not been to be found on the premises when the person who’d rightfully won them (the ‘winner’) had come to pick them up a couple of days previously, and I had apologised profusely and promised to get back in touch with the restaurant to replace them. It was only a short while later that my boss (Paul) called me into his office and in grave tones explained that we needed to do something about all these prizes going missing. His solution was to put me (the thief) (he didn’t say ‘the thief’) in charge of an investigative task-force to track down the culprit. Shortly afterwards, gangland boss Martin “The General” Cahill was shot dead near his home in Rathmines. In the words of Coolio, he was on his way to gangster’s paradise at last, and it was time to put a stop to my own life of crime just in case it should come to a similarly sanguinary end.
Infinite Coincidence 