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Since I wrote “Porridge, Picking Apples and Peace: Michael Jackson in Ireland“, Parts I and II, more charming and heartwarming stories about Michael’s time in the Emerald Isle have surfaced, so I’d like to share them with you. I didn’t expect to add any more to this series, but these stories are simply too wonderful to keep to myself, so I’m adding a third part here, and will add more if necessary!
Once again, Eugene Lambert of Lambert Puppet Theatre and Paddy Dunning of Grouse Lodge reveal a bit more backstory about Michael’s time spent with them.
It all sounds as if it was absolutely Heavenly for Michael – at least until one self-interested, ignorant and cocky American reporter announced to everyone around that Michael was there. We all know how self-serving, inconsiderate, and barbarian the U.S. media is, so I guess it was inevitable eventually. Poor Michael. He’d finally found his peace and there was the U.S. media once again in short order to take it from him. Nonetheless, Michael did find at least some peace in the World before he left it and I am happy for that.
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Michael arrived in a banger of a car, with his three children. There was no big entourage, just one security man and an au-pair. They spent over two hours with us, enjoying a show we put on for them and then sitting around having tea and scones. When we discovered it was Michael’s birthday, Judge sang him the happy birthday song and Michael happily sang along. It was a great day, a lovely memory.
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We have a small sweet shop in the theatre, and as we were about to start a show for Michael and his children, one of the kids asked if they could have sweets. I told the lad to help himself, and the next thing Michael was in the shop filling his pockets. He was quite literally the child let loose in the sweet shop, and he loved it.
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He clearly loved his children, and they equally loved him. They had a lovely, normal relationship. He struck me as a very kind, gentle person. The children were perfectly behaved, they had impeccable manners and they wouldn’t touch anything without permission.
It was very much a normal family scene, and I really couldn’t relate the person I met to the man portrayed in the media. To me, he was an ordinary, lovely man, and we got on really well together. I was quite fond of him.
-Eugene Lambert, Lambert Puppet Theatre
The Return of Waxo Jacko
(of course I KNOW Michael despised the moniker “Whacko Jacko” and I do as well, however, this is in loving fun, as you’ll see)
I NEVER ASKED him to moondance, and I never asked him for a picture. Michael said that when he was leaving. He said, “Paddy, you’re the only person who I’ve met in my whole entire life who’s never asked me for a picture.”
-Paddy Dunning, Grouse Lodge
The photograph that accompanies this article, and in which the two do finally appear together, is of a live Dunning and a brand-new waxwork of Jackson, which went on show yesterday at the National Wax Museum Plus; another of Dunning’s businesses.
After the 2005 trial in California, when Jackson was acquitted of charges of child sexual abuse allegations, he spent very little time in the US. Five months of 2006 were spent in rural Westmeath at Grouse Lodge.
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Across the road from Grouse Lodge is Coolatore House, a beautiful late Victorian mansion, which can also be rented by artists or the public. Jackson lived in the Grouse Lodge complex for a month, and at Coolatore for four.
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Once the family arrived, the gates were closed and the Jackson children settled down to a routine of lessons in a small room off one of the studios, playing with Dunning’s two children in the afternoons. Jackson made his own porridge in the mornings, favoured grilled chicken, fish and rice for dinner, went for walks, and read The Irish Times daily.
He was very interested in how this country worked, and the boom that was on here at the time. He was an avid reader of The Irish Times ; he read it every day from start to finish.
-Paddy Dunning
At the time of his death last summer, Jackson was reported to be taking an extensive range of drugs on a regular basis. However, Dunning says he saw no evidence of this.
Not that I saw and he was here, or around, all the time. We’d go for walks, and he was fit. Michael could move really quickly; I’ve never seen anyone move so quickly. He was like a ballet dancer. -Paddy Dunning
The staff working at Grouse Lodge did not even tell their partners who the studio’s current resident was, although Dunning himself cracked. “I eventually told my mam,” he confesses.
And then my mam was saying prayers for Michael. And then Michael rang his mother and told her that my mother was saying prayers for him, and then she was saying prayers for my mother, so I went back to my mother and told her ‘Michael Jackson’s mother is saying prayers for you, Mam’. My mother is a small little lady up in Walkinstown and it’s just mad to think that Michael Jackson’s mother was saying prayers for her. -Paddy Dunning
Jackson, one of the world’s most recognisable faces, sometimes left the estate to explore other parts of Ireland, usually accompanied by Dunning. How was it that nobody in Ireland appeared to notice him?
“Sometimes they did,” Dunning replies simply.
Sometimes I’d drive him to Dublin and we’d pull up a red light and Michael would look out the window, because he’d be sitting up front with me, and a person would not believe their eyes. They would go into semi-shock at the sight, not knowing what to believe – is this Michael Jackson that’s pulled up alongside me on Dame Street or wherever? -Paddy Dunning
The pair of them sang in the car as they drove around the country.
Although I’m a crap musician, I can say I’ve played with Michael Jackson. I played drums with him. And I sang with Michael. We’d be singing in the car. We sang that song, The Girl Is Mine, that Michael recorded with Paul McCartney. He did Paul McCartney’s part, and I did Michael Jackson. -Paddy Dunning
One of the places that Dunning took Jackson was to the nearby Hill of Úisneach, a historic site associated with the High Kings of Ireland.
“He loved history and mythology,” says Dunning, who is developing a Mayday festival around Úisneach – the Festival of the Fires – which will, he hopes, eventually radiate out across Ireland.
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Although staff, neighbours, the shopkeepers at Rosemount – and Dunning’s small children – kept quiet about the fact Michael Jackson was in residence, in the end, a US reporter eventually revealed his whereabouts. One Billy Bush, nephew of George Bush senior, first cousin of George Bush junior and presenter of Access Hollywood , a syndicated cable entertainment-news show, arrived to interview Jackson in Westmeath. He went into nearby Moate straight after filming and told the men, women, children and dogs in the street where Jackson was. “Stupid man,” Dunning says mournfully, but really, could any other result have been reasonably expected?
Jackson departed the midlands soon afterwards, to attend the funeral of soul icon, James Brown. He left the Dunnings his television; toys that had been bought for Prince Michael Junior, Paris and Blanket; various hats; a signed piece of wood (all visitors sign a slice of tree trunk); and a page of scrawled signature in the Visitors’ Book. “He was a very generous man,” says Dunning.
Jackson had agreed, in theory, to open Dunning’s Wax Museum last summer.
We’d told him about the museum. He was always interested in wax museums. He said, ‘If I’m around, I’ll launch it for you’. He was due to be in England at the time to do the shows at O2, and we were going to be going over to the shows and all of that. It was a massive shock when we heard he was dead. -Paddy Dunning
A note Michael left to Paddy Dunning thanking him for the hospitality at Grouse Lodge & Coolatore house
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{ Thanks to my friends Saskia and Blanaid for finding these additional heartwarming stories about Michael in Ireland! -Seven }
Tags: Children, Family, Friends, Photos, Quotes About MJ
