‘There is nothing wrong with offending people’: Roddy Doyle on getting the band back together

There is a speech in Roddy Doyle’s 1987 novel, The Commitments, I’ve long wanted to ask him about. “The Irish are the N-words of Europe, lads,” the band’s manager, Jimmy Rabbitte, tells his charges. He’s trying to explain to them what a bunch of pasty wannabes from the wrong side of Dublin have in common with African Americans and why they should play Black soul music, rather than emulate Ireland’s then leading cultural export, U2. “Say it loud,” Jimmy tells the perplexed Commitments, “I’m Black and I’m proud.”

By the time that speech was delivered in Alan Parker’s 1991 film adaptation, it was amended to: “The Irish are the Blacks of Europe.” Why? “Alan Parker was saying: ‘You just can’t have a white character using the word,’” explains Doyle.

But even that bowdlerised line made me queasy when I saw the film 30 years ago. Surely the Blacks were the Blacks of Europe? Doyle demurs. “The line was written and same-sex marriages. Today, you might well think the basket case is this side of the Irish Sea.