MY EARLIEST MEMORY WAS THE SONG “NOW IS THE HOUR”, which was a big hit for Vera Lynn shortly after the war. Bing Crosby recorded that in the Fifties, and that might have been the version that I heard, because a lot of big singers at the time recorded the song. According to my father, it’s the first tune they heard me la la-ing to when I was 18 months old.
MY MUM AND DAD WERE BOTH PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS. My father was trained in the Republic of Ireland’s system and my mother was trained in the north. My father was a Sligo man and my mother was born in County Tyrone. When they got married, they wanted both to work, so they had to find a town on the border of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. That’s why we settled in the town of Strabane. My mother taught in the north of Ireland, in a school three miles south of
