PROFILE AMANDA BRUNKER:THIS WEEKEND'S Oxegen line-up: Coldplay, Beyoncé and . . . Amanda Brunker. It was only a matter of time before the 37-year-old Dubliner would add the term "singer" to a CV that already sounds like a pop-culture dictionary.
To date, Brunker is a model/ journalist/writer/actor/broadcaster/TV host/ DJ/ website owner/slimming-product endorser and all-surface local celebrity. And “singer” may not be the end of the additions to her accomplishments this year.
Writing in her column in the Sunday Worldrecently, she claimed that a member of the Government had told her he would be happy to propose her for the upcoming job vacancy in Áras an Uachtaráin. President Amanda Brunker? Stifle those sniggers, there is a European precedent: the Czech writer Vaclav Havel became president of his country. Except it's unlikely that Havel mused in a newspaper column about his possible candidature with the Czech equivalent of Brunker's question: "Would I like it up the Áras?".
If you don’t read certain newspapers and magazines, watch certain TV programmes or visit certain websites where Brunker is an almost ubiquitous presence, all you really need to know about her is that she adds to the gaiety of the nation. Blessed with very good looks and possessed of a smart, quick-witted mind, not to mention a ribald sense of humour, the worst thing anyone can find to say about her is that “she calls a spade a spade”. Which is as mild as it gets in Dublin media circles.
By contrast, the blog and Twitter tormentors have been taking lumps out of the mother of two since it was announced on Wednesday that she would make her musical debut at Oxegen today. “Amanda Brunker is a pointless c***, I hope she is struck by lightning while on stage” and “Lads if anyone is going this weekend, can they throw a bottle of p*** at her for me?” were just two of the comments.
Over the past few days she has been busy deflecting criticism and defending her right to make her first musical appearance at the festival (at 2pm on the Vodafone Stage, if you’re in the area). She says she recorded a number of songs with the band Gitano a few weeks ago and e-mailed the MCD boss Denis Desmond half-seriously looking for a festival slot. Thanks to a late cancellation by the British star Jessie J, she has been pressed into action.
“I know people think this is a joke, but we’re definitely on,” she said. “I’m no Beyoncé and it is quite terrifying, but there’s no backing out of it at this stage.”
Brunker has never sung to a paying audience before, and cynics will have it that her surprise addition to the bill is a publicity stunt to garner last-minute media coverage for a festival that still hasn’t quite sold out. Either way, her much-talked-about slot will draw a crowd, if only for the curiosity value.
Don’t be concerned on her behalf: Brunker thrives on attention and feeds off a crowd. While she was growing up in a Protestant family in Finglas, north Dublin, she relished her outsider status.
“I loved being a Protestant in Finglas,” she has said. “It was the making of me, that sense of being different and having to stick up for yourself. Everyone in the area knew us as ‘the Protestant Brunkers’.”
Her brother Edward, who died of cancer in his early 30s, was best friends with Paul Hewson, who lived down the road. Edward’s death forged a bond between Bono and the Brunker family that is described as “incredibly strong”. Bono’s mother died when he was a teenager and the future U2 singer spent a lot of his time in the Brunker home while growing up.
When Brunker married Philip McLaughlin, the father of her two children, in the roof garden of the Rockefeller Centre in New York two years ago, Bono gave Brunker away. There was a problem with the schedule on the day, and McLaughlin had to ring Bono at the last minute to tell him of the timing difficulties. “Do you want me to ring David?” asked Bono. “David who?” said McLoughlin. “David Rockefeller,” said Bono.
Never an academic type when she was at Clontarf’s Mount Temple School – “it’s where you went if you were a Northside Prod,” she has said – she left at 16 before doing her Leaving Cert. The following year she won the Miss Ireland competition.
She fell into her main job as a journalist because, as she says herself, “I was a chick who was never quite sure when to keep her mouth shut . . . I used to get invited to all the events around town. It was a real case of ‘get yer one invited, she’s great crack’.”
She was picked up by the Sunday World to write about her social life and generally say things you aren’t supposed to say. Brunker’s confessional style of journalism is cheeky, irreverent and trenchant, unencumbered by notions of balance or discretion. From dancing on the tables at Renards nightclub to discussing anal bleaching, she has worked the wild-child/It-girl angle to great effect, taking a scorched-earth approach to media niceties.
“Amanda is ambitious, but not in an obnoxious way,” says a PR person who has had many dealings with her. “Away from how she projects herself in her column, she is super-hard-working, very down-to-earth, really self-deprecating. She’s a lot cleverer than people take her for and, work-wise, will fulfil any request made of her, no matter what time of day. I have an awful lot of time of her. She works her ass off but is a real laugh to be around also. But she is quite earthy, which is not to everyone’s taste.”
She attracted adverse comment last year for saying on Ireland AM that she hit her children. “When the naughty step doesn’t work,” she said, “when the taking-the-toys-away doesn’t work, I have smacked them hard enough to leave a visible mark. I don’t do it often, but at least I am honest. People try to be too PC.”
The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reported that it had received a number of calls from outraged parents following the broadcast. Brunker later added: “I have admitted that I have smacked my children, but the key thing that I wanted to get across is that I do not advocate violence towards children.”
Her TV work has seen her presenting light-entertainment fare such as The Dinner Partyand The Podge and Rodge Showand appearing as a judge on The All Ireland Talent Show.Always well-groomed and unafraid to go off message, she is eminently suited to the formats of these and similar shows.
As a novelist she has enjoyed commercial success with Champagne Kisses(2008) and the follow-up, Champagne Babes(2009), both of which were positively reviewed as page-turners. She doesn't like the term "chick lit" to describe her output, preferring to call it "raunch lit".
As a media figure who dishes it out in an almost incontinent manner and is the first to point the finger at others (and who is a loud presence at any social gathering), she does have her detractors. There is a notion abroad of Brunker as nothing more than a “sofa-selling hack”, as a poster on Boards.ie put it.
“I’m happy for people to slag me off as a good-time girl,” she has said. “I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning if I cared too much for what people thought of me. I’ve read the stuff people have said about me, but they’re knocking the public me. There is another side to me, the one that closes the door after work and isn’t as transparent as the public me.”
A colleague who has worked closely with her for a number of years says: “The Amanda I know is a really hard grafter. She cycles in to her work in tracksuit bottoms and looks completely different than she does when she’s on TV. If she’s off to do a celebrity interview you’ll see her going into the Ladies, changing and putting on make-up and emerging a totally different-looking person. The main thing about her is that she understands the showbiz and celebrity world. She knows that if you put yourself out there, as she does, you will get abuse. It doesn’t get to her – much. She knows it comes with the territory.”
May she enjoy her 15 minutes at Oxegen today, assuming she has 15 minutes’ worth of material. The musically correct among us are pouting and saying that the time slot should have gone instead to a “real musician”. But the other 99 per cent of the Oxegen bill is full of real musicians. Granted, Amanda Brunker isn’t real, she’s something (as far as a festival audience is concerned) far better than that: she’s hyper-real. And she’ll be the first to admit that today at Oxegen won’t be the first time she’s made a show out of herself.
Curriculum vitae
Name?Given her new musical career, perhaps she will change it (in the style of Jennifer Lopez becoming J-Lo) to A-Brunk.
The Irish Beyoncé?If you've ever seen her dancing on the tables in Renards at 3am with a few shandies on board, you'd certainly favour Brunker in a dancing "raunch-off" with Beyoncé.
Set list?You kind of just know there'll be a U2 cover version in there somewhere.
Musical career prospects?Who knows? It could be "there's no show like a Brunker show" before the year's out; alternatively, she could get booed off today and that will be the end of it.
Merchandising stall You can buy unofficial Amanda Brunker Oxegen T-shirts ("Brunk and Disorderly") at cafepress.co.uk/AmandaBrunkerLive.
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