I started off in Mourne Road School in Drimnagh, Dublin, which I went to as a "low baby". Even at the beginning they tell you you're a "low baby". What kind of a message is that? I can safely say I had absolutely no idea what was going on for the first three years. I might as well have been catatonic. I sat looking out of the window in the dunce's row. I didn't even know what dunce meant, I was oblivious. I couldn't fathom why we were sent there every day, I felt it was some sort of game I didn't understand.
The only thing I was slightly good at was maths. I found it very easy and that utterly confused them, because being in the dunce's row, I shouldn't have been able to add or anything. That was my passport out of there. I was ceremoniously moved one day - which was great, a milestone - when I was six.
From there I went down to St Michael's CBS in Inchicore for the rest of primary. It was all Christian Brothers, GAA, the Irish language, 1916, Cu Chulain the May Altar. Again I had no idea what it was all about. Although, the one thing I was good at was bringing flowers for the May Altar.
I have a very vivid memory of interrogation in addition tables and multiplication tables. There was a book of those things - one times one is one and the rest. I thought it was a type of poetry which I couldn't remember. That it had any sort of connection with maths didn't cross my mind until many years later. I remember when people were standing out who didn't know their multiplication tables. I was still standing out for the addition tables. I was bottom of the B class and there were only two classes. A very uninspiring beginning.
But one weekend, I was encouraged to bring home a book and I brought home one of the Famous Five books and read it cover to cover and brought it back on Monday wanting more. It just seemed a light went on in my head then and I started to improve.
I went from there to James's Street school, another CBS. Going in there, I was starting to get good at English and maths, but Irish I couldn't fathom at all. I was particularly unskilled with anything to do with Ireland and the Irish. When I was playing Gaelic football, I was just a duck out of water, running the wrong way all the time. When I took up soccer, suddenly I started to shine. Irish traditional music? I didn't know what it was all about. Popular music, the Beatles? No problem at all.
There were A, B and C classes then and I was the middle of the B class. I had come up considerably in the world. At this stage, a young student teacher arrived in the school. I don't think he'd even finished his HDip at the time and I clicked really well with him. He came in to teach us English and took a shine to my writing - and his name is Myles Dungan. I have to say he had a huge influence on me, I shot forward in the class and it all just started to make sense to me. I kind of concentrated after that and did well and went into the A class. It pains me to praise someone on another radio station, but I have to give the man his due. He was an interesting character, he was barely older than us - I think he was only 20 - and he'd a beard and he was into Bob Dylan. He was madly passionate about all the things he was teaching and it was infectious.
He started a debating team and I was the captain. We were very successful and we won something, but I remember having marks taken off me for sarcasm. As captain, I had to do the summarising and they thought I went too far. There was a girl, the third speaker, she was inaudible, so I got up and I rebutted the first speaker and the second speaker and they were all looking at me and then I said "now for the fourth speaker" and skipped her completely and there was murder over that, but I thought it was great. We won by something like 95 points to 40 points and they said it would have been a bigger margin, except they deducted marks for my sarcasm, like it mattered.
I was very rarely in trouble in school though. My attitude was always keep your head down, which I was very good at, and avoid their eye, which worked pretty well for me. So I sort of slipped in and slipped out.
In conversation with Olivia Kelly