There is no other way to describe it. "It was a nightmare," says Joe O'Connor. Exactly two weeks before his new play opened at the Andrews Lane Theatre in Dublin, his pop-star sister went and got ordained as a Latin Tridentine priest and, before you could say "bless me mother", the press were on the phone.
In saner times such a deluge of media attention would be, ahem, mannah from heaven for O'Connor, a successful novelist and occasional playwright on the verge of unleashing his latest work, but last week all anyone wanted to know were his thoughts on Mother Bernadette.
It gets even worse. O'Connor's new play for the Fishamble Theatre Company is a comedy based on the life and times of a "screwed-up family" living somewhere on the southside of Dublin in the seventies. It's called, wait for it, True Believers. Art imitating life, you might say - or vice versa.
In yet another example of familial symmetry, the endlessly creative O'Connor siblings led a pretty successful assault on the media last week. The spiritual sister got romantic, literally, with the tabloids and could be seen crooning Christ/Lord Have Mercy ad nauseam on Friday's Late Late Show. The book-writing brother appeared on Kenny Live the next evening and was the subject of a lengthy article in the Sunday Tribune the following day.
True Believers, O'Connor's third piece for the stage, is based on his collection of short stories of the same title. "Part of it is about a marriage break-up but it's not based on my own experiences," he says. "I don't think my childhood is particularly interesting as material."
The painful details of his own parents marriage break-up have been aired with great regularity by his sister but, for the record, O'Connor still seems to be basking in the glow of taking a walk up the aisle himself in October last year. According to its author, True Believers, which stars Geraldine Plunkett and Enda Oates as the mother and son characters, is a "very stripped down" piece of work. It returns, he says, to the same tension-filled territory as his first play, Red Roses and Pet- rol, but with a much simpler structure.
From Behan's era on it has been one of the shibboleths of Irish play-writing, he says, that "you have to write one set in a sitting room where devastating family secrets are revealed. I did that with Red Roses and True Believers is kind of a step up from that."
His last play, The Weeping of Angels, featured such thespian heavyweights as Brenda Fricker and John Kavanagh and completed a successful nine-week run at the Gate Theatre. Some of the reviews of the play were scathing, but O'Connor says he was untouched by any of it.
"I'm one of those writers who genuinely doesn't mind what critics say," he says. "I got some of the best and worst reviews ever in my life for that play and I wouldn't change anything about the whole experience. To have a play on at the Gate with that cast was a fantastic experience."
He has "modest" hopes for True Believers and admits to being nervous about how it is received. "If I wasn't, there wouldn't be any point. Being nervous means being excited - if the play does well enough to complete its run and do the tour that will be fine. On the other hand, if it makes it onto Broadway for seven years - that would be wonderful."
O'Connor has just begun work on his second novel for Random House with whom he has a three-book deal. The first, The Salesman, translated into 12 languages and is being made into a movie as is his debut novel, Cowboys and Indians.
The talk turns to the other Irish writers who have recently found themselves the toast of the London publishing world. "I think that whole thing was a case of let's give the Paddies a chance and see if we can find the next Roddy Doyle. But the end might be in sight . . . it looks like Scotland is the new Ireland actually." He is not particularly proud of being Irish because "nationality is not something you choose, it's like being proud of having blue eyes."
He remembers interviewing Brian Moore, and asking him whether he would mind if when people wrote about him they left out the fact that he was Irish. "He said that he would be delighted. The fact that he didn't think of himself in terms of his Irishness gave him so much more scope in his work."
O'Connor is uninhibited in his enthusiasm for the late author. He admired his "commitment to the art of writing that was a lifelong passion. It was a . . ." he breaks off smilingly and admits that he almost used the word "vocation" to describe his feelings towards Moore's and his own writing career. It's yet another reminder that whatever further success awaits O'Connor the spectre of his sister will prove difficult to shake.
True Believers is playing at the Andrews Lane Theatre until May 29th before touring the country