An octogenarian clubber is hosting a marital bash next week for an ageing rocker. Roisin Ingle explains.After returning home almost 10 yearsago, Sir John settled into the quiet life of a country gentleman until hisobsession with dance music took over
Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Oops. Too late, Macca. Sir John Leslie couldn't resist it, although at his age he really should have known better.
The eccentric octogenarian became the darling of the paparazzi this week when he let slip details of the wedding of the year between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills being held at his Co Monaghan home, Castle Leslie.
With a peacock feather in his green beret and a twinkle in his eye, he confirmed that the couple were likely to marry at the 17th-century castle on Tuesday.
Sir John had escaped from the security presence now camped out in his not-so-humble abode by saying he had to post a letter.
Surrounded by the media in the tiny border village of Glaslough, he proceeded to be refreshingly indiscreet about the secrecy-shrouded celebrity nuptials.
"We are told vaguely it is next Tuesday like the papers say, but it is all secret. I have to keep it dead secret, you know," he said.
At this point his niece, Samantha, who runs the castle, now a luxury guesthouse, persuaded Uncle Jack to take a lift back to the castle in her van. But the cat was well and truly out of the bag.
It's not the first time the land-owner has hit the headlines. His tabloid name is The Disco King of Ireland and he can be found most weekends at any of Monaghan's discos, dancing to what he calls "the boom-boom music".
The war veteran and 4th Baronet of Glaslough discovered raves a few years ago after a couple of local youths told him about their night-life.
At the time he told newspapers that he thought discos were gloomy places where people danced quietly. But then he went to his first rave in Carrickmacross.
"The music gets into your bones," he said, "and makes you want to dance.
"I get up and leap around just as I feel like. When I hear the boom- boom it electrifies me. I can leap up and down, and it's as if my ankles were electrified".
To date he has starred in two documentaries, Lord of the Dance and Uncle Jack and the Boom Boom Music. The last one showed him celebrating his 85th birthday at the notoriously hedonistic Manumission club in Europe's dance music capital, Ibiza.
"The clubs are amazing over there," he reported. "One of them closed only for two hours a day between 7 and 9 a.m. We went in and danced in the daylight".
The self-confessed sufferer of "discoitis" still goes clubbing every weekend. He knows little about the Beatles, however - "I was in Rome during their heyday," he said - and had to have McCartney pointed out to him from a picture, despite the former Beatle's visit to the castle two years ago.
The raver comes from a long line of eccentrics and can trace his roots back to Attila the Hun. His father, Shane Leslie, was a poet and ardent Irish nationalist who once joined a monastery.
His sister was the biographer, Anita Leslie King, who was an ambulance-driver in the French army. Her son, Desmond, a composer of electronic music, was a firm believer in UFOs.
Sir John spent much of his life away from Ireland, turning the family home over to Anita due to ill-health caused by five years in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp in Bavaria. The stately home is now owned by his niece, Samantha.
After returning home to Castle Leslie almost 10 years ago, Sir John settled into the quiet life of a country gentleman until his obsession with dance music took over.
Paul McCartney is thought to have chosen the castle as his wedding venue because of the Irish links of his late mother, Mary. The former Beatle once wrote a song called Give Ireland Back to The Irish.
Since news of the wedding broke, the village of Glaslough has been under siege, and it is virtually impossible to find accommodation in the area.
Locals are hoping that the wedding will do for their village what Madonna's did two years ago for the tiny hamlet of Dornoch in Scotland. The pop star is featured on the official website for the village: "Choose Dornoch as your wedding destination - Madonna did!"
Other famous guests to stay at Castle Leslie have included the Swedish royal family, Winston Churchill's mother, Mick Jagger and "the website boys", as Sir John describes boyband Westlife.
Dean Swift was another regular visitor to Castle Leslie, writing several verses about the clan. One of these suggests that McCartney and his celebrity guests may feel slightly overwhelmed by the family's own legacy.
Swift wrote:
Here I am in Castle Leslie
With rows of books upon the shelves
Written by the Leslies
All about themselves