Bill Cullen

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is an entrepreneur. He's risen from the tenement slums of Dublin to become one of the richest men in Ireland. The stars of his extraordinary story, apart from himself of course, are his mother and his grandmother, the first a dynamo, the other a philosopher who taught him to be positive. So it was that the boy who started work at the age of six selling apples from his mother's market stall was only sixteen years later in charge of Ireland's biggest Ford dealership, and he went on from that to own one of the country's most profitable car distribution companies. His grandmother told him to say, I am terrific every morning before he left for school, and those words still ring in his ears these days as he rubbed shoulders with presidents and prime ministers. Getting to the top may not have been easy, but it wasn't wholly unenjoyable either. I'm lucky, he says, but luck is opportunity meeting preparation. He is Bill Cullen. And your preparation was certainly tough, Bill. What you seem to have had all the way through is this kind of positive approach, which is really your form of luck, isn't it? It's in the genes, that kind of positivism.

Bill Cullen1:33

Well, I say it's probably in the genes, Sue, but it's it's also part and parcel of the habits you develop from an early age. And uh that's what I got in my mother's house. We had tough times, but she raised us all to be very positive, yes, look in the mirror every morning, a big smile, and say I am terrific and never leave this house without a smile on your face and your ch and your head high.

Presenter1:56

But she, you've said, was a true entrepreneur. I mean, had she lived in different times, she might have been as successful as you. Is that what you're saying?

Bill Cullen2:03

Even more than that, I kinda say that, and it's something you'll appreciate, and all women listening will appreciate, that women have to make these choices. Do they raise a family? Do they pursue a career? Or do they try and do both? My mother had no choice, really. She'd fourteen kids. She worked eight hours a day selling fruit on the streets, and she didn't have the choice. But I know from her dynamism that she could have been a mega property developer in particular, because we used to buy bits and property later on in our lives, and I knew she could have been that. So I actually say today, Sue, that my achievements are the realization of my mother's potential.

Presenter2:40

Mm. And did she live does it because she died she was pretty worn out, wasn't she? She was pretty worn out. She died.

Bill Cullen2:44

She was pretty worn out. She died in her mid-seventies and she did

Presenter2:46

Fourteen kids, you know.

Bill Cullen2:50

Well you just think about that, it's tremendous.

Presenter2:52

It's amazing. But but did she live to see you make your first million?

Bill Cullen2:56

Well, she did. And I remember I'll say this to everybody. In nineteen seventy seven, I opened my own Ford dealership that she was at, and I made a speech. And that night, the President of Ford of Europe was there, and he turned to my mother and said,

Presenter2:56

Well

Bill Cullen3:10

You must be very proud of your son Bill tonight, Mrs Cullen. And she said two things that stuck him to the floor. The first one was, I'm not waiting till to night to be proud of that young fellow. Then she turned and see over there, there's eleven of his brothers and sisters, carpenter, bricklayer, housewife. I'm just as proud of every one of them. You needn't think money makes any difference to me, and success is not about money, is what she said.

Presenter3:25

You need

Presenter3:29

But she was not to know, sadly, that you were to become one of the richest men in Ireland, estimated to be worth, what, forty forty million, is it?

Bill Cullen3:36

I'm putting out a hundred I think today, but I really haven't as I say, I often find it hard to get get cash to pay the taxi driver, but however.

Presenter3:37

Really hungry.

Bill Cullen3:43

Uh

Presenter3:43

But you've got a helicopter and a Georgian mansion, I don't know. Anyway, it's a long way from the slums of Dublin. And before we hear about the story of how you got there, let's hear your first record. Tell me about that one.

Bill Cullen3:43

But you've got a helicopter and a Georgian m

Bill Cullen3:52

Now the first record is uh it's a it's a song that goes takes me right back. It's the song that my mother always sang in her dream wish voice, Lullaby and the babies, the ever-present babies. And she used to stay awake till three in the morning and she'd be rocking the cross the cot with her foot, she'd be ironing clothes and darning and Gansies and all this stuff and dreaming her dreams. And she always sang the um

Bill Cullen4:13

The Judy Garland song Over the Rainbow.

Speaker 24:19

Where over the rainbow way of heart

Speaker 24:28

Is a land that I heard of once in a lullaby

Speaker 24:38

Some way over the rainbow.

Presenter4:45

Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow, and memories for you, Bill Cullen, of your mother sitting there dreaming. Now, Judy Garland, or her image, was the subject, wasn't it, of one of the very first deals you ever did as a little boy.

Bill Cullen4:56

Yeah, one of my financial coups for Christmas every year we used to sell Christmas ties and decorations in the centre of Dublin. And um I used to buy these all these stuff wholesale off a fellow called Hector Gray, who was terrific. I remember him saying to me once that, You know, Bill, you're selling a lot of balloons, are you making a good profit?

Bill Cullen5:13

I'm seven and I say, Profit. I thought this was Moses or John the Baptist. I said, What's profit? He said, Profit, son, is the difference between what you're buying the balloons for and what you're selling them for. You're buying them for a pound, you sell them for truppence, you have to get your one percent profit. So that was one of the basic lessons I learned. But the Judy Garland issue was he had a load of dolls lying in boxes, and these were about eight inches high, very soft, plastic, totally nude, and he couldn't sell them. He'd had them there for a few years. So I got this idea of dressing them up, putting bows in their hair and putting a dress on them. And I got my sister a little singer machine, and she was saying, What sort of a dress do we put on it? And the Wizard of Oz had just hit town. So we said, Why don't we do the Judy Garland? The little gingham frock. The little gingham gingham frock, the apron, and the things in her hair. And I bought these dolls for truppence and I was selling them on the streets with this penny gingham dress on them for half a crown.

Speaker 15:35

Totally

Presenter5:52

The little gingham frog. And the

Speaker 15:54

Yeah.

Bill Cullen6:04

You know, we are making eight, ten times the price we're saying.

Presenter6:05

Print

Presenter6:06

How old were you when you did this?

Bill Cullen6:08

Out of seven.

Presenter6:08

But the best story I like, a a favorite one of the the ingenuity of the trader, is how you sold the same thing several times over.

Bill Cullen6:14

Yeah. Well, we you know, the football matches up in Crow Park are big All Ireland games and we'd sell the fruit outside, which were in wooden boxes, and then we'd go inside with the wooden boxes and on the back of the terraces tell them to the small guys who couldn't see or so they'd stand up on this eighteen inch high box and they'd be out to see the game.

Bill Cullen6:31

When the match was over we'd collect the remnants of those wooden boxes which are now on sticks, and we sold that for firewood the next week.

Presenter6:37

Yeah.

Bill Cullen6:37

And up at the end of the ground there was a railway, and when the ground was full, and it held 100,000 in those days, we had a ladder from the railway tracks up to a wall that held 119 bums. And we charge them half a crown to go up and sit in the wall. And whenever they'd call out the attendants, and our game today has 105,329 spectators, and we'd all answer, he's 119, you didn't get on that. So a good day up in Crow Park, we'd often make the equivalent of three months' salary of my dad's. And that's what we had to do.

Presenter7:04

And that's what

Presenter7:07

Record number two. Module.

Bill Cullen7:08

Well, my next song is one from a very, very famous musical with Old Brenner and the wonderful English rose, Deborah Kerr. And in that we had The March of the Siamese Children, which always reminded me of my mother marching out all her army of children. And she had this song in it, Whenever I Feel Afraid, I hold my head erect. And my grandmother used to make us then sing that every Saturday evening in our house. And when we were in the tenements, living in the tenements with no lights, big dark hallways, rats scurrying around, some tramps maybe in hobos living in the hall, we used to all walk in, going, I don't ever I used to sing this song. So it's a great song. Whistle a happy tune, and Deborah Kerr sings it. Always brings me back to those days.

Speaker 27:47

Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect.

Bill Cullen7:47

Right.

Bill Cullen7:49

I hope my head

Speaker 27:52

And whistle a happy tune so no one will suspect I'm afraid.

Speaker 28:00

While shivering in my shoes, I strike the careless pose, and whistle a happy tune, and no one ever knows I'm afraid.

Presenter8:12

I whistle a happy tune from Rogers and Hammerstein's The King and I, and memories for you, Bill, of walking up to that one room you and this vast family of yours shared in the slums. It well, give me a description. I mean it's pretty.

Bill Cullen8:23

Well, it would have been an old Georgian house or sorry, even back further than that, the house of a hundred years of old, but it was eight rooms, two on each floor, four story over basement house, and they were high rooms. The the the ceiling would have been about sixteen, eighteen feet high.

Presenter8:35

So incredibly cold.

Bill Cullen8:36

Freezing cold. There was no heat. We had no water, no running water, no electricity. Laventury in the art. Lavatory in the art for everybody.

Presenter8:41

Laboratory in the art.

Presenter8:43

How many people would share one navigation?

Bill Cullen8:43

How many p

Bill Cullen8:45

In our house in 1947 there were a hundred and four people living. My mother had fourteen kids. Mrs. Preston upstairs got a little restorative had twenty-two kids.

Presenter8:54

And there you were in this one big room, no division in it, you just hung a curtain.

Bill Cullen8:57

You know,

Bill Cullen8:58

Yeah, she just hung a cordon that split it in half and the front half was the kitchen, the parlour and my mother and father's bed. And the other half was cut into two halves again, which gave us one half was a bedroom with a bed for the boys and a bed for the girls, and the other quarter of that was kind of the porch where my father's bicycle, the prams that we used to sell fruit from, sticks and turf for the fire and so on. And that's the way it was. We were on the second floor. You cooped in the front of the k the kitchen. There was a kitchen apart. You you cooped on a stove and a gas stove.

Speaker 19:20

Uh

Presenter9:20

Yeah.

Presenter9:22

So where did you scroll?

Presenter9:28

But you got to fetch the water and water.

Bill Cullen9:29

Oh, you had to bring the water, you had to I mean, it was endless buckets of water coming up. You'd bring up about ten buckets of water every day in an enamel bucket from the tap out in the yard, and you'd have to queue up for the tap to get the water. You'd have to queue up for the toilet.

Presenter9:35

I just

Speaker 19:36

Uh

Bill Cullen9:39

It sounds very miserable, Sue, miserable conditions. But the big thing about my mother was she was so positive and so dynamic that she just you don't do misery in this house. There's no moaning or whinging around here. It was as simple as that. And yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. We have today. Let's make the best of it. Let's go. And this woman never went to school.

Speaker 19:43

Yeah.

Bill Cullen9:58

She left school when she was six years of age. I taught her to read and write, which is one of my greatest achievements and gave me the greatest pleasure, obviously. But every morning of my life with her, I got up at five o'clock and we made out the list of what we had to do and we prioritized. I didn't I didn't know that word then but put the X after the four things we have to get done. What sort of things are on that list? Well the first thing was get food today.

Presenter10:16

Hmm what sort of things are on the

Bill Cullen10:20

That's amazing. The first thing was to get food today. And to do that we have to go down to the market and buy the best. Now we only have three quid and I probably have to pay more than that. So you're gonna have to get credit off one of the one of the wholesalers for me. So these are all the things that you are prioritizing.

Presenter10:31

And you did all this before you went to school.

Bill Cullen10:33

Yes, before you went to school. You got to school at half nine.

Presenter10:35

But despite all of this this is the most amazing things you did not regard yourselves as poor, did you? No.

Bill Cullen10:40

No. I remember vividly one day when my grandmother used to sell her fish and on Saturday I used to be her financier and I'd go in and count the money and you'd put so much in the jug for the rent and so much for her to pay all her little bills and so much for the rainy day and whatever is left might be fifteen shillings or a pound. And she'd say, Now put that in an envelope somewhere and bring it over to the nuns. And I remember saying to her, What are we giving this money to the nuns for, Granny? She says, Because the nuns look after the poor. And I said, aren't we poor, Granny? Poor? You have shoes on your feet, clothes on your back, roof over your head, get two meals a day, mammy and daddy who loves you. You're a very rich son.

Bill Cullen11:18

So, you know, we were poor, the neighbours were poor, but none of us knew we were poor. We had no money, there were no expectations in those days. We were all the same.

Bill Cullen11:26

Record number three. Well, the first real uh singer that I I was a big fan of was Frank Sinatra. My favorite song of all my Sinatra collection, and I have them all, is uh The Real Swinger One, The Place That I Love, One of My Great Destinations whenever I go to the States, and that's New York, New York.

Speaker 211:43

Start spreading the news.

Speaker 211:48

I'm leaving today.

Speaker 211:53

I want to be part of it.

Speaker 211:57

New York, New York These Vagabond Shoes

Speaker 212:06

Our longing astray

Speaker 212:10

Ride through

Presenter12:12

Frank Sonata and New York, New York. It wasn't just poverty and deprivation that bound you together though. It was also, of course, as you've said, Roman Catholicism. There was this bowl of water by the door and I think the Blessed Virgin got thanked for everything really.

Bill Cullen12:26

Yeah, the sacred heart of Jesus was the font at the door and you had holy water there and you never left the house without blessing yourself, blessing everyone in the house and saying you get back safely.

Speaker 212:34

Mm-hmm.

Bill Cullen12:35

And that was all part of the Cath we were a very Catholic family. I got Mass and Communion every morning. I lived in my mother's house, and that was uh six o'clock Mass before we went uh down to the markets or out to the trawlers.

Presenter12:47

But what about politics? What about republicanism? W you know, and that sort of innate anti-Britishness? That was a common bond as well, wasn't it?

Bill Cullen12:55

Well, I often say that uh I'm a republican, I'm a nationalist and I believe that Ireland should be a whole uh island of Ireland, um but we would never ever ever uh get involved in violence.

Presenter13:04

But your your grandmother helped hide Michael Collins, the big fella, at one point. Did she just hold it first of all?

Bill Cullen13:09

Yes, yeah, and this archamella.

Presenter13:11

And proud of it too.

Bill Cullen13:12

I bought a house in Herbert Park in Dublin for very posh in the late 70s. And my grandmother heard about this and she lived to be 100 Molly Darcy. She was a great girl. I used to meet her every week. And she says, I hear you're at the leave and I've gone to this outside. I said, That's right, man. Where are you living now? And as far as I was concerned, Molly Darcy hadn't crossed the Liffey. So I said, Well, it's a little place in Danny Brooke. Whereabouts? I know Danny Brooke. Well, I said, It's a place called Brennan Row. Know it well. Which number? I live in number five, the third house down with a green door. Still has a green door. And she just looked whistled up. She says, You know, son, many's the day I brought messages over there to the Big Fellow.

Bill Cullen13:48

And the next week I thought I said

Bill Cullen13:49

Molly, you were with Michael Connie. Yes, son. Used to take messages over to them.

Bill Cullen13:54

Bring them over there and I'd knock at the door saying, Any old clothes to throw out today? I used to collect the old clothes and I'd I'd get the girl to give me out some canzies and I'd leave her in a message as I took them off her. And do you know where I carried the message on in case the tans had stopped me, the black and tans, up the leg of me drawers. They'd even have soldiers even wouldn't touch a woman there. That was a great story. But we had no I had no resentment about the British. We did have 800 years of suppression. I believe that made us a very stronger nation. It's given the Irish a heritage that we can all be proud of no matter where we go.

Presenter14:22

Yes, but also a kind of instinctive and unquestioning support for the IRA. I mean, I think you you mentioned in in the book you've written about your life that at one point one of your car salesmen left and everybody knew, you knew that he was going off to join the IRA.

Bill Cullen14:35

Oh yeah, without a doubt. And lots of people were like that. And you must realize that.

Presenter14:38

But you didn't think the worse of him for that?

Bill Cullen14:40

No, no, no. It was well known he was a Republican. He used to come to work in a car and he was being followed by the Special Branch Police in Dublin. And he'd go out to wear a workshop and get in the trunk, the boot of a customer's car, and a mechanic would take it out in a road test and hit him in it. And he'd let him off a mile away. He'd come back later in the evening, get into his own car and drive away without fucking. Did you know all that? Yes, we didn't know all that. And you never dream of squealing or nothing like that.

Presenter14:56

And did you know all that?

Presenter15:01

But did you not just did you not just not chop him? Did you also condone it?

Bill Cullen15:01

Not just

Bill Cullen15:06

No, I didn't condone it and I didn't support it. I understood it. But I like to think today, Sue, that all that is behind us. We have the Good Friday Agreement. And I think slowly but surely we're going in the right direction. And I think the island of Ireland will become one, although it might still be governed in two ways. And that's fine. All we want is peace on the island and the ability to move backwards and forwards. We were going up there and you come to the border, barbed wire, a sten gun put under your nose, who are you? Where are you going? I'm Irish. I live here. Who are you? And where are you coming from? And why don't you go home where you came from? So that's the feelings that are evoked by all of that. Today it's better. It's going in the right direction and I'm greatly grateful for all that.

Bill Cullen15:44

Exactly.

Presenter15:44

Uh

Bill Cullen15:45

Well, the next record is The Man That Gave Us Freedom as Teenagers, and it's a very evocative song, so let's hear Elvis Presley and Jailhouse Rock.

Speaker 215:54

One through a party in the county jail.

Speaker 215:58

Then they began to wait.

Speaker 216:00

Man was jumping and the door began to swing. You should've heard this knocked out jailbird sing.

Speaker 216:07

I'm a blood in there.

Speaker 216:11

Everybody knows that

Speaker 216:15

Yeah.

Speaker 216:17

Final Murphy played his in a sex of phone Little Joey blowing on the slide drum bone

Presenter16:23

Jeffhouse Rock Elvis Presley and takes you back. Let's go back even earlier than that because I just want to get this picture of you going to school. You went to school at two and a half years old with long curls down your back.

Bill Cullen16:35

That's right, ringlets. Um my elder sister was four and she was gone to school for the first time in September of nineteen forty four. I was two and she was four years age. And she had been my minder.

Presenter16:46

That's how it worked, I suppose.

Bill Cullen16:47

Yes, you raise the next three or four, and that's the way that's the only way it could work. So she's heading off for school, and I want to go with her. So I screamed and roared and threw a tantrum to my mother. And then she says, Okay, here, take him and see what the nuns can sort him out at. And we went in, and I went in with my sister and my two sisters, and they pleaded with the nuns, Sister Patricia. Well, it's my brother Liam, and my mummy has to go out selling on the streets, and there's no one to mind him if we leave him home. So we really had to bring him here, and we really hope you can let him in. So she says, Of course, Liam, come in, put him up there. And she put me sitting on her chair and gave me some lollipops, and I had an apple for her.

Presenter17:21

Yeah.

Bill Cullen17:21

And I can't get luck again. Yeah, exactly. And that's the luck that I've had.

Presenter17:21

And I get into spoilers.

Presenter17:25

You weren't so lucky when you went to uh school with the Christian Brothers. Age six, you had to transfer. How many times were you lashed?

Bill Cullen17:29

Yeah.

Bill Cullen17:30

Yeah.

Bill Cullen17:32

Well, it's probably every day you'd get hit on the hand, you'd get six of the best on the hand, but they were a little bit more sadistic than that in ways. One of the their favourite things was to grab you by the your your hair the the hair just over your earlobe and lift you up and down. It was very painful. But I wouldn't let my mother said, Nobody puts a hand on you.

Bill Cullen17:50

They can chastise you by hitting you on the hand with a stick or with their letter, but don't ever let anyone put a hand on you.

Presenter17:56

Does she come and say that to them?

Bill Cullen17:58

She she did eventually, but she said it to me and I stood up to them and I resisted that, so they hit me on the hand. And eventually my other brothers who I'd be passing on to one of them got hit in the back of the head and she was up and she told me that she that she went up to the head about class, she went up to the brothers appear and said, Don't ever, anyone, hit one of my children. If they do something wrong, tell me, and I'll hit them harder than you will. But nobody chastises my children except me.

Presenter18:21

Hmm.

Bill Cullen18:22

And she was great in that regard.

Presenter18:23

It's a pretty sadistic regime. I mean, we've read about it in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, we've read about Bob Geldof's autobiography. I mean, you know, you do hear about the kind of controlling sadism of the Christian about this time and it comes down.

Bill Cullen18:34

And my Penny Apples covers that, but it also says this, Sue, it also says that that was ten percent of them. A lot of these men devoted their lives to looking after young boys. And I can tell you this much, we were tough young kids. We were street urchins, we were gurriers as we were called, and we were there and we take advantage of everything that came our way. And these men who were kind of, if you like, timid and holy in many ways, they had their hands full, but they gave us a great education. They knocked sense into us in many ways.

Speaker 118:48

Yeah.

Presenter19:03

Next record.

Bill Cullen19:04

Well, the next record moves on to nineteen sixty two. I remember this one. And the Beatles came to Dublin and they made their only public appearance there in in the Adelphi cinema. And the great story is I used to sell newspapers as well, and they had their limousines out the front while they did a show, and we had an Evening Herald newspaper van outside the back, and we orchestrated it after the show when a couple of fellas went running out, supposedly to them, out at the front of the crowds. The four Beatles got into an Evening Herddal van and drove away. So the song is the one I like best from that era for dancing. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 119:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 219:37

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves you, yeah.

Speaker 219:43

Love Syria!

Speaker 219:49

You'll think you've lost your love. Well I saw her yesterday, ay. It's you she's thinking of and she told me what to say, ay. She said she loves you, and you know that can't be

Presenter20:06

The Beatles and She Loves You. So, uh Bill Cullen, you got a job as a messenger boy aged fourteen after trying quite hard because you wrote seven hundred letters of application or something, didn't you?

Bill Cullen20:15

That's right. All the newspaper ads sent in uh my C V s and my letters without ever getting a response. Seven hundred and thirty six job applications I wrote for

Presenter20:23

So what was wrong with it?

Bill Cullen20:23

Well, we lived in an OGO area, so it was an OGO address as well. So when I wrote my job applications, I didn't get a response. I expressed my frustration to a social worker in the Buyes club I was in and he let me use his address which was Vernon Avenue, Cluntorf, Dublin Three, very posh. The first time I used it, he got a response that he gave me. I got an interview. I got the job, aged fourteen, sweeping floors, cleaning windows, running messages, gone up in the bike, and eight years later I was managing director of the company which implied two hundred people.

Presenter20:51

This was Walden's the biggest.

Bill Cullen20:52

Wall in four in the city centre of Dublin, yeah.

Presenter20:55

So eight years and as you say, you were managing director. That kind of ambition though sometimes I wonder if you got up people's noses, that you were just so.

Bill Cullen20:56

You will manage.

Bill Cullen21:04

I probably did. My boss said it was cocky. But he said something else. And he died a few years back. And I went out to see him just before that happened. And I said, what did he see in me that enabled him to give me that thrust at 22 years of age? And he said, I'll tell you, one night he said, I was going home from a very late night party. It was three o'clock in the morning. I saw the light on at the dealership and I went in and there's young Bill Cullen sitting at this sticking envelopes. I said, What are you doing? Well, I said, It's the last day of the month, and I'm sending out the bills because the quicker I get them out, the quicker I'm in these people to get your money in. And he said, It was two big piles. What are the two piles for? Well, I said, These all have your Tuppeny stamps on them, and I post them. But this bigger pile here, I can deliver them going home tonight on my bike. And he said, He went home that night in his car. It was New Year's Eve. He was coming from a party, and here was a 70-year-old kid in minding his money. He said, That guy's going to run a white company as soon as possible. So, was that luck?

Presenter21:52

So with

Bill Cullen21:54

There's me preparing for an opportunity.

Presenter21:54

Charity

Presenter21:55

But when was the point that you identified that you could go on forever, you know, uh and and doing it for somebody else and the difference between if you were really going to get the bi drive the big Bentley like the bus or get the big house, you were going to have to work for yourself? What how old were you? When was that moment when you thought, I know how ambitious I am?

Bill Cullen22:14

The philosopher in the family, Mother Darcy.

Bill Cullen22:17

You know, she said to me, You're doing very well. So and I was the car salesman then. I was driving a nice car and she said, It's wonderful to see this. Now she says, So sit down there and let me tell you another little thing about life and business. She says You'll never make money working for another man.

Bill Cullen22:32

She says, Get your own business. She says, You're going to be able to do that. I told you, you'll never meet a man better than yourself. If someone else can do it, you can do it. Get your own business. And that woman never went to school. She was born in a gypsy caravan, Molly Darcy.

Presenter22:42

Yeah.

Bill Cullen22:45

Yeah, yeah. She was the philosopher, as you say.

Presenter22:46

The philosopher, as you assume.

Bill Cullen22:48

Next record.

Bill Cullen22:49

Record number six is from my Jackie, my partner for the past twenty five years after my first relationship, my first marriage broke down. And when you've heard Jackie speaking, and she's a very cultured lady, a lady of an upmarket girl, and here I am, the fellow with no ass in my trousers. So her son is Billy Joel's Uptown Girl.

Speaker 223:12

Two girls

Speaker 223:14

She's been living in her uptown world.

Speaker 223:18

I bet she never had a backstreet guy.

Speaker 223:21

I bet her mother never told her why

Speaker 223:25

All the time, hold it up till night

Speaker 223:28

She's been living in her white, gray world As long as anyone would hot a can And now she's looking for a

Presenter23:39

Petty Joel, an uptown girl, to remind you on your desert island of your partner Jackie Lavin, who's a very successful model. You were married before that, though, you had two daughters.

Bill Cullen23:49

Uh

Speaker 223:49

Yeah. Right.

Bill Cullen23:49

Uh

Presenter23:50

Giving up on that marriage must have been and everything we talked about, your Roman Catholic faith and so on, alien to everything that you were taught.

Bill Cullen23:57

I mean, think about it, it was back in the early seventies. It's thirty years ago now. So it was alien. It took uh tre tremendous trauma.

Bill Cullen24:04

I didn't know it was the right thing to do.

Bill Cullen24:06

And yet I felt so devastated with my two children. I would only be able to see them on a weekly basis and that kind of stuff. And I remember going in and telling my mother, and she was devastated. She couldn't. She took her years to reconcile herself to it. Or the pride of her life, me doing something like this. And as she said, she prayed for me every day for the rest of her life more than she'd ever prayed before I did it. And maybe that's what took me through it. But I knew it was a good idea.

Presenter24:24

Smart Love

Presenter24:29

How long did it take her to come round?

Bill Cullen24:31

About three, four years.

Presenter24:32

Really?

Bill Cullen24:32

Really? Yeah, three, four years ago. As a matter of fact, initially she said, Don't ever set foot in my house again and I insisted on going in every Sunday morning and having my breakfast with my brothers and sisters and my father. And she'd get up quietly and walk out of the room when I came in for the first six months.

Presenter24:34

It was a matter of fact.

Speaker 224:46

Yeah.

Bill Cullen24:46

And then the first morning she stayed there I knew I, if you like, I had cracked the veneer and I just worked bit by bit on it over that.

Presenter24:47

Yeah.

Presenter24:53

And the church, what about the church? Because again, like the Christian Brothers at school, they were um they sought to punish you as well, didn't they?

Bill Cullen24:59

Yeah, well the church turns you back in immediately. You're now you know you're you're practically excommunicated, you're living in sin, uh you're an adulterer and all that kind of stuff. And I was lucky that some of the some of the young lads in the boys' club I was in went on to be priests and they were very supportive and consoling with me and what I where I was at that time.

Presenter25:17

But didn't they also seek to not allow you near your daughter for her conversation?

Bill Cullen25:20

Yeah, when my daughter was making her communion, I uh there was a few people with the priest uh resisting letting me into church this year because I wasn't fit to go into the Catholic church. And as I said to them, God welcomes the sinners more than He does the saints. So I went in and that was that.

Presenter25:35

But where does it leave your faith today, having gone through all of that?

Bill Cullen25:38

My fate today falls back on Molly Darcy again, and she just called me in, she sat down and heard all about it, son, and you're not to worry about this at all. And she had a great habit with me, and this never happened to her siblings, she used to put her thumb into the into the ashes of the f tour fire and make a cross on my forehead the way they do on Ash Wednesday.

Bill Cullen25:56

She said, Now you remember this, she said.

Bill Cullen25:58

The only thing you have to remember, as far as God is concerned, is do unto others.

Bill Cullen26:05

And I suppose that's the philosophy that I let take over with me. I've done all that. I never hold any bitterness.

Presenter26:11

Why does that upset you so much?

Bill Cullen26:14

I suppose um

Bill Cullen26:17

It's something thinking about my granny. She was such a

Bill Cullen26:20

Really wonderful person.

Bill Cullen26:22

And she gave me the strength in those tough time.

Presenter26:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:25

And you face today, so it's still there.

Bill Cullen26:29

Yeah, I still go to church today and it could be a Catholic church or Protestant church that I go into. I just want to communicate, probably with my my mother and my grandmother mainly. And uh as I say, I try to live my life in a way that they'd be proud of.

Presenter26:43

About your next record.

Bill Cullen26:44

Uh

Presenter26:44

Yeah.

Bill Cullen26:44

Uh the next one.

Bill Cullen26:46

Well this one this one is definitely theirs. This is uh Beth Middler singing The Wi The Wind Beneath My Wings and that's specially for them.

Presenter26:46

Well this one. Uh

Speaker 226:52

Might have appeared to go unnoticed.

Speaker 227:00

But I've got it all here in my mind.

Speaker 227:08

I want you to know I know the truth

Speaker 227:12

Of course I know you.

Speaker 227:16

I would be nothing without you.

Presenter27:23

Bet Middler and Wind Beneath My Wings. Inspiring stuff, Bill. These days you inspire school children with your kind of positivism. I have this image of you sort of landing on the school playing field in a helicopter.

Speaker 127:29

Uh

Bill Cullen27:29

Dude,

Bill Cullen27:33

That's exactly what I do, yeah.

Presenter27:34

Going over to the gymnasium full of hundreds of kids. What do you tell'em?

Bill Cullen27:37

Yeah.

Bill Cullen27:38

What do I talk to them about? I talk to them about not drinking, not smoking, not doing drugs. I talk about if you want to be successful, it's about hard work, it's about learning, it's about getting your exams, it's about going to college, despite the fact that I left at thirteen. That was uh not my choice. I talked them about a healthy mind and a healthy body, I talked them about sport, uh I give them some of the whole basics of

Bill Cullen27:58

And this is an interesting one with kids. Molly Darcy used to say to me, Sleeping is the nearest thing to dying you'll ever do, son, so don't do too much of it.

Presenter28:06

And you give him a sticker.

Bill Cullen28:07

I give them a sticker, and the sticker has I have one on them outside the sticker has a big smiling face on it, like the Gillette smile, right? And underneath it it says three little words, I am terrific.

Presenter28:18

Well that's great. So that's the motivation.

Bill Cullen28:20

I motivates them.

Presenter28:21

That's how it all works in the hurly-burly of real life. I mean, you're obviously a very gregarious figure. How on earth are you going to cope on a desert island with no one.

Bill Cullen28:24

Yeah.

Speaker 228:25

Yeah.

Presenter28:30

No to come up against other than yourself.

Bill Cullen28:32

Maybe I'll take time to s sit back and relax. I'm gonna read, I'm gonna reflect. I would love to have be able to take something like a machete with me and build it a boat and get out of there.

Presenter28:41

Oh, well, you can't do that. But I mean, what you describe sounds like a holiday. I mean, that's going to suit you, what, for 10 days? Yeah, no, no, no.

Bill Cullen28:42

But I mean what you're just

Bill Cullen28:46

Yeah and then I'm editor.

Presenter28:47

Yeah, exactly. Look at this escape PDQ. Correct. How are you going to do that?

Bill Cullen28:48

Exactly. You're going to escape P D Q. Correct. How are you going to do that? Well, as I've said, if if I have to escape there, I'll escape it mentally. But as I say, there's going to be ways of getting a boat and getting out of there. I'm not going to last on the Desert Islands. I'm just not there for it. It's not me.

Presenter29:03

Tell me about your last record.

Bill Cullen29:05

My master record, my first real holiday was I got a fortnight off myself with a couple of my friends and we went hitchhiking round Ireland. And at that time, the minute you stood out in the road and waved your tongue, a car stopped. Everyone stopped and gave you a lift forty years ago. And we went around Ireland and we saw how beautiful Ireland was. We had this song that brings all that back to us, and it's Johnny Cash singing the Forty Shades of Green. But what I want to tell you is.

Bill Cullen29:29

Johnny Cash wrote that himself as well as singing it. And he wrote that because his cousins are the Caches of Tullamore in the centre of the Midlands of Ireland, where he used to come many, many years eleven years I think he came every summer and they are travelling people, horse sellers, and he used to take a Romani caravan and his horse and go round Ireland and that's how he was able to write so well the Forty Shades of Green which tells how beautiful Ireland is and why I love it.

Speaker 229:54

From the fishing boats at Dingle To the shores of Dunedine I miss the River Shannon And the folks at Skibbereen The moorlands and the meadows With their forty shades of green

Speaker 230:21

But most of all

Presenter30:23

Johnny Cash and Forty Shades of Green. Now, Bill, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Bill Cullen30:31

I think I take.

Bill Cullen30:33

The happy one, which is New York, New York. There's a bit of bounce in it. I go to New York a lot and I always love going. I think it's terrific, it's like a second home.

Presenter30:41

So, a good positive record you take with you. What about a good positive book? We give you the Bible, we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Bill Cullen30:43

What about a good

Bill Cullen30:48

The book is a book by a Kerry man, and Jackie's from Carey, and we have our home in Carey, as I told you. A Kerry man called Brendan Canelli. He's now Professor of Modern Literature in Trinity College, and he's written many, many, many books. He's a wonderful poet, he's a wonderful man. And one of his books that we love is Glimpses. And the reason I bring it to a Desert Island is it's not stories, they're little six and eight line poems. And it's called Glimpses because every one of them gives an insight into the Irish psyche. And knowing Ireland as well as I do, I can see all the different people he's talking about. Give me a quick glimpse.

Speaker 231:21

Give me a quick

Presenter31:22

Glimpson

Bill Cullen31:22

Here's a two liner, and it says and this is one of the great things we always say. Molly Darcy said quit sleeping. You heard what she said. Here's what he says. He spent his time killing time until time killed him.

Bill Cullen31:38

And does that say it all?

Presenter31:40

And what about your luxury then?

Bill Cullen31:40

What about the market?

Bill Cullen31:42

My luxury. Um well, I've always wanted to play a new musical instrument, I never got the time to do it. My Uncle Bob, he played the accordion, and I used to love that he was able to play the accordion, sing and dance at the one time, like a one man band. So I want to bring an accordion, and I'll take the time over there to learn it, and hope to play it as well as Uncle Bob did.

Presenter32:01

Bill Cullen, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island iscs.

Bill Cullen32:04

Thanks very much.

Speaker 132:12

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.