The Booker winner and dramatist on writing his much-loved novel while teaching at a secondary school in a Dublin suburb
I remember the moment when I came up with the name for the older trumpet player, Joey “The Lips” Fagan; it felt like a good night’s work. I remember smiling – grinning – as I looked down at the name on the copybook page. It was so silly, but real. “Fagan” came out of the Dublin area phonebook, and “The Lips” came out of my head.
I started The Commitments in January, 1986, during the Christmas holidays, a few days before I went back to work as a secondary school teacher. I finished it in July. I typed out the final sentence – “Deadly, said Derek” – on a portable typewriter I borrowed from my mother. I like to think that I typed that sentence at half-time during one of the World Cup matches being played in Mexico; I’ve made the claim before. It might be true; it probably is. But 34 years later, I no longer remember, or I never did.
