Paddy Mayne: brogue hero

A modern day Cú Chulainn

Come Sunday the 30th of October 2022, Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne* will become better known to the public with his appearance on SAS – Rogue Heroes on BBC1. Up until now, he has been a folk hero, a military legend, a warrior of mythical ability with a story that has been crying out for a stand-alone film about him. I doubt from the trailer that this series will do him justice, but perhaps it’ll serve as the catalyst for getting that film made.

Autumn 2022 started off with the risible Blackbird vanity project by Michael Flatley and has ended with the implosion of the Tory party in Britain. Two events we’d all sooner forget about no doubt! With impeccable timing, Paddy Mayne’s arrival on our screens heralds the appearance at last of a proper leader with some purpose after these narcissists, clowns and dilettantes.

Finale update – Steven Knight’s feet of clay

Antony Beevor was right in praising the rock and roll swagger of the full series, but as a vehicle for popularising Mayne’s legacy, it stank. By the end of it, he had morphed into a full-blown asshole that pissed comrades off with his every utterance. Jim McDonald was back with a beard and a bone to pick. Such a tedious caricature wouldn’t merit that film I forecast. Boy, was I wrong!

It didn’t have to be like this. Mayne was complex, but in this muck, he is the Incredible Hulk with some serious sand under his foreskin. Knight has done good work such as Locke, but as someone who didn’t rate Peaky Blinders and rolled his eyes through most of Taboo, I say Knight’s made a camel’s arse of portraying a folk hero – the man deserved a lot better than this hyrax dung.

Hero or villain?

His reputation very much depends on who you ask as to whether Paddy Mayne was indeed the ultimate warrior or a psychopath in the desert. My introduction to the man on a BBC4 documentary years ago had an over-zealous historian A N Wilson brand him as the latter, now compounded by Knight’s folly.

Yes, the archetypal bogeyman is rocking up on your screen just in time for Halloween! And for good measure, he was also a hell-raiser – he’d put Richard Harris to shame as both a rugby player and a party animal. I won’t be giving a list of Paddy Mayne’s best known rambunctious antics here – it’d take too long plus you’d really need to be sitting down by a roaring fire with some cool beers.

Debunking the myths

Mayne’s story as hero is better told by the source of the new series, Ben McIntyre in his engaging 2016 book SAS – Rogue Heroes which was also a BBC documentary series, which is well worth a watch over three hours. A great introduction to Mayne was done by Michael Murphy in The Irish Post.

However, the most accurate in a slew of books going back to 1960 is Paddy Mayne by Hamish Ross (2004). He debunks the myths and concerning Mayne’s character and exploits, preferring a more circumspect account based on tangible evidence and is endorsed by the Mayne family.

The last thing that should happen to Mayne is that he becomes the John Rambo of Blighty, star of the next Call of Duty game or his name is hijacked by Jingo Joes in search of lost heroes. Yes he was the soldier’s soldier and a leader that all who served below him were in awe of, but let’s not deify him just yet – he deserves a bit more analysis than that. Post-war, the man trod a fine line as Mary Kenny’s excellent article suggests.

Mayne was indeed a chandelier-swinging rock and roll badass make no mistake, but the more you read the more you sense just what a complex character he was. One beyond the mad bastard causing chaos on Lions tours or wiping out a canteen of German air pilots with a cheery ‘good evening’ salutation. There’s also the man most at ease with his head in a book of poetry or ancient philosophy or playing Percy French records.

Valour until Valhalla

To me, Paddy Mayne was a tortured giant and a lost soul, one who was bereft after the death of his best friend, Eoin McGonigal, who was killed on the very first SAS mission. Mayne spent days looking for his friend’s remains.

Death pervaded Mayne – be it in the many people he killed himself or in the dangerous missions that garnered him an unparalleled four DSOs. Perhaps he sailed closest to death near Meppen in Germany where he was cited for the Victoria Cross. As the Commander of 1st SAS Regiment, with one of his officers manning a machine-gun, he drove his jeep under heavy and sustained enemy fire to rescue some of his men who were wounded and trapped. Miraculously, he got them all out intact.

He’d a death wish of sorts once his Ferdia, McGonigal, was gone. He endeavoured to go out in a blaze of glory and certainly cocked a snook at death on a daily basis. Both a deserved V.C. and a fatal bullet eluded him despite all his daring escapades. Death was not the worst of outcomes as it would reunite him with his best friend and confidante; valour until Valhalla.

Going out roaring on the battlefield would have been a more fitting ending for such a modern day Cú Chulainn. He joins a somewhat exclusive club of better known (for now) cultural icons whose lives were cut short by road accidents – Albert Camus, Eddie Cochran, T.E. Lawrence and even Marc Bolan. For Mayne, the end came running his Riley Roadster into the back of a parked tractor before Christmas 1955. A trite and absurd ending for a living legend.

No country for old men

After the war, the man was in so much pain that he could not even sit to watch a rugby game and sleeping was nigh on impossible. After so many escapades evading death, his body was wrecked and his back in particular was in constant pain. Life as Secretary of the Northern Irish Law Society and a Masonic Lodge member was a far cry from the glory days of the war. He rarely spoke about those days, though no doubt he was asked to on a daily basis.

In a way, it’s fitting that he joined that exclusive club in 1955. For he too was a philosopher, a legend of the desert and yes, the precursor to a rock star in persona, just as that musical phenomenon was hitting this side of the Atlantic.

Shine on you crazy diamond

He never got that Victoria Cross of course – too hot to handle for his unorthodox modus operandi, his anti-Establishment persona and yes, his sexuality. It does not diminish his cachet to many though, in fact it increases it.

Resist ever going to see Blackbird, never vote Tory, but if you like what you’ve seen about Paddy Mayne here, read up and maybe even make a pilgrimage to Newtownards. Salute him on Mill Street where death finally caught up with him, to his resting place in Movilla Abbey and his statue in Conway Square. Oh yes, and find a good local hostelry to have a few beers in the man’s honour. A force of nature finally at rest after his very own Táin had been fought and won.

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Blair Mayne Blast - a Spotify playlist**

BLAH

Observing the Sons of Ulster on Sunday

Four weeks into the BBC series and they are lazily tagging Mayne as a snarling lunatic. This is one of several inaccuracies. Mayne in the series talks like a Belfast docker whereas he had a low-key soft Ulster accent. His departed friend was made to sound like an extra from The Commitments. He too had a much more refined accent and his name was pronounced ‘Ian’, not ‘Owen’.

Another Ulster colonel on a neighbouring Sunday slot has also been pigeonholed for TV. Dick Strawbridge’s super sharp analytical brain has been reduced to him being a docile project manager for his missus, Matt Lucas’s lost twin, Angel. Escape to the Chateau started off well, but has since become a toe curlingly twee house makeover show for the girlies. Opposite ends of the spectrum, but neither persona is doing Ulster’s finest fighters any favours!

Why Paddy?

*All Irish men in the British Army were referred to as ‘Paddy’, something Blair Mayne had no qualms with. I decided to stick with Paddy for the sake of consistency with all of the videos I’ve attached and for ease of reference for anyone looking for this article on a search engine.

A few tunes to salute the man

** If you are going to read up on Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, here’s 15 hours of songs and poems to accompany your discoveries. Like a true Irish wake, it’s also a party – as he’d have insisted on – complete with random Percy French numbers, poems and SAS favourites thrown in for good measure. Sláinte!

Dead Poets Society

Mayne adored poetry, both to read and to write. When in Co. Down, visit fellow poet Louis MacNeice’s grave in nearby Carrowdore, a truly stunning location.

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