‘“Mrs.Byrne, you’ve a beautiful, very pale, ginger-haired baby boy, with a wonky eye.” My mother wept for all the wrong reasons as she was handed me by the midwife. She could have slept with a platypus and still I would have come out better than this.’ So begins Jason Byrne’s Memoir. It was a time when your brother put dog poo in your cereal and told you it was Coco Pops, your house is blown up by lightening, you are responsible for the near-death of your best friend in a car accident and you fall asleep each Sunday night to the sound of one of the neighbours, who were all named Paddy, drunkenly singing Magic Moments in the good front room. In short, it was a time before health and safety regulations, when kids were kids and wild and free.
