How agreeable are you?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m mostly agreeable. I try to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic, and I\u2019m generally more interested in finding the best outcome than getting my way or winning an argument.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your middle name and what do you think of it?<\/p>\n
My middle name, James, was almost my first name, but my cousin James got there a year before me, so my parents chose Dylan instead. When my mum told my dad\u2019s mother, she looked perplexed and said, \u201cBut there are no St Dylans?\u201d I\u2019m from a long line of James\u2019s \u2013 my dad, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather and my great-great-great-great-grandfather were all called James.<\/p>\n
Where is your favourite place in Ireland?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an old coaching inn a short drive from Dublin that I think would definitely be up there. It\u2019s perfectly imperfect, timeless, warm, understated and cared for. The floors are worn and slanty, the linen is immaculate, and in summer each dining table is adorned with a glass bottle holding sweet pea freshly cut from the garden. The garden itself is a perfect cottage garden and reminds me of the flowers my grandmother used to grow in her front garden in Eden Villas in Glasthule, Co Dublin. Among the flowers are an assortment of old cast-iron garden furniture, which is given a fresh lick of green paint every few years, making the original patterns hard to make out under the layers of paint. It\u2019s a place that has memories for me of people who are no longer with us. I can still see my stepbrother, Lorcan Brennan, walking around the garden finding out the names of plants. I can remember when my dad first took me there when I was a child, and old men smoked pipes and read newspapers in the front bar while I probably had a Cidona and he a Smithwick\u2019s shandy. More recently, it\u2019s where I married my wife, Bl\u00e1thnaid. We now return every year for our anniversary. You can feel that it holds similar memories for other people, not least because some of them in previous decades have scratched the names of their romances on the glass windows of the diningroom.<\/p>\n
Describe yourself in three words.<\/p>\n
Curious, fair-minded and nostalgic.<\/p>\n
When did you last get angry?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never dwelled in anger. The things that get me most riled up are usually injustice and lack of fairness, and I\u2019ve always found it serves me better to channel those emotions into agency and as fuel to the fire for action. That said, I only like action if it has a chance of actually making a difference. There have been times recently when I\u2019ve felt a bit of paralysis as to what meaningful action might be, rather than just action to make myself feel like I\u2019m doing something.<\/p>\n
What have you lost that you would like to have back?<\/p>\n
My dad. He died in 2006 when I was 19. I\u2019m 38 now, and last July I passed the mark where I\u2019ve lived longer without him than with him. There have been some key life milestones where I wonder what conversations we might have had. I have dreams very occasionally where he comes back, and in the dream, I feel a bit of guilt about him not fitting back into my life now. His passing shaped a lot of the course of my twenties, and while there was immense grief, in other ways it afforded me certain insight I wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise. So, I would have to trade all of that and roll the dice on how things might pan out.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your strongest childhood memory?<\/p>\n
Usually moments of everyday normality, which is maybe telling in its own way. One of my earliest memories is going for a Sunday drive through the Wicklow Mountains with my dad driving his Rover P6 and me asleep on the cushiony leather back seat, my head resting on my mum\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n
Where do you come in your family\u2019s birth order, and has this defined you?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not been my experience that it defined me. I\u2019m from a very blended family. I\u2019m the only child of my mum and dad. My little sister Aislinn came much later, with nine years between us, and I\u2019d moved out when she was 10, and I was 19.<\/p>\n
What do you expect to happen when you die?<\/p>\n
My thoughts are more in the realm of hope than certainty. In my lifetime, things have happened in the world that I would have never thought possible \u2013 scientifically, politically, technologically, culturally \u2013 so it would not surprise me if our existence and consciousness doesn\u2019t end when we die. I hope I\u2019ll get to see again all of the people I\u2019ve loved and lost.<\/p>\n
When were you happiest?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned that happiness doesn\u2019t come from pinnacle moments such as career achievements, winning awards, and so on. Those highs are all great and worth working for, but I really think the moments of true satisfaction are proper time hanging out with people I care most about. I\u2019m very fortunate to have some positive memories from the Covid years, like finally getting back to Ireland and having takeaway pints from Walsh\u2019s on my friends Matt and Esther\u2019s porch in Stoneybatter. Or our condensed Covid wedding in 2021. There were lots more people we\u2019d have liked to have had there, but there was something special about looking out at a gathering of 30 of our closest people and knowing they all love you and are rooting for you. I strive to create more of those moments.<\/p>\n
Which actor would play you in a biopic about your life?<\/p>\n
The Ireland and Leinster rugby player Cian Healy once tweeted that I looked like a guy from the US television show Glee. I wasn\u2019t really a Glee fan, so I can\u2019t comment on the resemblance or acting abilities, but whoever that actor is should be on the shortlist. On a very different tack, when I was nine, a casting agent came up to my mum and me in Stephen\u2019s Green Shopping Centre and said they were looking for a blonde child for a flashback scene in a new film called The Devil\u2019s Own, in which Brad Pitt, playing an IRA terrorist, has a flashback to his youth. She obviously needed a quota of blonde children and cast the net very, very wide. I remember going into the casting agent\u2019s office somewhere, but alas, there was no callback.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your biggest career\/personal regret?<\/p>\n
I do carry regrets, more so of things I didn\u2019t do than things I did. As a result, I try to anticipate what I might regret doing or not doing, and use that to guide my decisions. I\u2019m very conscious of the finite amount of time we have.<\/p>\n
Have you any psychological quirks?<\/p>\n
None officially diagnosed, but apparently, every waking hour and, I\u2019m informed, even in my sleep, I touch my head just behind my left ear. I\u2019ve no awareness of doing it, but it drives my wife mad. <\/p>\n