Finn PurdyThe State of Us podcast
John Linehan is best known for his character May McFettridge, a Belfast housewife with a sharp tongue
Across 34 years of playing the pantomime dame at Belfast’s Grand Opera House, John Linehan, aka May McFettridge, has performed to hundreds of thousands of theatre-goers, and poked fun at a sizeable proportion of them.
But it was a chance encounter with one fan of his work that he said has made it all worthwhile.
“She came up to me and says… ‘I was going to do something very very silly and I’d made my mind up to do it’ and she says ‘I heard you on the radio and you were great craic and there was laughing, but you said something at the end it stopped me taking my own life’.”
John can not remember what it was he said on the radio that day, but he will not forget the impact that it had.
Pacemaker
In 2002 with Eamonn Holmes and Carol Smillie on BBC Northern Ireland’s Making a Difference programme
Speaking in an interview on The State of Us podcast, he wondered: “Maybe that girl went on to have a family and led a good life and helped other people.”
Asked whether he is aware of amount of joy he brings to so many, John said he is “probably not”.
He added that he still thinks of himself as “John Linehan, motor mechanic”, who “just did this for a laugh”.
“I started McFettridge because people thought I was just naturally funny, you know, and even if you were saying something serious they would laugh,” John said.
“It’s not hard work, you’re just being yourself and it’s just as simple as that, I just love doing it.”
John Linehan has appeared in 34 pantomimes at the Grand Opera House as May McFettridge
The character of May started life as a caller to a radio show hosted by Eamonn Holmes in 1987.
“Downtown radio asked [Eamonn] if he would do a couple of weeks as a guest presenter and he was just looking people to ring in and he asked me,” John recalls.
He remembers how on his first appearance May did not yet have a second name so when Eamonn asked for one he played for time while flicking through a newspaper.
He said he across the name of Olcan McFetridge, an Antrim hurler, “and that was her started”.
Now, nearly forty years on and at the age of 72, John said he has no intention of quitting any time soon.
“If the punters want me and the part is there for me and I’m fit enough to take it.
“A couple of years ago I had a very bad back and I just got me second knee done so I’ve two titanium knees.
“But then somebody said you couldn’t be from north Belfast and not have your knees done.”
Navigating the Northern Ireland divide
John says that when he started to get gigs as May McFettridge he always made sure to play to both sides of Northern Ireland’s divided society.
He said he would “love to think” that May played a small part in Northern Ireland’s peace process, and tells the podcast the story of doing a spot at the funeral of a friend who admitted involvement in the loyalist organisation which planted a bomb that John and his wife narrowly survived.
John and his wife Brenda were upstairs in a bar in Belfast in 1973 when directly below them the bomb went off.
“It was like a big slap in the face and I heard Brenda screaming, I put my hand down to the right hand side, she must have been on the floor I thought, I just pulled her back up and I walked forward but there was no floor there.
“We were the first two near enough to be taken out of the rubble.”
But John said he “never blamed anybody” and never wanted to “get my own back”.
Drag Queens
John said that despite regularly donning a dress and wig he “by no stretch of the imagination” relates to the world of contemporary drag.
John said that May shares more in common with the likes of Dame Edna, the character created and portrayed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries.
“He was great and that type of humour is mine because he was wicked.
“He wasn’t afraid to tell whoever he was sitting beside and maybe 16 million watching: ‘The years haven’t been good to you love, have they?”