John Burns

speaker

307 appearances 11 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 6 Aug

John Burns’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 9.

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The Indo Daily · 'Baddie of the Bailout': How 'Fingers' Michael Fingleton built 'the world's worst bank' · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

People have described him as a bullion.

So I'm wondering, if I knew him, if you knew him at that time, and even if we ended up working for this guy, who would we have been working for in terms of his personality?

Yeah, he was great at the art of self...

promotion, I would say.

So he adopted a kind of a trademark look, always wore a pinstripe suit, wore a trilby style hat and had a very well manicured, expensively manicured, I would say, goatee beard.

And that was particularly his trademark.

And he used to warn off other people from having one like it, saying, you know, this is my thing.

Don't bother trying to copy it.

was a real networker in every aspect of Irish life.

So with the media, it's well known, he's very friendly with journalists, but he also carried favour with politicians.

He was one of these people who hung out in the Shelburne Bar, you know, as so many well-known figures from Irish showbiz, music and business did in the 1970s and 1980s holding court there.

So a real hail fellow, well met.

Yeah, it's interesting because I'm wondering, did he take himself seriously as well?

I mean, his nickname was Fingers, so that would imply some kind of levity.

But clearly there was money and clearly there was business deals and clearly he was able to get these things done.

Yes, I believe where the Fingers nickname came from was that he had a finger on every pie.

Ah.

Well, that's certainly one version of the story.

And what that meant was that although he was the head of Irish Nationwide Building Society, a relatively small institution, but nevertheless, he was very hands-on and he was involved in almost every aspect of its business.

So if you or I went in and got a mortgage...

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