Nicola Tallent

an intriguing character, to say the least.

And there's a little bit of intrigue and mystery to his background, which we're going to go into.

Some of it is clear and other bits, the stories that go around the mix and you can never, like for example, you know, some people would say he was a heroin addict.

I know he did tell the courts at one point that he did, but he did it for a reason.

And the reason was he wanted a free education.

We'll come back to it because that is something that, you know, certainly some people close to him say that was never the case.

Yeah.

And those who are sort of, I suppose, become his enemies in more recent times would definitely say that like it's a... A stick to beat him.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But there's other little bits that are unusual.

We'll start and we'll go through as much as we know factually and then we'll also discuss the rumours.

So he's born in 1957.

He's six years older than Gerry the Monk Hutch, which just gives him a little bit of a...

You know, we can see where he is.

What I would always say was into the bosom of a respectable middle-class family.

Now, some intrigue comes with this.

His father, to my understanding, was a taxi driver who worked the Gresham rank on...

Stephens Green, and that would have been a good job.

Well, I suppose the first house that we can look upon that we know he was in as a child, and he was the only boy in a family of three girls, Denise, Maria and Sally Ann.