Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Now for the Culture Club today, we're joined by, well, this is becoming, I think, in something of an annual tradition, somebody who is involved in supporting the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation by doing a piece of artwork which can be purchased online. Peter O'Brien is this year's guest from the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation Incognito event. He is a fashion designer of some renown.
Peter, thank you very much for joining us.
My pleasure, absolutely.
Does this mean that you're a good artist as well?
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Chapter 2: Who is Peter O'Brien and what is the Incognito campaign?
That if you're somebody who designs high-end fashion, that you also have an eye for a good drawing or a good sketching?
Yeah, I think I was probably born with a pencil in my hand. I drew all the time. And, you know, when I was at O'Connell School's Christian Brothers, I spent all my time drawing ladies in dresses, which was very strange for a boy in a Catholic school. But I always drew. Did you get bullied for that? No, because you kind of develop strategies.
I was really good at English, so I used to write people's English essays for them. And I'm really ashamed to admit this. And all the women, if they are listening, will beat me up. I used to draw naked women with huge bosoms. So that made them very happy. So I was kind of a class mascot in a way. I was a strange boy. But yeah, that was my survival tactic. Yes, because I was weird.
And we used to have to play football on Wednesday afternoon in the Phoenix Park. And I hated it. I can't begin to tell you how much I hated it. And I complained so much that they actually allowed me. I was the only boy who did art in the inter, now junior cert. I used to draw kind of a withered banana and a shriveled apple every Wednesday afternoon in the school hall in O'Connells.
And I did art for my junior cert.
You can give us any clues as to what you might have done for the incognito event, because nobody's supposed to know who's the identity of what they're buying.
No, you're not, and I'll get beaten up if I say, but I think most people know what I draw. I tend not to draw guns and warriors and soldiers. They tend to be ladies in posh frocks, so there's a slight hint there.
At present, what sort of stuff are you doing?
Well, I haven't really done fashion for a while. I came back from Paris 20 years ago and then I got involved.
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Chapter 3: How did Peter O'Brien's early experiences shape his artistic journey?
I did a lot of theatre costume design. And then I stepped in for Eamon Eamon Aldonic, who was teaching out at IADT, teaching costume design. She said, you know, I'm working on a film. Would you do it for me for a month or so? And 12 years later, I'm still doing it. I'm still teaching. I love it. Why? What's that about teaching?
I think there's a wonderful sense of possibility that young people have. I think
like acting you can't phone it in they know if you're cheating them um and alan bennett says you know the history boys you have to pass the parcel and my field of knowledge is quite deep but it's quite narrow and i think it's kind of useful to kids going into costume design so if they pick it up and run with it it makes you you feel great you know it's great and they keep you on your toes
Well, I just want to let people know incognito.ie is the website that you can go to. You can purchase, well, you don't know who it is, an original postcard artwork, 75 euro, and it's a massive fundraiser each year for the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation. Have you ever done it for them before?
No, this is the first time I've done it, but it's a brilliant thing. It's really more like an auction, or it's more like a raffle than an auction, in fact, because if 25 people bid on the same drawing, you know, a name is metaphorically pulled out of a hat, so it's kind of a raffle. But we all did three. They send you, we all have the same material on which to work.
They send you three slightly large postcards, so you draw on those.
The late Paul Costello actually did it, and he came in for a culture club a few years ago talking about his involvement with it.
They've had all sorts of amazing people. Tracey Emin did it once, and I know Mick O'Dea has done it, and I know Bono has done it. Lots of people have done it.
Okay. Now, let's talk about your culture club choices. And we'll see now how strange a young fellow you were when it comes to things like the first single or first piece of music that you remember getting.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Peter O'Brien share about his artwork for the Incognito event?
I never think musicals really work in film, except for maybe Singing in the Rain. But I think the suspension of disbelief can happen in a theatre. I think it's harder to do it in cinema. I like the essential theatricality of people singing things that they haven't got the words to say. And I think, you know, I love the great American songbook and, you know, Kern and Gershwin and
Rogers and Hart and Cole Porter. And most of those songs, which would have, when theatre was kind of central to the culture, Those songs that were big hits, 99% of them were from shows, you know, from musical shows. So I just love musical theatre shows.
Okay, and this particular one's sometimes a little like music. Actually, we'll just play a little bit of one from that album. You can tell us a little bit more. This is, I think, quite a famous track, Send in the Gloves.
Yeah, my least favourite track in the whole show. Oh, really? Oh, sorry. That's all right.
I hate this song. You hate this song, but we still have to play it because that's the clip we have. You can tell us why you hate it. All right, I will. Isn't it bliss? Don't you approve? One who keeps tearing around One who can't move Where are the clowns? Send in the clowns Just when I've stopped
Opening doors Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours Making my entrance again with my usual flame Sure of my lies No one is there
Okay, I've heard better versions of that as well, I have to say. Well, that's the original, and Steve Sondheim would say his favourite. It's Glynis Johns, and she has a tiny voice, and she couldn't sustain a note, so he deliberately wrote a song where there's one note per syllable. And he wrote it in an evening, because they needed a song at that part of the show.
I don't like it because I suppose it's a kind of intellectual gatekeeping. It's the one Sondheim song that everyone knows, so I kind of can't bear it. Isn't that awful that I'm admitting that?
No, not at all.
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Chapter 5: What is Peter O'Brien's perspective on teaching and working with young designers?
OK, well, we have a little bit of musical because you love sometimes music and you want Sunday.
Yeah.
Sunday in the Park with George played at your funeral.
Yeah, I do. Absolutely. Yeah. Sunday is it's an amazing piece. It's about George Sura painting the painting Sunday on the island of the Grand Jatte. And it's basically, Sondheim wrote it, it's about artists and how they suffer for their art. And the first half of the opera is kind of a fictionalised version of George painting the painting with his mistress Dot, who's also the model.
And the second part is his great grandson, who's a conceptual artist in the 1980s when the show was written. But Sunday's wonderful because it's the very end of the show and they've managed to kind of the set director, the costume director, they've kind of reconstructed the painting. And it sounds really silly. I gave my students this year a project on it.
And when I started to talk about it, I started to weep. I mean, I get terribly, it's such a wonderful, beautiful thing. I love it.
Let's hear it someday. And it's Mandy Patinkin.
And Bernadette Peters, yeah.
Yeah, singing this. Let us pass Through the perfect Pausing on us some day By the blue triangular water On the soft green elliptical grass As we pass Through arrangements of shadows Towards the verticals of dreams
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Chapter 6: What are Peter O'Brien's favorite cultural influences in music and theatre?
You've given us an event at a piano bar in Paris.
Well, my friend, Patti LuPone, Klang goes the name, I've been friends with this woman who, she's not that famous, but she's famous on Broadway, and she had opened in Sunset Boulevard in London, and The New York Times reviewed it. She was taking it to Broadway. And Lloyd Webber, the critics said she was too young. So Lloyd Webber decided he would go for a more, you know, bums on seats name.
And he hired Glenn Close to do it. So Miss Lupone was not best pleased and developed laryngitis and came to Paris for the weekend. And we had a friend called Jurgen who had this bar, which is smaller than this studio on three floors. On this first basement, all these French boys would sing. Edith Piaf, Tragic Songs. And there was a 955-year-old piano player.
So they're all going, Miss Lupin, Miss Lupin. And Patti was the original Evita in Evita on Broadway. So that's kind of what made her famous. And so Patti sang Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, and 45 homosexuals died and went to musical theatre heaven. I mean, it was fabulous.
We don't have that from your Parisian piano bar. But just to give an example of how she sings, this is With One Look. Oh, from Sunset. Sunset Boulevard. OK. With one look, I can break your heart. With one look. I play every part. I can make your sad hearts sing. With one look, you'll know all you need to know. With one look, I touch everyone.
With one glance I eclipse the sun Take a look and you will see Why the world watches me No words can tell the stories my heart tells.
Okay, that's Patti LuPone. Yeah, singing a terrible... I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber music, but it's fine. As she's my pal, I'll forgive you. We're getting all the wrong choices for you. All of that kind of lush, syrupy...
I'm glad you're saying that. I was going to say that, but I didn't want to insult you.
I can't bear it. I can't bear it.
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Chapter 7: How does Peter O'Brien describe his favorite musical and its impact?
Although it would only occur to a complete and utter f***ing psychopath. You think he knows which one? Shit. Wait, where are they going? Abbotsfield. Abbotsfield? There's already been an attack at Abbotsfield. Of course they are commemorating at a multi-face centre, surely. You can't just say shit like that and then just sit there and do nothing. I'm not doing nothing. I'm sending my best agents.
And you. Jack Loudon, Sashka Reeves, Amy Fionn-Edwards and the last voice we heard there, Gary Oldman in Slow Horses.
It's so good, isn't it? It is. It's really great, I think.
What is it about it, though, that you love so much?
Um... I don't know. I think the writing's really good and it's really kind of adult. I think it got to be a bit action movie by the time the second series came around. It was a bit talkier, maybe, in the first series. But the actors are all, like, flawless. They're so good. I think Gary Oldman could... You know, the smelly socks and the toes sticking out and the farting.
It could be cut back about 5%, I think, because it's kind of, you know, a bit caricaturish. But it's wonderful. I love it.
You have as your buried treasure a wonderful movie and a performance in it. The movie is the original Manchurian Candidate. The remake was rubbish.
Terrible, yeah.
But the original one with Frank Sinatra, wasn't it?
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