From humble beginnings in No 44 Seville Place, playwright and theatre director Peter Sheridan has finally reached the top of the world - the Gresham Hotel to be exact. The launch party for 44: A Dublin Memoir, Sheridan's recollections of life in 1960s Dublin, gathered the greats of Irish theatre, writing and filmmaking in the plush premises on O'Connell Street on Monday night.
The extended family came en masse to the launch, headed by Sheridan's mother, Anna, his wife, Sheila, and three of his four children, Fiachra, Doireann and Nuala. The author's brother, filmmaker Jim Sheridan, was given the task of recording this family get-together on a hand-held camcorder - I hope he realises he may be facing his toughest critics when the video gets its first home screening.
Actress Pauline McLynn was there with her husband Richard Cook, director of the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival. McLynn has just signed a £100,000 deal for two crime capers, the first of which is due out next year. "The more I talk about my book, the less I get done, so I have to stop talking about it," she confided. Meanwhile, McLynn will be wrapping her comic talents around a new ITV sitcom, The Dark Ages, written by the team which created the successful sci-fi comedy series, Red Dwarf.
Commenting on the current vogue for Irish authors, following the worldwide popularity of Angela's Ashes, Peter Sheridan remarked: "I've certainly benefited from Frank McCourt's success, but I didn't write 44 for the American market - I wrote it for myself. When I finished the book, I had no agent, no publisher, and no advance. It was very liberating - when I sent the manuscript to four publishers and got back an offer of just £1,500, I was walking on air. Of course, I got a much better deal in the end." Roddy Doyle gave Sheridan's book the thumbs-up: "I liked passage about The Beatles's Sgt. Pep- per. It made me want to go out and buy the album and listen to it again."
Also queueing up to get their copies signed by Sheridan were musician Gavin Friday, actress Rosaleen Linehan - who is soon to appear in All About Adam, a new film by Gerry Stembridge - and her husband, novelist Fergus Linehan; and film producer Ed Guiney.
