Mary Coughlan, onstage from the age of five - ‘Applause and lemonade!’

Mary Coughlan – aka “Ireland’s Billie Holiday”, adored by Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan and Elvis Costello - is on tour again in 2026. This warm, funny and circuitous conversation looks back from her home in Wicklow at the first shows she ever saw and played and various milestones along the road, among them …

… singing Two Little Orphans (aged 5) at a Christmas party: “The adrenaline rush! Applause and lemonade!”

… escaping down ladders from school to see Rory Gallagher in Galway and the nuns waiting when she returned

… seeing Donovan on the Aran Islands in 1969, a trip from the mainland by currach

… meeting Mike Stoller and re-recording Peggy Lee’s savaged Mirrors album: “more relevant now than ever”

… Elton John (dressed as a hornet) at Watford Stadium and the embroidered floral skirt she’d made to watch him

… her love of cabaret and old 78s and the songs she and Erik Visser chose to launch her career

… her transformative slot on the Late Late Show in 1984: “I played to four people the night before; a week later they were queuing round the block”

… Frank Sinatra’s mysterious autocue and sitting next to Roger Moore in his audience (“very orange”)

… “I adored St Dominic’s Preview and 15 years later Van Morrison was in my dressing-room”

… her cure for insomnia

… why Joe Strummer meant so much to her

… and her 200-song live repertoire – from Meet Me Where They Play The Blues and Don’t Smoke In Bed to Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Order Mary Coughlan tickets here: https://www.marycoughlan.ie/upcoming-shows

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