Daniel Figgis interview ,copyright Victoria Mary Clarke,2004
Daniel Figgis is a performer who is all the P words.  Precocious, provocative, promiscuous, paradoxical.    Whether or not he’s a prima donna remains to be seen. Every inch a pop persona, he’s tiny, with giant Karl Lagerfeld shades, and Warholesque, bleached blond hair.  I recognise him, because of the shades, which are, as he has promised, very Jackie O
But who is Daniel Figgis?  And why am I here?  The man himself has assured me that there’s no need for me to read anything about him, or do any research as he will be telling me everything.  It will be an experimental interview. Very Andy Warhol.
Daniel is a pop person (in his own words).  A composer of what you might call experimental music.  But you wouldn’t call it that if you didn’t want to get into trouble.
‘I am a composer,’ Danny tells me.  ‘But I object to the word experimental.  It implies that my work is not fully realised, and  I wouldn’t dare to inflict my experiments on the public!’
He’s also an artist.
‘Although I trained as a philosopher,’ he points out.
‘You can train as a philosopher?’ I ask, momentarily baffled.
‘Yes, I studied philosophy at Trinity.  And History of Art.  The classical middle class boy’s route into pop music!  And there I lost my religion.  The best way to lose religion is to study philosophy.’
Believing in nothing, as a result of his education, the young Danny was fascinated by people like Warhol.  I had noticed a similarity, I say, as we sit down at an Indian restaurant, where he is buying.  It is only five in the afternoon, much too early to eat, but he has been starving himself all day and he wants to buy me dinner, so I have obliged.  I suspect that this is a man who usually gets his way.
‘Somebody screamed abuse at me the other day,’ he says.  ‘I was out with my wife, having a Guardian afternoon…’
‘A what?’
‘We’re the Guardian/Observer crew,’ he explains.  ‘I don’t read the Irish media.’
The wife is someone that he mentions repeatedly throughout our time together.  Perhaps just to remind me that he is taken, perhaps not.  They have an open relationship.  Old fashioned as I am, I say I couldn’t imagine not being jealous, in a situation like that. 
‘That’s not a problem at all,’ he insists.  ‘Although it has been with other people, who didn’t understand where I’m coming from.’
The wife (Deirdre Behan, also an artist) is a computer whiz and he is not.  She tells him he’s a bloody eejit, he says.  And the wife is a very good cook.  His latest work, which will be performed at Marlay Park, features a video of her cooking breakfast for him and his now deceased best friend, Timothy Keane.  It is, he tells me, an enormously poignant piece of film.  He and his wife only got married a year ago, but for eight years they saw each other twice a week on Wednesdays and on Saturdays, an arrangement which worked very well.  She is a wonderful person, he says.  I must meet her.  I must, I agree.  But I suggest that we get back to the story of his life, for now. 
He had a happy childhood.  And was a child actor.
‘I had a driver from the age of five.  I worked with Jenny Agutter and Anthony Andrews, Michael Mac Liammoir, Tyrone Guthrie, Donal Mc Cann, Cyril Cusack…’
I am impressed.  Not everyone gets to be a child star, I say.  But he is dismissive.
‘What happened was that I went to an acting class, because my parents thought it would be good.  And somebody decided to put me on TV.’
His great grandfather, it turns out, was one of the founders of the Gate theatre, Arthur Murnahan.  And he is related to Suzy Figgis, the casting agent.  But acting wasn’t a passion.
‘I was charming and pretty,’ he says.  ‘But I don’t know if I could act.  I was precocious.  And acting means you can never be a team player. Acting is always about your close up and how well you come out of a scene.’
  He was always going to be a pop person.
‘Funnily enough I was just telling someone about my favourite Irish band of all time…’
‘No!  Stop!’ I say.  ‘Let me guess who it is.  It’s not U2?’
‘No.  I like them as people, but it’s not them.
          ‘Is it The Thrills?”
          ‘Interesting you should say that,’ he says.  ‘Because The Thrills are my unfavourite Irish band of all time.  No, no,no.  Westlife are my favourite Irish band of all time.  And I’m not being facetious.  I f***ing love them.’
          While at Trinity, Danny feel in love for the first time.
          ‘She turned out to be psychotically, homicidally dangerous,’ he says, cheerily.  ‘She tried to kill me many times.’
          ‘Why?’
          ‘I haven’t a f***ing clue!’
          ‘Were you sleeping with her best friend?’
          ‘Not until later.  And it wasn’t really her best friend, although that gave rise to her stabbing me the second time.  But she stabbed me the first time because she thought I had lost fifty pee.  And then she tried to decapitate me with a car registration plate.  She stabbed me again after I had f***ed a woman and then asked me ‘Are her breasts bigger than mine?’  To which I had answered ‘Yes, much!” And we were off!  Stabbed again.’
          He doesn’t know why he stayed in the relationship for the two years. 
‘Does anyone ever know why they do these things?’ he says.
          ‘I put it down to Catholic education.   If a woman put out, you were in love and I was in love with her, immediately.’
          Daniel wasn’t only attacked by his girlfriend.  He was hospitalised twelve times, after having been what he calls ‘queer-bashed.’ He had formed a band called ‘Princess Tiny Meat’, a band which were, he says, more interested in gender politics than in making music.  But wearing dresses was a great way to get laid (he says he never had so many women as when he was dressed as a woman.)
          The eighties were a wild time, with a successful album on ‘Rough Trade’, and opportunities to experiment with every kind of drug, including heroin, without getting addicted to anything.
          ‘I’m too neurotic’ he says.  ‘Besides, I’m not an addictive personality.’
          There followed a ten year hiatus.  And now he’s back, with a follow-up album, (which will, he says, be brilliant) and a show in Marlay Park.  ‘A high-tech haunting, in a spectacular environment, encompassing live music with surround sound, and integrated video projection and lighting’.  The show is violent, he says, and therefore is over eighteens only. 
After our dinner, I met a friend who knows Daniel and who gave me ‘Skipper’, his CD.  I listened with trepidation.  Sometimes these experimental things can be truly appalling.  I have to say that I was shocked and delighted with what I heard.  Unfortunately it’s a challenge to describe it adequately.  Beautiful seems a tame word.  There are shades of Sean O Riada in there and shades of Alice Coltrane.  I can only say it’s well worth checking out, you’ll be sorry if you don’t.  And no, it doesn’t sound like Westlife.
‘Tamper’ by Daniel Figgis is at Marlay Park September 24 and 25.  Tickets from 1850 374 643 or www.fringefest.com