Publisher's Synopsis
There have been many books about the Irish experience in England, but none about the children of Irish immigrants, especially those born in the 1960s and early 1970s, who fundamentally changed the general view of 'Poor Paddy' in British culture. Now, Aiden Baxter is desperate to change that, and together with his nemesis, Jimmy Sheehan, he leads us on a journey from the working class Catholic clubs of West London in the eighties to middle class respectability and buying your sausages from a butcher in the early noughties. How did the Curly Wurly Paddies, as Aiden likes to refer to the offspring of this Celtic diaspora, swap the donkey jacket for a dinner jacket in one generation? This is a story of that odyssey, with the odd fetish club and broken nose thrown in, to keep things nice and respectable.
