A Voyage Around Gabriel Byrne - Part IV

The Toronto International Film Festival 2007, September 6-15th. Gabriel is there to help promote Autumn Hearts. And this is where we really get to see the least pleasant - at least for a man like him - aspects of his job.



Gabriel is on an overstuffed couch, being interviewed by a nice, if rather nervous, young woman. It's "Entertainment Tonight", I think.

"How are you feeling about everything? How is it to be a Tiffer? Do you enjoy coming to festivals?"

A beat. Gabriel takes a moment to decide whether or not he has heard her right. It's another one of those "Dwarf Hitter" moments. Finally he says, "A what?" She explains what "Tiff" is shorthand for. My heart goes out to Gabriel. We leave him trying to figure out which of the three questions to tackle first.

Cut to shadowy footage on a playback monitor of him giving another interview. He's rubbing his forehead repeatedly, looking uncomfortable. Then cut again - this sequence makes it seem like he is just spending the entire day being shunted from pillar to post (sorry for the mixed metaphors), from one interview to another. In this one he is in a hotel room. The woman who is interviewing him sort of sniggers, and then puts her tape recorder on Gabriel's knee without, it appears, asking him.



To a European, that appears like a terrible invasion of personal space, though of course things may well be very different in the United States or Canada. We subsequently see the same woman, at the end of her interview with Gabriel, utterly convulsed with laughter. She is positively guffawing. Gabriel's expression is odd - perhaps he is pretending to look confused and potentially offended - "What? What? Whaddid I say?" at the woman's mirth - he's certainly not joining in. He looks quite taken aback. What you could call a classic "What the f***?" moment.

"I hate things like red carpets, and things like that," says Gabriel somberly, over footage of Max Von Sydow and his wife arriving for the premiere of Autumn Hearts. "It makes me very uncomfortable. The day of those things I normally wake up with this feeling of, Oh God, no ... But I have to do this thing tonight."



We see Gabriel leaving his hotel and being ushered into a limousine. He's checking last-minute details, and fiddling very noticeably with his collar. Then we see him getting out of the car, at the same red carpet as Max Von Sydow. The very moment he steps out of the car, what seems like a hundred different voices are cheering and, above all, calling his name. Or, worse, they're calling "GABE! GABE!"



Like the tape recorder on the knee, or the unexplained hilarity from the interviewer, it all seems so rude to me. Perhaps I have lived in Europe for too long. I guess Gabriel Byrne is probably used to all this now. Indeed, you see him doing his thing - posing for pictures, shaking hands, writing his autograph, smiling, nodding, being very pleasant. People's adoring and grateful expressions remind me of why he does this. And in point of fact I get the impression that it is not the meeting regular people which he dislikes - it is the fake interviewing process.

"It's really stage-managed," he says. It's probably the nearest he gets to sounding overtly cynical in the entire film. "All the way down. You'll sometimes notice celebrities hanging behind, while one celebrity finishes an interview. The publicist has said, 'OK - Hold back! Hold back! ... ... ... OK - GO!' " Gabriel pats his knee for emphasis. It sounds almost like he's being sent over the top of the trenches in World War One. He mimes a microphone being thrust unceremoniously into his face. It's like a bayonet thrust. " 'So how do YOU feel about being here tonight?' "



We see Gabriel being interviewed in this manner. The woman asks him, "What is your greatest fear?"

Gabriel looks thoroughly nonplussed. He's such a very honest, congruent man, that even now he evidently finds it difficult to answer a direct question with some brief falsification that he has cooked up for the purpose. The whole shebang is so false, so contrived and, frankly, such a waste of time that could be better spent watching a film, reading a book or chatting to someone interesting about something real. Or having a prostate examination.

A woman with a microphone says to him, "Can you say something in Russian?"

Gabriel carries on mimicking some of the inane and pointless questions that have been fired at him over the years. "'If you've got three wishes, what would you wish for?' And of course, as soon as you start to answer them seriously, they're getting word in their ear saying, 'Move him on, move him on. Too serious. Not getting funny enough. Move him on."

Ah now, there's the key. They all think he's too serious. Too slow. But Irish humour is not about brevity. It's about contrast, and you have to set the scene first. If Gabriel Byrne were to tell you a joke, it would last a good ten minutes, and you would NEVER forget it. But what he is being asked to do on these occasions is simply not what he's good at.



"Because as soon as you walk through the door, there's somebody bigger and more famous behind you."

I suddenly think I know why Gabriel agreed to make this film. It was an opportunity for him to finally speak truthfully and at length about himself and about what makes him tick. To an audience who genuinely cares. It is his reward to himself, back-payment for a hundred and one red carpet rat-run nightmares that he has had to endure since Miller's Crossing came out.

"That happens to everybody eventually. There will always be somebody bigger and more famous and more crowd-worthy." We see Susan Sarandon, Gabriel's old friend, arriving. "I remember once having the misfortune to be stuck behind Robin Williams," he says.



Gabriel moves his lips as if trying valiantly to withhold something facetious and inhales deeply through his nose. His eyes are laughing, if you can imagine that. I myself have no problem imagining why a man like Robin Williams would irritate a man like Gabriel Byrne. Like Gabriel, Robin Williams is a highly intelligent man, but he seems to cover that up with a display verging on the insane so often. Gabriel, poor bastard, can't do that. "I was between John Travolta and Robin Williams. So, Robin Williams wouldn't shut up. He was cracking jokes and doing accents and what and they were saying to me, 'Hold back ... hold back ...' and then John Travolta would appear behind me so a big cheer would go up for John Travolta. And you can see it in their eyes, you know. They're going, 'Oh my GOD, there's John Travolta! Whaddami asking THIS guy about his three wishes for?! Get him outta here!', you know. Because I made the mistake in the beginning .. they'd say 'What's the most frightening thing that's ever happened to you?' For example. And I say, 'Well - actually ...' and I'd start telling them some story about when I was in Kildare coming home with my father and seeing this red-haired woman up the road and by the time you'd be half way through it they'd be saying 'GET. HIM. OUT!' You could almost see that in their faces.



I'm right, you know. It is rudeness. It's disrespectful and it's rude, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

Gabriel talks about fame.

"To me it's like living in a village. If you live in a village, a small little village, then everybody knows you. And everybody knows everything about you. Fame is a small village. Or being well-known, I should say. I don't even know what 'Fame' is. I mean, is fame like the Beatles or General de Gaulle or something? It's a small village. And all the comforts that a small village provides are also the things that you need to flee every so often. Familiarity and acknowledgement and a feeling of belonging, to a certain extent. A feeling that people know your private life, even though - ostensibly - they leave you alone. But they do know the facts of your life. That happens in any village."



We see Gabriel and Susan Sarandon together, posing for photographers and film cameras. Gabriel has his arm around Sarandon's shoulders in a gesture that I can only describe as protective and indeed from the vantage point of the documentary film maker's camera, you can see his fingers squeezing and releasing her arm over and over again in a comforting sort of way. Who is being comforted? Perhaps she hates red carpets as well. He says something to her that makes them both smile and laugh. Thank god for old friends, eh?



"It's a kind of a strange dance that's played between the person who is recognised, and the person who recognises. It's a very peculiar place to be in. I remember going to see my mother in hospital one day. And my mother never had any problem about drawing attention. To me. She'd say, 'Come in girls!' she'd say to the nurses. 'Come in and say hello to him sure, he won't bite the head off ya!' And I'd say, 'Look, they're going about their business.' And she's say, 'Who's paying any attention to ye anyway?' So I said, 'I'd .. I'd prefer it if they didn't ..' and she'd say, 'C'mon in, girls, c'mon in -' and so they'd come in, and we'd say hello and all the rest."



Gabriel sighs deeply, resigned. Somehow he has managed to completely miss the fact that his mother was probably trying to set him up with a nice young Irish lass. Yes, he has totally missed that point. I giggle. "I always felt, at times like that, really really uncomfortable with the notion of what people expected of me, and who I actually am."

Abruptly, we are back in the past. It is the Sex Symbol Breakfast scene between him and Ellen. Ellen is still convulsed with laughter but has now joined her husband on the bed. He has finally emerged from behind his newspaper.

"You pretend to be me," he says through his laughing. "And I'll be you."

Without any preamble or warning of any kind Ellen Barkin launches wholeheartedly into an impression of Gabriel that I can hardly watch because it makes me laugh and I can't do that at the moment because I have the flu. I have a little coughing fit in the bathroom and come back. God, it hurts to be a Gabriel Byrne fan sometimes.



"For fook's sake! Jaysus! For Jaysus' FOOKING SAKES! You call this a fooking breakfast for fucking Jaysus' sakes. JAAAAAAAAYSUS."

Gabriel is also rendered helpless with giggles. He finally manages to hush his wife up a bit. And now it's his turn. Ellen says, being Gabriel, snapping her fingers, "C'mon Ellen, let's get ready. C'mon."

Gabriel, in his best New Joisey Accent: "Whaddami, Speeeedy Gonzales?" He gives a petulant little flick of his head. Ellen tries not to fall off the bed. She says, "What time is it, Ellen?"

"Whaddami, I clock?"



Gabriel's voice-over.

"It's a very painful thing to look at that footage."

The sudden contrast between the hilarity of his goofing around with Ellen, and the sombre note he has now, makes the laugh die in my throat. I am caught entirely off guard. I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. It's like I said before: I don't get this part of his life. Maybe he doesn't, either. "To see the obvious attraction that there was. Between us. And ..."




There's a pause. His voice. I don't know how to describe it. Wistful. Terribly sad. "We drifted apart."

Cut to the here and now. Gabriel's face is contorted for a moment. He is a man looking at something painful. "I can't, I can't really think of any blame .."

Another deep breath, another slightly defiant tilt of his chin. His voice is uncertain, halting. "Though I'm sure that .. I have .. obviously, I have my faults, and I don't know that I'm a terribly easy person to live with - "

(This is in direct contrast to what Ellen Barkin said about him sixteen years ago in GQ Magazine, where she said that he was "Like, the world's least difficult person." But that was then.)

"In the beginning of a relationship, communication - the desire to know the other person and the desire to allow yourself to be known is part of the excitement of the beginning to a relationship. But I think that in the end we lost touch with each other."



There's some footage of Gabriel and Ellen in the back of a car. She is snuggled up to him, giving him a little kiss on the cheek, laughing at him as he tells a tall-looking tale. She looks to the camera suddenly as he, oblivious, carries on with his epic tale. She mouths silently, "I love him!"

"And although we parted amicably and remain - " a pause while he selects the right word. "Friends, the really difficult part is the aftermath."

Footage of Romy and Jack playing in the back yard of a house. "Because we had two children together."

Gabriel is making the film. But Jack comes up to him and says, "Dad, I wanna direct!"

"Who do you want to direct?

"You! And Romy."

"And what do you want to make us do?"

"I don't know!"

Gabriel again. "It took me longer to get used to the idea of being a father. What it meant to be a father. What my role as a father was."

I'm nodding at the screen again. Hey, Gabriel - women can feel that way too, you know.

"I think there's a bit about it - uh, you can cut this out if you want - "

The camera pulls back unexpectedly, adjusts its focus. Gabriel slips his reading glasses back on and turns to another part of his book. You can tell he's very proud of having written that book. "It's just another bit about when he was born - "



Gabriel reads. "The sounds of a hospital at night. Only I am awake. Her arm hangs over the side of the bed like a broken doll. Only the sound of their breathing. My wife, and child. Moonlight slides through the window. My finger in his tiny hand. This is a moment I will never forget. The two of them asleep and me awake here remembering a day with my father, in Kildare. Into the summer's morning we walk by Fairywood. A stream gurgles among the rushes at the roadside. My hand in his. He whistles. I know that song. Among trees, only the faintest whispering of winds."

Gabriel is editing his text as he speaks; I notice this later when I look this part of the book up. Changing words, shortening sentences. Will he never be satisfied, I wonder? Is he his own worst critic?



"We stand still for a moment. It seems as if all my life was a beautiful still morning in summer, at that moment. My wife stirs in her sleep. Now she wakes. 'What are you doing?' she asks. 'Just thinking.' 'About what?' 'Remembering,' I said. 'Pictures in my head.' She comes and stands before the cradle of our sleeping boy. 'OUR child,' she says. And we both stand there for a long time, taking in the wonder and the mystery and the beauty of this moment. And I think about my father, and me, and my son, and it all seems to make sense for a moment."



"Divorce and separation, and all the things that came with that ... made me question my link in the chain again. What does it mean to be A Good Father? Have you failed because you're separated or divorced? I don't believe that now, but there was a time when I did. I don't believe that any more. I believe that just because we are divorced or separated, doesn't mean that my love for them is any less."

Gabriel has a very determined look upon his face at this moment.



"They're teenagers now. You go through three stages of being a parent. You're cool, then you're a fool, and then if you're lucky enough, you get to be cool again." He laughs. "So, I'm kind of at the Fool stage at the moment. I said to my daughter one day, I said, 'You know, I was just thinking - how come you know EVERYTHING?' And she said, 'You know dad, I was just thinking the same thing about you. But I was thinking, how come you know nothing?' She's a typical teenager. My son's a typical eighteen year old teenager. My son is passionate about music and is a beautiful kid; shy, kind. My daughter is as smart as a whip and can take on anybody. I'm very close to both of them."



We see traffic at night. For once, the camera stays still, letting the word go by for a spell. I begin to hear faint strains of music. It sounds like music playing out of a radio or a cassette player in a car or something. Gradually I recognise it as being 'All In The Game', by Tommy Edwards.



I have this on my MP3 player, but find it hard to listen to now.

We are suddenly back in California, sitting shotgun with Gabriel driving his car towards the Beverly Hills Hotel. For the last seventy-five minutes we have been passengers in his life. He's been showing us the sights, pointing out who lives where. On the car goes. The screen fades to black, the credits roll. The music keeps playing.

I am wondering why it is I am so affected by this film, and perhaps a lot of it has to do with the ending. The film finishes up by showing us who Gabriel Byrne really is. It doesn't matter who he was - plumber, chef, teacher, encyclopedia salesman. It doesn't mean anything if he is married or divorced or orphaned or engaged or even living in a remote monastic community of Buddhist ascetics in the Tibetan Himalaya. It's irrelevant, who you think he is: Cowboy, Aristocrat, Baker, Priest, Journalist, Devil, Plumber, Tommy, Immigration Officer, Concentration Camp Survivor. He can wear a suit of armour, a grease-stained boiler suit, Armani overcoats, puttees or indeed he can wear nothing at all. It's all irrelevant. He can grow his hair, or cut it short, or shave it all off; he can sport sideburns or a handlebar moustache. Pay no heed if he rides a push-bike or a stallion, or is sat in the back of a limousine. None of these things tell us who Gabriel is.

Likewise, it doesn't matter what he now goes on to become, as he reaches the age of sixty. Poet, philosopher, actor, director, producer, writer, photographer, statesman, political activist, humanitarian and philanthropist. He could go on to be the first Irish man on Mars, and it wouldn't matter.

When all is said and done, the one thing about Gabriel Byrne that is most important, that defines him above all else, is that he is a father.



Fin.

A Voyage Around Gabriel Byrne Part III

Now we're on Broadway. The noise is incredible, the movement, the colour, the lights. Cars, people, neon. But Gabriel is in his little sanctuary. Long-sighted, he is bespectacled. Doing what he loves to do best. He's reading.



He's reading from a copy of "Moon for the Misbegotten." I don't think it is the edition that has his photograph on the front of it. The piece he reads is about how the character, James Tyrone, saw alcohol.



"James Tyrone is an immensely sympathetic character. Because he is fighting against his inner daemons. In this case, his love for alcohol and his love for the bottle." I notice Gabriel's gaze is cast down. He doesn't look at the camera or the director, as he has previously. "O'Neill is such an honest playwright that at the end of the play, I think one of the saddest and most truthful moments is when Josie realises that her love is not enough to stop James Tyrone from killing himself." The eye contact thing is getting to me. Look up, Gabriel. Look UP. He does. Sort of. "Although we all love to believe that love is almighty and cures all ills, and that it is the answer to all our problems, the truth about it is that love cannot save another person."



There's a long pause. The camera shifts its position slightly, pulls back from Gabriel, who is lost somewhere in his own reveries. Sunlight streams through the open window behind, but there is a blackness to this part of the movie that is nothing to do with environmental conditions, the seasons, the trees, the sunshine. Because depression pays no heed to those things.



"I believe that every character is the actor, and that every actor is the character. Which is why Hamlet is kind of like a perfect play. Because it is every man. No matter who plays Hamlet, IS Hamlet. James Tyrone isn't a character who depends on whether you can act well or not. The character depends upon how willing you are to explore what is, I think, at the crux of acting. It's not about being somebody else. It's about allowing other people to see who YOU are." Perhaps playing the role of James Tyrone was part autobiography, part confessional for Gabriel Byrne. "There's a scene in this play where the character of James Tyrone does a very long monologue and has to break down in tears at the end of it. I did that eight times a week for five months. And I found things within myself that each night would produce the effect of breaking down. They were events that were drawn from my own life, you know?"



He's walking again. It's night time, in New York, in the rain. I can feel my mind trying to escape, to protect itself, from what he is talking about. What I know he is about to talk about. "I don't think it's possible to enjoy every minute of your life. The notion that you have to be in this kind of euphoric state of contentment is misleading. It's kind of delusional to think that you can live like that. The real challenge of life is living with the grey days. You can somehow sometimes triumph over the bad days and the adversity of it and the good days are pretty easy to manage. It's the indifferent, in-between days that test your mettle. At least mine, anyway." Gabriel pulls up his collar and folds it around himself against the cold. He's coping. He has a strategy. He knows to look after himself.



"I was a periodic drinker. I could go off it for two three weeks at a time. But ... I could go to a hotel room, check into a hotel and just close the door and be there for, like, four or five days." He pauses to allow the significance of this to sink in. His head tilts in a manner that suggests he feels defensive. He must be used to people being judgmental, surely? Perhaps it is the pain of his own self-judgement that he is still feeling. "With the curtains closed. And the phone off the hook."



An extraordinary thing happens. The screen cuts to black for a second. This is not a fault in my copy of the film, I am certain. This was a deliberate decision by the film makers to illustrate that there was a small pause in the filming where nothing else could be added, or spliced in; nothing was there to be used as a filler. No more shots of nocturnal New York, or Gabriel mooching idly in pleasant parks and cafes. Because of the seriousness of the subject matter, nothing could be allowed to interrupt the way this part of the film was presented. So, if you had a few moments where Gabriel needed the camera switched off, then so be it. But Gabriel wouldn't hide that fact. So. The screen goes black. And when the camera comes on again, Gabriel looks ... No. I don't want to describe that look. "I can remember once in London ... drinking ... it sounds gross and reprehensible in recall but actually at the time you can logic away anything ... I was vomiting and drinking at the same time. So that alcohol was being regurgitated through my throat as I was forcing more alcohol down my throat." I still am unable to describe his expressions. He takes a breath to speak some more but stops. Swallows. The action cuts to him walking again. Going to a coffee shop. I allow myself a smile, because I know his fondness for coffee shops. The film makers are allowing me a reprieve. I suspect that making himself go out and be with other people like this is part of Gabriel's survival strategy. "And then one day I woke up .. quite a few years ago ... and I just thought, OK. I'm going to have to stop. And I checked into a hospital. And checking into that hospital was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Checking into a hospital and having to come downstairs, in front of so many strangers - talk about the irony of going into a room and NOT wanting to be the focus of attention - I was the focus of attention when I walked down the stairs and all those people looked up and said, 'Fuck is he doing here?' Or at least that's what I thought they were saying. I think the were saying that. That's the thing about being a well-known actor; when you think you're being paranoid, and people are talking about you, they probably are." He smiles broadly and laughs at himself, taking a well-earned hit from a take-out coffee cup. "Anyway. they were talking about me. And they were saying, 'What's he doing here?' "



"Came out the other end. Not cured. But I have never drank since. The thought of being back in that place again fills me with dread. I don't miss drinking now at all. I think it was the best thing that I ever did for myself. But it [drinking] did lead me to a place where, had I not pulled back, could have resulted in my pretty early death. And I'm not exaggerating about that." More coffee. I stop the film and go out, take the dogs for a long walk, make myself a cup of tea. I wonder for a moment about Gabriel's use of the word 'hospital'. Rather than, say, a celebrity 'clinic'. It almost sounds as if he chose a public place to take himself to at random; not, for example, seeking out a lavish private establishment like Betty Ford or The Priory.

Maybe Gabriel recognsied that the problem was not to do with his celebrity, but to do with something deeper within him. Some seed that had been sown much earlier in his life, when he was just a regular guy walking the streets of Dublin, wondering what the hell it was all about. So he chose to return to an eariler version of himself, and become that regular guy again until he was well enough to go back out into the rest of his life.

We see Gabriel at a reception or a party of some kind. He is in a conversation with some other men who I feel I should be able to recognise, but I can hardly look at them. I can only see Gabriel, and only hear what he is saying. He plays compulsively with his open collar, as if he were cold, or wondering what he had done with his tie. Or perhaps he is nervous. He says,

"There are times when I go to parties and I feel uncomfortable. There are times when I wish I could just take the edge off, and then I could kind of be .. who I am. Like the people who say, 'Oh yeah he's very relaxed!' Or whatever. It's very hard to be in those situations. But I'm in them all the time, constantly. One of the things I have learned is that it doesn't really matter what people think of you. And usually people are so busy thinking about themselves, they're not really thinking about you anyway."

I don't think that would be the case if I were at a social function attended by Gabriel Byrne, but there you go.



We see footage of Gabriel receiving an honorary degree at a University. It's probably either at Trinity College, Dublin, or the National University of Ireland in Galway. People are milling around him, talking to him. He listens patiently and smiles. He looks attentive, relaxed, confident and self-assured. Like most people who suffer with his type of depression, you wouldn't be able to guess it had nearly killed him once.

"And so - it's OK! Nobody knows if I am really tense in my head or not. Most people would never know that. They actually think that I am a very relaxed, gregarious, sociable person - which I am." We see Gabriel leaving a party. It looks like early morning - the restaurant hostess is standing outside bidding farewell to her guests, and appears to be wearing a tablecloth as a makeshift coat. Gabriel finally does up his collar. "But that doesn't mean I am not still afraid inside. Afraid of people's disapproval or whatever. Drink took that away."



Gabriel pauses to allow this to sink in. He's really a great storyteller, even in the middle of THIS. "I didn't care whether people approved of me," he says insouciantly, with that arrogant narrowing of his eyes. "I didn't care whether I had anything interesting to say or not because when you're fueled with alcohol, you think everything you're saying is interesting anyway!" He pauses again and I can see a tiny smile start to creep around the lower half of his face. "But there's nothing more boring than listening to someone who's fulla drink, thinking they're interesting .." He can't contain his ironic laugh any longer.





I love this guy to bits.

Cut to Gabriel - oh, you can guess now, can't you? He's either 'Out Walking' or 'Sitting in Coffee Shop.' It's the latter. He's nursing a large bright red mug of something. It looks exactly like what a big strong cup of tea would be served in, in cafes and restaurants all over Britain and Ireland.



"I still have to be very careful with depression," he says in voice-over. "Depression is a major part of ... you know. My Battle. Depression would lead me to drinks, to get out of the depression, which would cause an even bigger depression. I mean, it was just one vicious cycle. When you are crippled like that, you cannot give. You have nothing left to give to the people who are closest to you. Trying to pretend to give, is a painful place to be. Trying not to let other people know that all you really want to do is lie in a corner, curled up in a ball, and want nothing to do with anybody. And yet your kids are saying, 'Dad! Dad! Let's go play on the swing!', or your girlfriend is saying, 'Come on! We've got to go to this thing tonight!' In other words, life is happening all around you. Life. And .. you, you can't partake in it. That makes you feel ... that makes you feel very ashamed."



"It's a funny thing. It's like a storm; a storm that comes into your brain and it rages in there for days or for weeks and then you wake up one morning and suddenly - it's gone. There's that tremendous sense of relief. You cannot imagine why you felt like you felt for the last two or three days. Or a week. Whatever."



This part of the film affects me very personally. I find myself wondering when it was exactly that I explained to Gabriel - using those very words, no less - how it felt for me to suffer from depression.

"You're saying, my God .. now I feel kind of normal. But I feel really weird trying to rejoin the human race again."



As if to demonstrate this point, we see Gabriel joining in one of those cool open-air chess games that you see taking place in parks in New York. He sits there with a whole group of what in England we would call "likely-looking lads." Gabriel is in faded blue jeans and a big black overcoat. I reflect that he could turn up wearing a potato sack, wooden clogs and a sombrero, and still look fantastic.



His opponent is a real jack-the-lad. Sorry, my American/English translation service is broken. He has his hands on a pile of money on the chess-table between them. Gabriel says, "Are you sure you wanna risk this?"

There is only a tiny, tiny hint of humour in his voice. He's perhaps back in the character he played in "Shade." A grin seeps over my face and I lean closer to the screen.

"What," says the guy. "A fifty? You're right! Let's do a hundred!"

"No, no!" says Gabriel hurriedly. "I haven't got fifty." He fumbles in his wallet and laughter erupts as his poker face is thoroughly blown out of the water. Gabriel regains his composure and waves a wad of money around. "This is just academic, really," he says seriously. "Because I just want to show you how good I actually am."

"Oh, you are?"

Gabriel nods. "Because I'm an Irish Chess Master."

"Are you really?"

"Yup." As if to underline the point, Gabriel puts his money down on the table.



"A'right c'mon, I'll bust you up," says his opponent gamely. "Are you ready?"

"Off you go, off you go!"

It's one of those timed chess games. The two men play furiously, moving pieces, stabbing at the clock. "Hit the clock! Hit the clock! Don't hit the clock - I got you anyway! Huh - at least he knows how to move the pieces!"

Gabriel concentrates. But his grin is getting wider, and wider, and wider -

"Check!" says his opponent.

"OK" says Gabriel, slowing down.

"'Cause you're mine! Oh - oh - NOW I'm gonna make it official!" Check Mate. Gabriel's opponent wipes the floor with him. Figuratively speaking.



"Did you take me in sixteen?" asks Gabriel seriously. The score is confirmed. Sixteen seconds to check mate. Gabriel puts his head in his hands in despair. But then he looks up and springs his carefully laid trap. "You know what - I have to say that, just because you beat me in sixteen seconds, I wouldn't take it as a major [triumph] ... because I have never played the game before!"



The Likely Lads erupt in laughter, falling off their benches and their tables. Gabriel joins in with them. It's beautiful. This scene is so perfect, because it lifts me out of wherever I had been threatening to go to in the scenes immediately before it. Gabriel Byrne, in a mere sixteen seconds, and at the cost of about five bucks, shows how you help yourself to defeat depression. He shakes the man's hand. "Take care of yourself, man," he says.

One of the Likely Lads buttonholes Gabriel. He is a gentle soul, eloquent, bespectacled, sincere. He says to Gabriel: "I think you, sir, are at your very best when you play roles that have the supernatural - an air of mystery and intrigue. When you play these roles you play them with a degree of temperance that is uncanny."




Unusually, Gabriel seems lost for words. He finally says quietly, "That's a high compliment. Thank you."

Gabriel leaves the Likely Lads resetting the chess board and eyeing up their next victim.