Queueing for a Living - Paddy O'Gorman

Queueing for a Living - Paddy O’Gorman
1994, paperback

Since 1984 Paddy O'Gorman's remarkable success and popularity as a broadcaster has been based on his direct approach to people. For his RTE radio programme Queueing for a Living, Paddy has taken his tape-recorder to dole queues, pawnshops, bookie shops, courts and prison gates in Britain, Germany, Holland and in Ireland, North and South.

Paddy O'Gorman does not trust spokespeople.
Spokespeople include some social workers and any official who forces a distance between him and the people he wants to listen to. As Paddy remarks, "there is something very subversive about listening to people in queues", Paddy doesn't just listen to people. He holds conversations with them as well. It would not be true to say that Paddy O'Gorman is non-judgmental. He is opinionated, exasperated, comical and prejudiced.

This book is about people who have never previously been given the right or the opportunity to talk. Ordinary people, as well as prostitutes, criminals, victims of paramilitary discipline in Northern Ireland, addicts, wife beaters, beaten women, perverts and their families, all find their voices in this vivid and unsettling testimony.

Paddy O'Gorman never meets a typical person because there are no typical people.

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