Luke O’Connell ruminates on Sinead O’Connor’s recent reappearance in the media
I can honestly say that, in all my years in a school run by multiple members of the clergy, I never once encountered a priest so openly and unashamedly in search of cock as Sinéad O’Connor (who was ordained in the Latin Tridentine church in 1999). The singer, who once threatened to wrap her arms around every boy she saw in her legendary cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”, has revealed that she has had sex with no more than a banana in over seven months.
Of course, O’Connor, 44, has arguably gained as much media attention over the last two decades for her bizarre and controversial behaviour as she has for her music career. Known for her bald head and bare feet, she has long been a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church and its attitude to the child abuse scandals. Frank Sinatra once vowed to “kick her ass” when she refused to allow the playing of the USA’s national anthem before a concert. In 1992, she performed on Saturday Night Live and, much to the shock of everyone from the producers to the audience, ended her cover of Bob Marley’s “War” (whose lyrics she had re-appropriated to highlight the issue of child abuse) by tearing up a photo of the pope and storming off the stage.
Shortly after her last marriage (her third), she penned an astonishing polemic in the Sunday Independent in which she attacked the Irish media for bullying her, not despite but because of her “fantastic arse”, an arse which was, she wrote, “responsible for the conception of [her] four lovely children, by four lovely men.” It is unclear whether O’Connor believes that anal conception is biologically possible.
In August of this year, O’Connor managed to cause even more public bewilderment when she wrote another colourful article for the same paper, announcing her hopes to find a “very sweet sex-starved man” to more or less ride her senseless. Her criteria included a minimum age of 37 (alas), an absence of hair gel or after-shave, a love for his mother and, it seems, a proclivity for anal sex (or “the tradesman’s entrance”, as she eloquently puts it). She loves nothing better than talking about anal sex in public.
On September 2nd, she appeared on the Late Late Show after much humming and hawing. She has repeatedly professed her (unrequited and inexplicable) predatory love for the host Ryan Tubridy and in the week leading up to the show she spoke of her apparently genuine nerves regarding going on the show. She temporarily pulled out a few days before the show when she was hurt by an RTE researcher’s patronising questions about her “insane behaviour”. Indeed, one might question RTE’s motives in having her appear as a guest if they wanted her to show herself up as nothing more than a pathetic laughing stock. They were, no doubt, fully aware of her well-publicised mental health issues throughout the years and inviting her on could arguably be construed as nothing more than a cynical commercial publicity stunt. In fairness to O’Connor, her interview on the show (having been persuaded to change her mind again by Tubridy) was a gregarious and altogether amusing few minutes in which she joked with Tubridy and came across as relatively normal.
Having exhausted the avenue of cyber-dating, the nymphomaniac’s latest (at the time of writing) idea for finding love or something like it (sweaty sex, truth be told) is the almost-forgotten matchmaking orgy Lisdoonvarna. Attracting over 40,000 lonely hearts (it says here), the festival is traditionally more banal than anal, but O’Connor has reportedly been strongly encouraged to attend by the head matchmaker.
Once the disbelief of hearing O’Connor speak so brazenly about carnal matters subsides, one might admit that maybe she isn’t so risible after all. As her Late Late Show appearance demonstrates, she is doing all this half-jokingly; not in a cynical career-boosting way but to do whatever (or whomever) the fuck she likes and damn it if the boring Plain People of Ireland are going to try to stop her. Would Jim Corr and Mark Little be following her Twitter if she were a man? Probably not, but that is the gender divide for you. O’Connor doesn’t care, and more power to her, as they say.
There is no denying that O’Connor has at times been bullied by certain sections of the media and beyond as pathetic and mad, ripe for lampoon. The argument that she tends to court attention should not ignore the fact that she has spoken out (even if in occasionally ridiculous ways) for the voiceless at times when others spinelessly turned away. Her recent foray into prurience is just another bit of eccentricity. Let her be. Let’s keep listening to “Nothing Compare 2 U” when we feel sorry for ourselves. Let’s not bother with most of the rest of her music career. But let’s hope she gets a phenomenal pounding from the man of her dreams one of these days.
