‘Peter O'Toole filled a vase with stout': Plumber who left note behind hotel wall in 1969 tracked down

Irish Times

13-05-2025

They say if walls could talk ...
Staff at the Metropole Hotel in Cork have tracked down one of four tradesman who hid a note in the wall of the hotel while working there more than half a century ago.
Plumber John Keogh (86) was part of the maintenance crew at the hotel in the 1960s. Along with electrician Tommy Ross, carpenter Jerry Higgins and painter Steve Casey, he signed his name to a piece of paper that Tommy Ross placed in a wall in the lobby when they were doing refurbishment there in July 1969.
'We were all working with different firms,' said Mr Keogh, 'but we were all allocated to do maintenance at the Metropole. Jerry Higgins was the carpenter and what would happen is Jerry would take down the panels because Tommy would be tracing wires, and I would be tracing pipes.
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'Steve would come in then when it was all finished and do the painting, but it was probably Tommy who took off the bit of paper, but we all signed our names, and he put it behind a panel in the lobby. Somebody sent me a photo of the paper today and I recognised my signature straight away.'
Mr Keogh lost contact with his colleagues in the Metropole maintenance crew over the years. He was just 31 at the time the note was written and Steve Casey was a similar age, while Jerry Higgins and Tommy Ross were much older men.
But while over half a century has elapsed, Mr Keogh has great memories of working in the Metropole as he recalled nights being called out from his home at the top of Richmond Hill to make his way to the hotel to fix some problem, often meeting many of the stars who stayed there over the years.
The Metropole hotel on MacCurtain Street in Cork city
'We could be called out at any hour – we had a great night there one time with Peter O'Toole. He went behind the bar and there was a vase with flowers in it and he just threw the flowers out and filled up the vase with stout. He wasn't long lowering it – that man could drink.
'Gregory Peck stayed there while they were filming Moby Dick in Youghal and I remember another time Trevor Howard – he was in Von Ryan's Express – my god, could he drink. The next morning he would be going around the hotel, dickie bow tie on him and you think he hadn't a drop inside him.
'The British model Christine Keeler – she was caught up in the whole Profumo affair about the Russian spy – she stayed there another time, and it was the girls who were telling me she was very nice, that she would do all her own ironing, no airs and graces about her at all.'
The note signed by Mr Keogh and the other tradesmen was discovered in the lobby by workmen carrying out renovations and while Mr Keogh hasn't been back to the Metropole in recent times, he and his wife, Phyllis, hope to pay the 127-year-old hotel and its refurbished lobby and restaurant a visit.
'I wasn't inside the Metropole in years, but we're invited down now. When they heard me on the radio, they contacted me, which is nice of them. So myself and the missus will head down along – it will be nice to see the place again and see what progress they've made.'