These two 80s Irish pop stars were protrayed as rivals - now they're best friends

Sunday World

2 days ago

1980s pop stars Flo McSweeney and Leslie Dowdall were often seen as arch rivals, but they since have become best friends.
Leslie Dowdall and Flo McSweeney will be singing the songs of Linda Ronstadt and Carole King
They were Irish pop pin-ups in the '80s as singers in their respective bands — and often portrayed in the media as arch rivals.
Now Flo McSweeney — who fronted 1980s groups Toy With Rhythm and Les Enfants — and Leslie Dowdall of In Tua Nua are teaming up for a new show.
In an exclusive interview with Magazine+, McSweeney today talks about their relationship and her life in music.
Flo also looks back on her days as a co-presenter of RTE's popular Megamix TV pop show in the late 1980s with Kevin Sharkey, who is now a successful artist.
She reveals how the celebrity pair went on holiday together to Lanzarote at the end of one series — and sent postcards to family and pals of a lookalike couple lying naked on inflatable pool lilos.
Flo says: 'Kevin and myself had the best fun doing Megamix and after the first series finished we went off to Lanzarote for a two-week holiday and we had the best craic.
Leslie in In Tua Nua
'On the first day we found these postcards of a dark-skinned guy and a white girl, with very short blonde hair like mine, lying face down on swimming pool lilos completely naked. It was like an aerial photograph.
'So we bought all the postcards and we sent them to everyone back home. My mother had a complete and utter conniption. 'Oh Jesus, it's Kevin and Flo naked in a swimming pool!'
'All I remember about that holiday is that we laughed for two weeks.'
Looking back on her early Irish pop star days when she hung out in celebrity nightclub The Pink Elephant with UK bands such as Spandau Ballet and Def Leppard, Flo says she didn't strike up a friendship with Leslie Dowdall.
Leslie Dowdall and Flo McSweeney will be singing the songs of Linda Ronstadt and Carole King
News in 90 seconds - 11th August 2025
'We were in our 20s and we were both rockers, but we didn't know each other very well,' Flo tells me. 'We'd kind of skirt around each other when we'd meet in clubs like The Pink Elephant.'
Flo, who is married to comic Barry Murphy of Aprés Match fame, says it was a decade later that they formed a close friendship.
'When Barry and I moved into a little mews on Baggott Street in the early 1990s, it turned out that Leslie was living around the corner. We bumped into each other one day in the supermarket, abandoned the shopping basket and went for Irish coffees…and we've been friends ever since.
'Leslie is great fun. The two of us are now women of a certain age and have we grown up? No! And nor do we intend to.
Flo with Kevin Sharkey
'When you're in your 20s you look on others as rivals. Some of my closest friends now in my 60s are Jenny Newman, who took over as singer in Toy With Rhythm from me, and Karen Coleman, who I worked with in The Commitments touring band, and we would have all been rivals back then.
'There was never any real cattiness, but now it's just wonderful, it's supportive and it's friendships. We are not in competition with each other at all.'
McSweeney has had a varied career in music that at one stage included the role as lead singer in Moving Hearts a couple of years after Christy Moore's departure.
She replaced Mick Hanley and says: 'Mick Hanly had just left Moving Hearts, they decided they needed to change their image and I was offered the gig as singer,' Flo recalls.
'I hadn't a clue whose shoes I was stepping into I was so naïve at the time. It wasn't the greatest fit for me from a music point of view. I'm a sort of torch song singer and Moving Hearts was very, very different.
'It was hard for me as well. I remember when we did a gig in The Bottom Line in New York, which was a really prestigious gig to do, there was a guy down at the end of the room shouting 'Where is Christy?!'
'I ended up going off the stage after the gig in floods of tears. If that was now and there was a guy shouting at me I'd feckin' wipe the floor with him. I am a perfectionist but I'm not hard on myself anymore.
'At this age you have history and you've lived a life and I kind of think with the music that I like doing I have more of a right to sing those songs now in older age. It's life experience in all of those songs.
'Between 40 and 50 I didn't do much live work because Aprés Match had taken off (for Barry) and my kids were young. But at 50 I decided to go back to it, it was kind of like starting again and I said yes to everything and it has just been amazing.'
It was promoter Pat Egan who suggested that she should team up with Leslie Dowdall to perform the songs of legends Linda Ronstadt and Carole King for a show at Dublin's Vicar Street next month.
'We're not a tribute band — there's no wigs or any of that nonsense,' Flo stresses. 'We are doing the songs between us and then a couple of songs each on our own and we have a great band. It's a real joy to perform these songs together.'