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Irish Times

Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s must have been groaning with future celebrities of the diaspora

Oh no. 'Ed Sheeran sparks backlash from fans after revealing he 'identifies culturally as Irish'.' However will he recover? That Mail Online headline leads, of course, to a mere trickle of X posts raising largely facetious objections to the ginger guitar-basher's recent affiliation with the land of his fathers. Obviously, some folk (ahem) who don't enjoy Sheeran 's brand of inexplicably popular busker folk have done a bit of performative grumbling. Not everyone (ahem, ahem) loves the ubiquity of his chosen verb. People are forever 'identifying' as something these days. In times past you just were what you were. Those are the sort of whinges people who aren't me were making. On balance, however, Irish people seem relaxed about Sheeran's comments on The Louis Theroux Podcast . He certainly looks Irish. He inherited an Irish name from his Belfast-born father. The nation seems prepared to draw a veil over Galway Girl and allow him into the larger camp. 'I identify culturally as Irish, but I was obviously born and raised in Britain,' he told Theroux . READ MORE It helps that he seems a nice enough fellow. It helps further that he is among that sizeable portion of the diaspora, a few other celebrities also among them, that I am going to identify as the Holidayed with Granny cadre. We have long been a tad wary of the third-generation immigrant to the United States who thinks his Irishness is equivalent to those who grew up with Bosco and warm Cidona. You know who we're talking about. Patty's Day, Irish car bomb cocktails, corned beef and cabbage, dying the river green. All that baloney. We'll put up with it while he's paying for the drinks, but we're sniggering behind hands as we're doing so. The descendants of immigrants to Britain tend to have a more dynamic relationship with the home country. They watch much the same telly. They listen to the same music. Even before the advent of budget flights, they were only a relatively cheap train and ferry journey away from the old country. So they Holidayed with Granny. On the evidence of interviews in this newspaper and others, Ireland was, during summers from the 1970s through the 1990s, groaning with future celebrities of the diaspora. 'We'd spend all of our holidays in Ireland,' Sheeran said. 'My first musical experiences were in Ireland. I grew up with trad music in the house.' Liam and Noel Gallagher spent the summers in Charlestown, Co Mayo. Martin McDonagh's holidays in Galway influenced his subsequent plays and films. Shane MacGowan knocked about Tipperary in the warmer months. Back in 2013 I talked to Steve Coogan , raised in Manchester, about his own travels back to the sod. 'Some people went to Spain every summer, I went to Mayo,' he said . 'When I left people would ask me when I was coming 'back home' again.' Coogan, who also has family in Cork, discussed a relaxed blending of cultures. There is no sense of any chips on the shoulder. No attempt to be something you're not. 'There was never an anti-Englishness,' he told me. 'We supported the England football team. My mum would support Ireland as well.' [ From the archive: 'I'd abolish the royal family' - Steve Coogan on what separates him from Alan Partridge Opens in new window ] In a perfect world (or nation) no purity tests would be invoked when someone 'identified' as Irish. We do not live in that world (or nation). Racists bristle when people of colour – even those born and raised here – declare themselves of the flock. The kaleidoscope of traits that can get you labelled a 'west Brit' has scarcely diminished through the years. And look how unfairly columns such as this slag off perfectly decent Irish Americans as they try to connect with the home soil. We should be ashamed of ourselves. The offspring of immigrants to Britain – the Holidayed with Granny cadre – have, however, always found it relatively easy to slip back into their parents' and grandparents' culture. For the most part they understand the barriers as well as the stubborn connections. Coogan feels this is particularly so of those who grew up in the north of England. 'In London they maybe felt the need to assimilate more,' he told me. 'They lost the 'O' from their names more often than in Manchester. The London Irish felt more need to refine themselves.' Anyway, we should be enormously flattered that so many people yearn to be 'culturally' Irish. One gets no sense that similar numbers are queuing up to be seen as culturally Dutch, Canadian or Maltese. Yet not everyone has the determination to pull it off. Born and raised in Cabra (or maybe Phibsborough), the late Michael Gambon , actor and raconteur, approached the issue in mischievous fashion when, in 2010, he was asked whether he was English or Irish. 'I suppose I can't get away from it, I'm English, aren't I?' he said. 'All my things are here.'