Stories of Cork’s Echo Boys come to the stage

‘ECHO, Echo, get your Evening Echo!’ was the catch-cry of Bill O’Shea, a former Echo Boy known as Billaboo.

Originally from Dominic Street close to Shandon, he will be making his stage debut at the Cork Arts Theatre from April 17-27 in The Echo Boys, a new play by Val Dennehy and Marion Wyatt with original music by Jimmy Brockie.

Bill, 66, who went on to work as a docker in Cork for 40 years, started selling newspapers on the streets of Cork when he was just eight years of age. His modest earnings, bolstered by tips, were much appreciated by his mother who had nine children to feed. Bill’s mother would give him back a penny or two every day from the newspaper money.

“At that time, I was going to Eason’s Hill School at the back of Shandon,” says Bill. 

It was a tough area back then. All that was there was Shandon church, the North Chapel and a few shops. My father was a docker.

Bill sold the then titled Evening Echo and other papers until he was 14. His perch was outside the old Cork Gas Company.

“I’d shout ‘Echo’ but you could hear the other fella around the corner shouting the same thing. You’d be trying to get the people to come up to you. There were so many Echo Boys. There was huge competition.

“I’d sell ten dozen Echos a day. I’d come out of school at 2.30pm and run down the hill and go up to ‘Echo Lane’ (Bowling Green Street). My name would be on a parcel of papers and they’d be thrown down to me. I’d have them sold by 6pm.”

As well as selling the papers on the street, Bill would also sell them to various shops.

“You knew all the people in the shops. You didn’t have a mobile phone to write in a person’s name. You had to remember. They paid you at the end of the week and they might throw in a few pennies for you.”

With some boys as young as seven out selling the Echo, weaving in and out of traffic, Bill agrees that times were tough.

But nobody had anything in the ’60s. There was no-one judging you because everyone was the same and everyone spoke the same.

Bill also recalls going to Kent Station to collect the Dublin newspapers from the train at 6am. He would sell them before going to school.

He left school at 14 and spent a year of an apprenticeship as a baker at Larry McCarthy’s Bakery on Blarney Street. But his father advised him to go down the docks where there was plenty of work.

Proud of his background, Bill is delighted to be treading the boards of the Cork Arts Theatre. His granddaughter, 11-year-old Hollie, is also acting in the play.

A play about the Echo boys seems inevitable from the pen of Marion Wyatt, who is directing it as well as being its co-writer. She has already created plays about the Sunbeam girls, Cork dockers, the Shawlies, and Katty Barry, her focus firmly trained on the city’s social history.

“The idea for The Echo Boys really came from Val Dennehy,” says Marion. “She has a lot of information to do with the Echo Boys. The show is a drama with some musical interludes.

At one point, we thought we’d develop it into a full-scale musical. We’ve worked with the composer, Jimmy Brockie, who worked on Dockers as well.

“Val is a great fan of musical theatre. In my own professional career, I’ve directed musical theatre but drama is my first love. Jimmy and Val convinced me to have some music in The Echo Boys.”

The show, set in the 1960s, is about six Echo boys.

“It’s based loosely around real stories. We are talking poverty but one of the boys is a little better off than the others. His mother has her own stall and the father gets regular work. This boy is the youngest of a family of five boys who are all tipping away, earning.

“But then you have another boy from a very impoverished background. There are issues affecting him. He takes on the responsibility of not only trying to earn money, but also taking care of the family in the absence of the parents. The mother is very ill and the father has left.”

But this is not just a tale of relentless hardship.

“We wanted to show the ambitions of the boys. Even though they had to work at a very young age, they had dreams. One of them wants to have a band. Some of these boys had grandfathers who were in the Barrack Street Band and the Butter Exchange Band.”

The show itself is ambitious with a cast of 34 and a choir of 70. But the choir is not live; it has been filmed. Jimmy Brockie and Val Dennehy have written an anthem, called The Echo Boy which Marion reckons “could be number one by Christmas”.

Val, a director and performer, was a member of the Blackrock Players. She is full of local history. Her grandmother had a lodging house on Lavitt’s Quay and her father worked on Coburg Street.

“I went everywhere with him on the bike. Those days were full of fun. What I miss in Cork are the people who were the core of the city, like the Echo Boys (a dying breed with just David Hogan still selling The Echo outside the GPO), the shawlies, and the dockers.

They survived and supported the people of Cork.

“I remember my uncle’s pub, Kellehers, down from my grandmother’s place. I have a memory of the snug where the women had to go as they weren’t allowed in the bar. I saw the hand of a shawlie coming out onto the counter and taking her glass of Murphys into the snug.”

Describing The Echo Boys as “a celebration” of times past and “a feelgood show where the kids sing the anthem and all their hearts are lifted,” Val describes it as “pure magic.”

She loves Cork.

“I’m originally from Ballinlough. I knew the Echo Boys to say ‘hallo’ to when I was growing up. The Echo had to be bought every night. You’d be eaten alive if you came home without it.

“The first thing people looked at in the Echo was the births, deaths and marriages.”

This is the first time Val has written a play. With co-creator Marion, Val says the experience was “like having a baby”.

Marion inspired me and pushed me. I based it on my grandmother’s place and my uncle’s pub.

“When I gave it to Marion, I was terrified. She’s the only person I’d entrust with it. I’d only ever write things that I’m an authority on.”

The anthem that Val wrote with Jimmy Brockie goes as follows: ‘If you want to be an Echo boy, there’s one thing you must do. You have to sing ‘The Echo,’ make the people come to you.’

Will it be a number one hit? That remains to be seen. But the play should be popular given its quintessential Cork subject matter.

Bookings at https://corkartstheatre.com/