The Lovejoy Pergola: Mark O'Leary's Architecture of Nostalgia

 

If you were anywhere near a television set in the late 1980s or early 90s, you knew Lovejoy (0:43). The hit BBC series about a roguish, leather-jacketed antiques dealer didn’t just entertain audiences—it set trends (1:12). For a certain generation growing up across Ireland and the UK, Ian McShane’s signature uniform of blue jeans, a premium leather jacket, mullet and white runners wasn’t just a look; it was a lifestyle (1:12). [1] 

"Climbing the pergola to the pagoda predicated upon Lovejoy"

“I used to wear blue jeans and white runners myself kind of emulating Lovejoy,” confesses Cork musician Mark O’Leary in a delightfully eccentric recent interview (1:18). O’Leary—famous in music circles as an avant-garde guitarist and famously known to the wider public as the teenage guitar teacher of Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy—recently mapped out a chaotic, star-studded web of personal intersections that traces everything from classic British television to global tech billionaires. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Before O’Leary taught Cillian Murphy he wore a West German Army Parka, Blue Jean and White Runners, when he taught and Mentored Cillian Murphy he wore a trench coat, black jeans and white runners,

“In a way, the trench coat, jeans and white runners, still had a modicum of the Lovejoy aesthetic.”

It turns out that the classic world of Lovejoy is the secret anchor to an incredible web of Mark O’Leary’s pop culture history (0:43).

"I used to wear blue jeans and white runners myself kind of emulating Lovejoy," confesses Cork musician Mark O'Leary in a delightfully eccentric recent interview (1:18). O'Leary—famous in music circles as contemporary guitarist, composer, electronic musician and famously known to the wider public as the teenage music teacher/mentor of Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy—recently mapped out an expansive, star-studded web of personal intersections that traces everything from classic British television to global tech billionaires

It turns out that the classic world of Lovejoy is the secret anchor to an incredible web of pop culture history (0:43).

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The Schoolyard Race for Joanna Lumley

Mark O’Leary attended Scoil Chríost Rí Primary School in Turners Cross Cork, where he was a child prodigy author aged eight, Scoil Chríost Rí is also the alma mater of Micheal Martin, the leader of the Republic of Ireland and now at the rotational helm of Europe. In In those childhood years, The New Avengers was at its absolute cultural zenith (1:26). The star of the show, Joanna Lumley, became an overnight icon and the collective crush of schoolboys globally (1:26).

“Every day after the episode the night before, we would emulate what transpired on the schoolyard,” O’Leary reminisces (1:39). The obsession ran so deep that it dictated the playground’s competitive ecosystem (1:53). “It was all hunky dory until someone mentioned Purdey, then, it was like, ‘I’m marrying Joanna Lumley!’ ‘So am I!’ ‘So am I!’ So we would run races around the perimeter of the schoolyard, and the winner got to marry Joanna Lumley. We were like seven or eight years of age. The common denominator, we all loved Purdey.” Decades later, that childhood playground prize would cross into Mark O'Leary's real-world professional timeline through a series of intriguing musical crossovers (4:52).

The Win Stanley Factory Connection

So, how does a Mark O’Leary intersect with Ian McShane and Joanna Lumley? (4:52) It all comes down to the legendary Irish music scene of the late 20th century (5:00). [1]

Mark O’Leary was a member of the iconic Irish alternative rock band Interference in their formative years. O’Leary was in a band called Midway in Monkstown Co. Cork and Fergus O’Farrell of Interference went to school with the Bassist Kevin Murphy’s brother Bernard in Clongowes. Fergus had a mobile recoding unit and Bernard asked would he come down to Monkstown to record Midway and he agreed, he produced and engineered the Midway demo tape and a few months later when Interference ended up being just Fergus, he invited Kevin Murphy to join, which he did, culminating in the end of Midway, about a week later, Murphy and O’Farrell called Mark O’Leary and asked him to join, which he did and they ended up writing, rehearsing and recording in the White House at the top of Patrick’s Hill in Cork, in what is now known as Bruce College, this period is know as “The Bruce Sessions”, on a saturday afternoon on the precipice of the end of august, Kevin and Fergus put it to Mark O’Leary and Cal McCarthy (drummer) that they were relocating to Dublin and “were they coming” Mark O’Leary demurred as he had to sit his secondary school final exams and was going to Los Angeles to attend Musicians Institute, for which he had already attained a place (5:00). While in Dublin, Interference wound up sharing a rehearsal space at the historic Win Stanley factory with none other than the Hothouse Flowers (5:09).

.

[Mark O'Leary] 
       │
       ▼
 [Interference] ◄──(Shared Space)──► [Hothouse Flowers]
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                    (Appeared together in)
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                    [Lovejoy (w/ Ian McShane
                                     & Joanna Lumley)]

The two bands formed a deep, decades-long collaborative bond, supporting each other at gigs and playing on each other’s records, members of Interference, a band O’Leary had just left interacted so profoundly with Hothouse Flowers that members of Hothouse Flowers became members of Interference, it was a deep synergistic cooperation (5:16). A few years later, Hothouse Flowers, famously guest-starred and performed in a full episode of Lovejoy alongside Ian McShane and Joanna Lumley, Mark O'Leary found his circle fully closed, via being a member of Interference, via Hothouse Flowers, there is an intersection into Lovejoy and Purdey.

Enter Uncle Derek: From Bergerac to the Musk Family

If the Lovejoy connection isn’t enough, O’Leary’s family tree features a legendary figure known simply as Uncle Derek (2:52). Derek is a man who seemingly exists in the post-credits scenes of global history (3:02). [1]

“In my paternal family, we are a modest lot, we eschew hubris, albeit we have a claim to fame that is a source of family lore and second to none, our Uncle Derek went to school with and grew up with John Nettles (whom we allude to as Bergerac) in Cornwall, this is a given, and Bergerac reigns supreme, but second only to Lovejoy; my paternal family would rearrange tennis matches, croquet, bridge and other social activities so they could watch Lovejoy in realtime, because the very next day, the would be the fulcrum of conversation and to be part of the in crowd, one must be au fait with the gist of what transpired in series the night before, Lovejoy was nonpareil, it surpassed even Bergerac, the very fact that I have an intersection with Lovejoy, it does put me on a hierarchical trajectory on the cusp of Uncle Derek.”

Through Uncle Derek, the degrees of separation get even wilder:

• The Acting Link: British actress Lucy Punch starred in the drama Tainted Fruit alongside John Nettles (famously known for Midsomer Murders and Bergerac) (2:29). Nettles went to school and ran around with Uncle Derek in Cornwall (2:52). [1]

• The Billionaire Link: In a spectacular twist of corporate history, Uncle Derek also personally knows the Musk family—including Elon, Kimbal, and Errol Musk (3:02). Derek actually worked for the same mining conglomerate as Errol Musk did in Zambia (3:14). [1, 2]

  “Uncle Derek is a modest man, but he is a genius, like Errol Musk, another genius and everyone knows this as a temporal fact, and if one had an issue in Zambia, Uncle Derek was the man to see, because he could solve it and solve it to immediate effect.”

• The Bass Link:

  “Mullets and four string basses to Pony Tails and five string basses.”

  When he isn’t rubbing shoulders with the Musk’s or Bergerac, Uncle Derek is the ultimate bass luthier (3:14). “If you’re looking for a five-string fretless electric bass, he’s the man to see,” O’Leary notes, adding that Derek custom-builds the notoriously hard-to-find decent five string fretless basses from his base in Africa

• The Kite Maker: “I remember Uncle Derek built a Kite, it was ergonomic, it was aerodynamic performing aerial acrobatics, it could do the Immelmann turn, I contended Uncle Derek should mass produce these kites and intimated, Uncle Derek, do you have a blueprint for the kite, a schematic or a design?” “Nah, its all up in me head mate.” “This was one of the first times Uncle Derek was home from Zambia and I concluded, to create a kite like that, Uncle Derek must be a genius but in retrospection what is absolutely ironic about that kite, it had a similar outline as a Tesla truck.”

  The Spin-Off That Should Have Been: Ray Donovan Season 2

  Mark O’Leary’s appreciation for Ian McShane didn’t stop in the 1990s (6:00). Decades after Lovejoy, Mark O’Leary found himself working out of Calabasas, California, he recorded his Calabasas series there; Signs, Waves III and On the Shore, Ian McShane joined the cast of the gritty premium drama Ray Donovan (Season 2) (3:50). In Ray Donovan, the star Liev Schreiber lives in Calabasas.

  McShane played the billionaire Andrew Finney—a performance O’Leary calls “absolutely astounding.” (4:00)

  In fact, O’Leary was so impressed by the performance that he concluded that the producers should consider a spin off series with McShane as Andrew Finney (4:19). “At the time, I actually thought that the producers of Ray Donovan should have considered a spin-off show starring Ian McShane as the main actor in an Andrew Finney series, with cameo roles from Ray Donovan himself (4:19). It would have been highly successful. At that juncture, TV needed that.” (4:35)

A Masterclass in the Joy of Stories

Ultimately, Mark O’Leary’s reflections are a brilliant reminder of why we love local arts and global pop culture. Everything is connected (4:52). A rainy afternoon teaching guitar to a young kid in Cork who won an Oscar for Best Actor which can sit right alongside playground races for Joanna Lumley, underground Dublin rock factories, dalliances with the Musk’s and custom five string bass guitars built in Africa, to the soliloquy “The Volvo Estate, the blonde mullet, fringe with Surrey on top, trench coat, jeans, white runners, the Cheltenham bride and bliss in East Anglia. Oh to those sunlit uplands of Universal tranquility where the swords are beaten into ploughshares.”