Mary Coughlan, onstage from the age of five - ‘Applause and lemonade!’

Mary Coughlan, onstage from the age of five - ‘Applause and lemonade!’

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold January 12, 2026 Duration: 25:17

Mary Coughlan – aka “Ireland’s Billie Holiday”, adored by Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan and Elvis Costello - is on tour again in 2026. This warm, funny and circuitous conversation looks back from her home in Wicklow at the first shows she ever saw and played and various milestones along the road, among them …

 

… singing Two Little Orphans (aged 5) at a Christmas party: “The adrenaline rush! Applause and lemonade!”

 

… escaping down ladders from school to see Rory Gallagher in Galway and the nuns waiting when she returned

 

… seeing Donovan on the Aran Islands in 1969, a trip from the mainland by currach

 

… meeting Mike Stoller and re-recording Peggy Lee’s savaged Mirrors album: “more relevant now than ever”


… Elton John (dressed as a hornet) at Watford Stadium and the embroidered floral skirt she’d made to watch him

 

… her love of cabaret and old 78s and the songs she and Erik Visser chose to launch her career

 

… her transformative slot on the Late Late Show in 1984: “I played to four people the night before; a week later they were queuing round the block”

 

… Frank Sinatra’s mysterious autocue and sitting next to Roger Moore in his audience (“very orange”)

 

… “I adored St Dominic’s Preview and 15 years later Van Morrison was in my dressing-room”

 

… her cure for insomnia

 

… why Joe Strummer meant so much to her

 

… and her 200-song live repertoire – from Meet Me Where They Play The Blues and Don’t Smoke In Bed to Love Will Tear Us Apart.

 

Order Mary Coughlan tickets here: https://www.marycoughlan.ie/upcoming-shows


Help us keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Word In Your Ear
Podcast Episodes
The glorious story of Funk from James Brown to Off The Wall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:54
Old friend of the podcast Lloyd Bradley wrote Bass Culture, the defining account of reggae, and he’s now turned his attention to funk, from its deepest roots and via the jazz, arts, TV, radio and pop culture that flavour…
Nick Lowe’s miracle payday, Rock feuds and a giant inflatable Jarvis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:35
Panning for gold in the murky waters of this week’s news, we found the following … … is Sabrina Carpenter’s aunt the voice of Bart Simpson? … is punk now just a small room in the giant apartment block of Goth? … why band…
The Damned at 50 and the memories (and regrets) of Rat Scabies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:42
The Damned are – yes! - 50 years old with three of the originals still onboard. And just starting a world tour. In this immensely funny and touching podcast, Rat Scabies (who’s smoking!) points up the repercussions of li…