Picture the scene. The sun is beaming. The air tastes of cut grass. Huey Lewis and the News are rolling from a boom box. There’s a bunch of teenagers break-dancing on an old piece of lino. And some skinny kid is standing next to a BMX just off to the side. That kid was me. But don’t think the get-up of ball cap, khaki trousers and black converse runners was casually thrown together. Not at all. It was completely inspired by my hero at the time, Howling Mad Murdock, the unhinged helicopter pilot from action adventure series, The A-Team.

A group of us kids were obsessed with that TV programme. To the point that B.A. Baracus’ words of wisdom infiltrated our daily vernacular. Everything was to be pitied. I pity the fool who’s never seen the Teen Wolf movie. I pity the fool who never tasted no ‘Catch chocolate bar’.

And I aint visiting no Granny’s today, fool.

Of course there were other heroes over the years. Marty Mc Fly inspired me to try to build a flux capacitor out of a remote control car. There was Knight Rider, Luke Skywalker and even the Hobbit guy from the Goonies. But Murdock was my first inspiration.

It’s difficult for my heroes in adulthood to compare. Of course there are other writers and people who I respect and admire. One in particular influenced my writing a great deal and although I’m a massive fan I don’t think she’d be too impressed if I started to imitate or wear the same clothes as her.

I suppose a lot of people can relate to the admiration of a favourite teacher when young and the craving of recognition from them.  This need to impress can even remain when schooldays have long since passed. I’m no different and that’s why I was especially pleased to spot an old maths teacher at a production of one of my plays a few years back. He was a man who inspired me in many ways and I was pretty eager to hear how he rated the play.

‘So, what did you think?’ I caught up with this teacher immediately afterward.

He scratched his head for a bit, raised an eyebrow.

‘Do you know when you were talking about that guard fella,’ he said.

I knew he was referring to a brief scene in the play where one character’s posture is compared to “three sided shapes and tangents or any number of the trigonometric theorems that were drilled into a child’s head in school.”

I nodded in acknowledgement and wrung my hands expectantly. My maths teacher leaned in close. He then steadily tapped me on the shoulder, exactly like he had done when I was in secondary school.

‘I think,’ he grumbled. ‘You might be confusing the tangent line in geometry with the tangent function of trigonometry for that part’.
And without any further hesitation, he rambled off to talk to someone else.
In typical Irish fashion, I was quickly brought back to earth.