BP Fallon and Ian Dury in Dublin 1999. Photo: Jasmine Guinness.

"You won't faint, will you?"

Ian Dury pulls up the black t-shirt that he found on a skip to show you the tubing that goes
into his chest on the right side of his heart. He says it doesn't hurt. At the other end of the
tubing, down by the right side of his waist, hang two nozzles protected in gauze. The tubing,
its journey from the hole in his chest down across his body is made firm by little children's
Winnie the Pooh sticking plasters.
This tubing, Ian has a little bottle attached to the end, and every two weeks for three days,
chemotherapy is being pushed into his body into an artery just beside the heart. Then Ian's
heart, it wooshes this concoction around his bloodstream in 35 seconds. This is the Hickman
Line.

Two and a half years ago Ian Dury was operated on for cancer of the colon. "My doctor said
his job was to keep my mouth attached to my arsehole!" He roars with laughter, slaps his
right knee with his right hand. "In January, an ultrasound scan found something on my liver,
nine nodules."
Three months ago, Ian Dury had another scan "and the nodules had been diminished. And I
had another scan two weeks ago and they are all gone. They're in remission, as they call it.
That's good news."

Eight months ago, Ian was told that, at worst, he had eight months to live. He's still going
strong, thank God. "Doing gigs frightens the life out of cancer. I feel this amazing energy
coming off the audience. And when we come to Dublin we'll do the new tunes and anything
anyone wants. We do Sweet Gene Vincent, Rhythm Stick, Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll,
Billericay Dickie, Reasons To Be Cheerful..."
IanDury is sitting there by his desk in Suite 203 of the Russell Court Hotel in Dublin. He's in
town to promote his stupendously wonderful new album with The Blockheads, Mr. Love Pants,
and the forthcoming Ian Dury And The Blockheads gigs in Dublin. He's stouter than before -
"portly" is his word - and he peers over glasses that he got in Boots for £8.

Ian Dury is giving his job description.

"My job is to make people happy and smile and dance.
I have one of the proudest professions in the world, that of an enertainer. I'm a mixture
between a comedian and a musician, a bit of acting and writing thrown in. A potpourri of
entertainment, a smogasbord of fun and festivity!"
He's been in 15 or 16 films, says he can't remember their names. Among them are Hearts Of
Fire, Pirates, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. (To me, films are something you
put in a camera).

He chortles through tales of movieland madness with Bob Dylan and Ronnie Wood and Iggy
Pop and getting into a fight with Omar Sharif at the Caprice restaurant in London. Four
years later, he finds himself in Gdansk in Poland with all his scenes in a movie opposite Omar.
They hug and make up.

"I was pissed" says Omar. "So was I" says Ian. His film roles, they're mostly little parts.
"'Don't shave and do smoke a cigar' , they say". Sure enough, he turns up on television in
Judge Dredd, unshaven, smoking a cigar. "I'm a cigar actor. I've smoked more cigars in
more films than anyone else."

Twenty two years ago, Ian Dury and me, we sat down in London and worked out The £67-A
-Minute Plan, based on what Elton John had made that year. "I still have that bit of paper,"
Ian says. See, I had this company called The Dept. Of Corrective Truth and Ian was one of
my, uh, artistes. So we mapped out The £67-A-Minute Plan. Doing the maths took longer
than figuring out the plan.

Twenty two years later, he's 56 going on 57 and here in Dublin there's a New Musical Express
on the desk, this yellowing NME dated September 11th 1976. Inside there is a story headlined
'Ian Dury is not FINISHED yet' and a subtitle that goes 'I'm a disabled 34-year-old maniac and
I want to be popular'.
The story starts off: "BP Fallon, publicist and bursar of Ian Dury's projected Royal College of
Rock 'n' Roll, has now extended to leading magical mystery tours..." and carries us into the
yarn of this former student at the Royal College Of Art who's band Ian Dury And The Kilburns
have just broken up.

The hits and the classic album New Boots And Panties by Ian Dury and his amazing new band
The Blockheads were little more than a sniff away.

Thank God they came. Ian reckons that he's spent 60,000 on fighting his cancer. "If I hadn't
had the money, I'd be brown bread.''
Ian contacted polio as a seven-year-old kid. Last year, UNICEF rang him up and said, "We are
trying to eradicate polio, will you come out to Zambia?"
"I was as useless as a spare prick at a wedding," Ian laughs, that resonant hahahaha bursting
out of him again. "I was useful once. This medical officer was giving all these people a lecture,
saying 'Do you know what polio looks like when you get older?' and they're all looking at me
and going 'Yeah, him over there!"' More roars of laughter.
"I felt really proud. I almost took a bow!"

Last week, Ian went out to Sri Lanka with Robbie Williams - whom he is mad about - for the
UNICEF's Day Of Tranquility. " It's a war zone. The Tamil Tigers and their adversaries have
pledged to stop fighting for 24 hours. About 130,000 volunteers will immunise 4.2 million
children in a day."
Ian fancies a Guinness. "I've got three areas of expertise now: rock 'n' roll, UNICEF and
cancer..." Pause. " What about the man who went to the psychiatrist and said 'I think I'm a
dog' and the psychiatrist said 'I'll sort you out, hop up on the couch', 'I'm not allowed', said
the man!" More mirth, more slapping of knee.

Suddenly, Ian's singing a song by '50s British songthrush Alma Cogan, "The Naughty Lady
of Shady Lane, she's got the world in a trance, la la". Another pause. Then he's off again.
"Twenty tiny fingers, twenty tiny toes." That's what he sang before he became one of the
best ever wordsmiths in pop, Alma and Elvis and a bit of Bill Haley. "Thirteen women, only
one man," he sings again, the face beaming and the eyes over the eight-quid glasses
gleaming.

Much later on in the evening, as we are munching on fish and chips in Ian's room, he
clambers to his feet and bursts into Rockin' at the 2 Is by English '50s rocker Wee Wee
Harris, then another song by his pal Wreckless Eric. All the time, he's cracking up.
Hahaha.

Ian is married to the sculptor Sophie Tilson. They have two children, Billy, who is three and
a half and Albert, who is one and a half. By his first wife Betty, Ian has another two children:
Jemima who is 29 and Baxter - the young lad on the cover of New Boots and Panties - who
is now 26 and has a deal with Polydor Records.
Betty died of cancer. So did the lovely Blockhead drummer Charlie Charles. Ian's friend Alan
died of cancer, his pal Les Prior from Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias died of cancer. "I know
loads of people who died of cancer. I watched how they dealt with it and I was very proud
of them.
So I knew there was a standard to achieve."

Did polio prepare you for adversity?

"Polio was adversity. It didn't prepare me, it engulfed me. Adversity was my bedfellow.
I don't think anything can prepare you for the fact the Grim Reaper might come to call.
"I've got a cocky-dick attitude. I might have hidden my inner recesses from very self,
as well as everyone else. In 1976, you and me, Bernard, we called that LP Live At
Lourdes, remember?"

"It's sad that I might not see my kids when they are older or see Sophie . . . or,"
he laughs, more quietly this time, "me".

Ian sips his Guinness, his upper lip now like some albino Charlie Chaplin. Sitting here he
looks more calmly contented than a pig in shite. There are darker private moments but
. . . well, has this . . . cancer thing . . . has it made you keep your pecker up, Ian?

"Have I got gee-ed up because I have a battle on my hands? I try not to let it change
anything, I haven't shaken my fist at the sky! I had a couple of cries early on and I cry
when people write me amazing letters. I got one from this hard nut: 'No way are you
going to roll over on this one, son!' "Hahaha", he goes.

Ian, do you think all of this, y'know, your life, everything, that it's been amazing? "Yeah,"
he says straight away, lowering his head and looking down. He looks up, looks you straight
in the eyes, says "Yeah" again, but more softly.

He'd melt your heart, Ian would. You want to kiss him, this lovely warm, kind, open-hearted,
funky rock'n'roll man. You want to kiss him not for his talent, not for his illness, not for his
bravery, not for his dignity, not for his grace, not for his humour. Actually you want to kiss
him for all of these glorious attributes, but really . . .
you want to kiss Ian Dury because of his love.

Great man, Ian.

And one of the greats.

The Sunday Independent September 20 1998
Words by and © BP Fallon