My name is Diarmuid O’Driscoll, and I’m a hundred and three years old.

I was born in Kildare in Ireland in 1918, at the height of the Spanish flu, but I managed to escape it.

My earliest memory is being evacuated from our house during the Irish civil war, by the Irish government at the time.

We were taken to a very nice house, it was called Froc Bán, on the outskirts of the town of Kildare, and we remained there for two years, until the civil war had died down.

We were then allowed back to our old residence and I remember all the bullet holes in the various rooms, as it had been under fire from De Valera’s forces against the government at the time. This would be 1922.

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood, was sitting on the wall outside our house. Our house faced onto the main road from Dublin to Cork, I say ‘main road’ but at the time it was not in any way paved or surfaced.

Anyway, one day, Ciarán, my younger brother and myself were sitting on the small wall outside our house looking across the road at a grocery shop, to which my aunt would come every Saturday, to buy her groceries. And when our aunt came out of the shop, she would always give us a packet of biscuits, so that’s why we were sitting on the wall.

But in any event, this day we were sitting on the wall, and I see a motorcycle coming from out of the town. There were two people on the motorcycle and it was maintaining a course down the centre of the road.

And coming from the other direction, going south, was a car; and lo and behold, what did the motorcyclist do, but he rammed into the bonnet of the car, and himself and pillion passenger were ejected right up over the roof of the car… which I can see now with my eyes… ejected, and thrown about fifty yards down the road.

Ciarán and I ran over to the bodies on the ground, and I can still see the bones sticking out all over the place. (laughs heartly) It’s no laughing matter, but I am tickled by the vividness of my memory after almost one hundred years.

When I was twelve years of age, my parents told me I was going to be sent to boarding school and the boarding school was called Clongowes Wood College. I knew nothing about this, they just said I was going to be sent, as they felt there wasn’t equitable education opportunities in Kildare at the time. I liked the idea, in fact I felt I couldn’t get there quick enough, whatever notion I had of what it would be like to go to boarding school…We had a car at the time, when there were very few cars on the roads, it was called an Overland, and I can remember sitting in that car being driven to Clongowes, full of excitement for what was ahead of me.

Anyway, when I got to Clongowes, I became a bit of a rebel because as it turned out… I couldn’t stick the confinement of boarding school.At twelve years old, I was already addicted to tobacco. I was happily smoking a packet of Woodbines a day, which I would buy for tuppence. So on the first day, I was put into a class, it was the baby class, it was called First Elements. I sat towards the back of the room. The class was being held by a Jesuit priest, a father O’Sullivan, who believe it or not is now being proposed for canonisation, a prelude to sainthood in the Catholic church. This Jesuit priest was sitting on a dais. And I was back down in the body of the class. And what do I do? I take out a packet of Woodbines from my pocket and I light up a cigarette and start smoking, in the middle of the class! So Father O’Sullivan, looking down at me says, ‘What are you doing?’ He couldn’t believe his eyes, he says, ‘Come up here at once! And bring up that cigarette you have.’ He called me up… He was a very gentle man. A kind man. And he calmly told me to give him the packed of cigarettes and kneel down there at the foot of that dais. And after that class there was no mention of it again.

Well, I had four aunts. And when I was a youngster I used to spend the Summer, down with them… They lived in various parts of the country, and I spent much of my Summer holidays with them. And they used to get great fun in seeing me sitting there smoking; you must remember that at that time cigarettes were regarded as harmless. And it was a novelty, when visitors would call to the house, to see me smoking cigarettes and sitting up in my chair conversing like an adult at eight or nine years of age. It sounds like a warped sense of humour today, but there it is.

I grew to enjoy my days at Clongowes. I loved sports. I played everything, hurling, soccer… but cricket was my game, cricket was my joy, I loved cricket. I had a cricket bat, which I regarded as a pet, I took it everywhere. I took it home with me on holidays, oiled it… Cricket in my day in Clongowes was a very serious business. We togged out in whites, and we had a beautiful cricket pitch and cricket pavilion… It could all have been at Lords! And I used to play wicket-keeper. They were wonderful days.

After Clongowes I went to UCD to study medicine, and I went into what was called ‘diggs’, that was living with a family as a border in their house. The boarding house was on the North Circular Road, and I would cycle every day into UCD. And when I became a fourth year student, I went into the Mater Hospital as a house student, where I was resident for six months.

I had four uncles and they were all doctors. My father was originally a chemist but he subsequently studied medicine and became a doctor. So you could say it was in the blood. I also had an uncle who was a doctor in Manchester, he was also my godfather, and it was intended that I would eventually take over his practice in Manchester.

My time in UCD was pretty wild, as any medical student’s is… I can’t go into details, but life was pretty wild. But then the war broke out, World War II, when I was still a resident student in the Mater Hospital. On the 3rd of September 1939, war was declared.

I can clearly remember walking into the house surgeon’s residents room where there was a television… what am I saying, a radio. There was no television yet. And at the precise moment I walked into that room, the radio said: ‘Stop! We are going to make an announcement now… England is at war.

She has just declared war on Germany.’ The 3rd of September 1939, there in that room, the actual declaration of war. My studies continued and the following year I qualified in medicine in UCD, and I’m certainly not bragging, but I got honours… And I then went back into the Mater as a house surgeon, and I spent six months there before moving to the Coombe Hospital where I spent three months. Then, in accordance with the plan that I would join my uncle’s practice in Manchester, I went to the UK. This was at the height of the war. So I took the boat from Dublin to Holyhead. Holyhead was in total darkness, due to the black-outs. And though there were no lights, the whole place was lit up from the bombing, burning buildings all over the place, the whole place was lit up by fire.

Anyway, I managed to board a train to Manchester. I arrived in Manchester in the middle of an air-raid. Total darkness everywhere. Bombers overhead and a strange city. A city is a strange place in total darkness. I don’t actually recall it, but somehow I managed to find my way to my uncle’s house. I then spent nine months with him as an assistant. His house was in Old Trafford, which I suspect you have heard of as the home of Manchester United Football Club.

It was a great experience and I learned a lot as a general practitioner and I enjoyed working with my uncle. However, one day I said to him, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I have been thinking, and I have decided I not to stay in general practice, I want to specialise in something, please do not think me ungrateful.’

He immediately said, ‘No, no not at all, you must do what you need to do.’ He was a kind and understanding man, and as I have mentioned he was also my godfather.

So, I perused the British Medical Journal and saw an advertisement for a house surgeon in the City General Hospital in Sheffield in the north east of England. It was a one thousand bed hospital. I applied for the post and was appointed one of the house surgeons, of which there was about ten. I spent a year and a half there and I happened to be appointed to the maternity department. You had to go where you were sent, it could be orthopaedics or to ear, nose and throat department but I was sent to the maternity department, directing my future as a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology. It was still the middle of the war, with so much loss of life, and here we were bringing new life into the world.

I then had the impulse to join the war effort and applied to enter the Royal Navy as a ships doctor. But, unfortunately, I failed the medical on superficial grounds. So it was suggested to me that I join the merchant navy. It was the law that any ship carrying more than a hundred passengers had to carry a doctor on board.

So I walked into the offices of a large merchant shipping company in Leadenhall Street in London, showed them that I had no liability for military service and three days later I was in a doctors uniform, which had the same gold piping as the Royal Navy uniform, abord a large ship bound for Rio De Janeiro. I had a beautiful little surgery onboard and a small hospital with twenty-one beds. And funnily enough the twenty-one beds were practically full the whole time. Mainly with sea sickness rather than anything more serious. It was wartime and things happened fast. The ship had three hundred passengers and had two cannon, fore and aft. And these cannons were accompanied by two regiments of the Royal Artillery to man the guns. A lot of boats were sunk by German submarines so you set off with this in the back of your mind. But I wanted to get to sea, so my main feeling was one of absolute delight!

When one crosses the equator, there is a ceremony… performed by all ships crossing the equator; nowadays you can reach South America in one flight… But in those days, there were no such planes. Planes at the time had a range of about five hundred miles.

Life on board was never dull. At night, we would sit above with the ship’s captain. You see, the doctor was ranked second to the ship’s captain, followed by the Chief Engineer, then the second and third engineers, and the second and third mate…

But anyway, at night time we’d all go up to the ship’s captain’s suite. And there were three of four ambassadors on board and we would all sit down each evening, and I won’t say we drank our heads off… but we would have a fair amount of ‘night caps’…

All diplomats and ambassadors were getting round the world on any vessel they could get on. You must remember, there was not commercial air travel. And on our ship was an Albanian ambassador, Zog was his name. He was a gas man… We also had an ambassador from Sweden and a Finnish Ambassador, all such wonderful and entertaining characters. And as I said, we would all have our night-caps together. It was a wonderful time. All of us sitting there being joyous, hoping the next minute would not be our last, and all the time steadily travelling at twenty five knots. Day and Night.

Eventually we got to Rio. And as it happened, it was carnival time in Rio… this is a great spectacle, world famous. After the journey on board the ship, anticipating the possibility of being torpedoed at any time, this all looked magical to us and we danced in the streets day and night.

We took on a cargo, and after three days in Rio we then headed for Buenos Aires , Argentina, which is three days south of Rio. So, we sailed down to B.A. –Buenos Aires, where we tied up at what they called a frigorifico which is a big refrigerated plant for meat. We were in port for a whole week as the frozen beef would come down from the frigorifico on a line into the holds of the ship. And the ship could carry enough meat to feed Britain for a week. Thirty nine thousand head of cattle fitted into that ship.

But in any event, when the ship was tied up, we were at liberty to go into the city of Buenos Aires, visit the cinema and explore the place.

And during that week, on land in Buenos Aires, the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the Japanese caved in and called for peace. We were invited to the British embassy to a cocktail party for British ex-pats living in Argentina, and we had great celebrations for peace. I was in my uniform. The war was over. We would travel back to London, still with our mounted canons and Royal Artillery Regiments but in a joyous spirit. Peace was declared and we had no fear of being sunk. Everyone was smiling.

However, we had just set off for home - I called London home then - when the captain of the ship went down with pneumonia. He was a strong Welsh man, but he was certainly an excessive drinker. As the rest of us explored Buenos Aires, he had spent the whole week in the bar with his pals drinking.

He had acute pneumonia. It was very serious. In fact, I thought he was going to die. And I was extremely concerned. But as it happened, before leaving London for South America, our medicine cabinet had been updated with a new drug, it had just been released, albeit with a caution to use it only in deserving cases. Well, here was a deserving case if ever there was one. I believed the man would not see the next day… The drug was called Penicillin.

We knew nothing about it. I administered it to this dying man with no sense of hope…as I said we knew nothing about it… And there, in front of our eyes, it worked a miracle on him. In two days, the pneumonia was gone. And he was up on his feet again. You must appreciate, it was absolutely a miracle the way the Penicillin worked. It was a historic moment, for me… obviously, it had been used in the war and in London, but we had no data on it. I used it on this particular date for the first time, on this man, and without it, he would have died. So I was most grateful.

The captain was back on the bridge again within a week and had taken on the captains duty. One of the main duties, and a very important one, was at twelve o’clock, mid-day, he would go out on the upper deck and take our bearing from the sun. That was how navigation was done. The captain and the navigation officer agreed the position and we continued on that basis. There was no satnav those days.

On route to London, we first called in at Lisbon port, where we had more peacetime celebrations, for three days. We had celebrated the end of the war on two continents. Finally, we tied up in London docks.

At that time, UCD had a club in London, in Buckingham Palace Road. A residential club, where graduates could stay. So, as I was only in London for a week before returning to the ship, I used this as my residence. When I returned to the ship, our cannons had been removed, and the Royal Artillery regiments were absent. Peace was a wonderful thing.

I returned on another trip to South America, calling into many ports. Now, let me explain this… As a merchant seaman, and I was classified as a merchant seaman, one cannot leave the navy at a foreign port. If you want to quit the merchant navy, you can only do so at a home port. So, on my second voyage, I was informed that the ship was not going to return to London but going to sail to Greece. This meant that I could spend several years going between Athens and Buenos Aires, and that would have sent me round the bend…

But luckily, at the last moment, on our return voyage, we were directed to return to London instead of Athens, and, oh boy, you wouldn’t have seen me… I jumped off that ship… ha-ha, for dust…

I went immediately again to the UCD club with all my belongings. I sat in my room and wondered, what was my next move in my career path as a doctor.

So, I rang up a medical agency and asked if they had any openings for a doctor. To which they informed me that they needed a doctor to go to Hampton Court, where Henry the Eight had his palace, to take over a practice where the doctor had just died. The widow wanted to retain the practice and she needed someone immediately.

So, I immediately decamped to Hampton Court, only to find myself as the chief mourner at this dead doctor’s funeral. I walked with the widow behind the coffin, at the funeral, of a doctor, whom I had never met or seen. It was all very strange.

Then that very evening, I was called to a nursing home in Hampton Court, where a lady was having a baby, the lady had been a patient of the doctor who had just died. So I arrived and entered the labour ward, and who was inside but Professor O’Sullivan, who was professor of midwifery at UCD…

‘Good god,’ he said… He had examined me a year before and passed me in my mastership. But anyway, he said, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I said, ‘I’ve just got off a ship, I’ve come ashore, and I’m looking for a job.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a hospital in south London and I have vacancy for a house surgeon, would you be interested in the post?’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘That’s just up my alley.’

So I stayed on with the lady in Hampton Court for another week, until we had secured a replacement.

I then went to south London, and spent a year working for Professor O’Sullivan. But while I was there a position came up in the City of London Maternity Hospital, now that is the most prestigious maternity hospital in all of Britain. But the hospital had been evacuated during the war, twenty five miles out of London into Hertfordshire to the residence of the previous Lord Melbourne, called Brocket Hall. Lord Melbourne was premier of England when Queen Victoria ascended the throne. But it was now owned by a Sir Charles Nall-Cain, or rather his son, who had been interned during the war as a Nazi sympathiser, and the property converted into a maternity hospital.

I applied and was appointed to the position and so found myself in this beautiful setting, with beautiful parks and lakes and with a neighbour down the road - George Bernard Shaw.

What used to happen was that the maternity patients from East London who were attending the mother hospital in Old Street… When it was approaching their time to have the baby, they would be sent out to a house in the countryside, near Brocket Hall and then come into the hospital for delivery. I was out there all on my own.

One weekend, I decided to go to London.

I went to the UCD club to meet some of my friends, and on entering I went upstairs to the bar, there was already a crowd of people in the bar.

I immediately noticed Frankie, I clapt my eyes on her, and I couldn’t believe it. I thought… This is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

I really mean that!

I mean, I was utterly transfixed. And I made a beeline for her. And I wouldn’t let her go for the next month or two…I was haunting her day and night. She was in London working as a dental surgeon at the dental hospital in South London at the time and was in digs in west London. I really pursued her.

I brought her out to show her my big estate Brocket Hall… (laughs heartily) We saw each other for the next two years and, eventually, I proposed. And she accepted my proposal. So, I brought Frankie home to Kildare to meet my parents. And then we went down to Mayo, to Foxford, to meet her parents. And the rest, as they say, is history. (Diarmuid and Frankie would have eight children and are still happily married seventy five years later.)

It has been a long and varied carrier. I officially finished my career as the obstetrician gynaecologist here in Wexford hospital, I was there for twenty years.

And where I was compulsorily retired at the age of sixty five. When in actuality, I was at the height of my ability which was indeed a shame. That was nearly forty years ago.

So, I said to myself, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

I had a public clinic in the hospital. I saw Sadam Hussein’s daughters in the hospital, two of them. And when they would come to visit me in the hospital, there would be a platoon of highly armed soldiers stationed outside the door of the consulting room for fear of assassination.

I also treated the families of many of the extended Hussein household.

Anyway, one day, I was walking along the street and this gentleman came up to me, I didn’t recognise him. He said to me,

‘Doctor, I’m Mohamed Ali.’

I had no idea who he was, but I said, ‘Hello Mohamed, how are you?’

He said, ‘I was a patient of yours and you treated me and my wife with a very happy result.’

He said, ‘I want to reward you for your good medicine.’ He said, ‘Will you come with me to the souk and I’ll get you a present.’

The souk is the market place in the Arab countries.

Anyway, I said, ‘What?’ Then I did not want to insult a happy patient, so I said,’ Ok, Mohammed Ali, if you want to give me a present, I’m not adverse to it.

So, I said I’ll go along. So, we went along to the souk, myself and Mohammed Ali, as I thought, as that’s what he called himself.

So he said, ‘I think we will go to the carpet section. You will find a nice carpet there.’

And I was thinking to myself, how the hell am I going to bring a carpet back to Wexford… So, anyway, we got to the carpet section and Mohammed Ali goes up to one seller and he tells him to display his best goods. He was showing me huge Turkish carpets worth a fortune. And all I was thinking of was… ‘What’s small enough that I can bring home in my bag…?

’So, I said I only just want a small rug that I can take home with me and he said OK, and he showed me that rug there. (gestures to rug on the floor) I said, that’s ideal. I didn’t know or care one way or the other about its value. Anyway, the carpet was wrapped up and Mohamed Ali and I went out of the souk. Mohamed Ali said, ‘Goodbye and thank you again for your good doctoring.’

And he disappeared. And I never saw him again. But two years later, I was reading the paper and I saw an article about a notorious bomber who had been hung by the Kurds. The Americans handed him over to the Kurds and the Kurds hanged him. It was the Kurds he had massacred.

And I looked at the photograph and said…Oh my god, that’s the guy that gave me the carpet. The so called Mohammed Ali. Now exposed as the notorious Chemical Ali. And the Kurds hanged him for his crimes.

My father was not a heavy drinker, but he always had a barrel of whiskey, you know, like a small keg. I can still see him turning on the tap and pouring himself a glass. He was a moderate man, but at an occasion or celebration he could certainly hold his liquor.

When I first saw the first O’Driscoll bottles, to see them physically exist, I was very proud, having been a witness to the whole process that came before them. It was great to see everyone’s efforts come to fruition. My first thought was, wouldn’t the Old Man like to see this…

I have always been proud of belonging to the O’Driscoll clan. I consider myself lucky to be born with that name. It is an old name and we have been intrinsically woven into the fabric of this nation and scattered to the four corners of the globe.