Introducing the Wiley O'Reilly

INTRODUCTION

Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. So I believe is humour and that is what the following pages deal with; a larger than life rural general practitioner, his young, eager, naive assistant, and the recounting of the misadventures that befell them. As you read, if you behold the mischief, you will find yourself laughing out loud.

The redoubtable Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly will be known to readers of the Irish Country Doctor novels. In them he is a complex, flawed human being and his doings are either expressed through his own eyes or from the point of view of his young colleague, Doctor Barry Laverty. While there is humour in the novels there is, I trust, also the unfurling of the lives of some real people with the same hopes and fears of all of us, tears, little triumphs, disappointments, and laughter.

Not so with the template for Fingal, who began life with the full glory of the name Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde O'Reilly out of deference to Oscar Wilde. Fingal's brother Lars was initally named, Lars Porsena Fabius Cunctator—a mouthful that would choke a pig, the Marquis Of Ballybucklebo, John MacNeill began as Lord Fitzgurgle. One Presbyterian minister has the monicker of the Reverend MacWheezle. The author must have been influenced by the Dickensian Mr. Fezzywig, Mister Bumble the Beadle and their ilk.

The prototype for O'Reilly got his start as the Oliver Hardy to a straight-man narrator and their function was to poke fun at an all too serious profession, my own. Medicine. Between 1995 and 2001 their monthly doings appeared in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. Thank you publisher Doctor John Cocker and editor Simon Hally.

I chose to cast myself as the teller of the tales for the simple reason that by doing so I could make facetious asides without spoiling the flow of the stories. Once again. I am not the Barry Laverty of the novels.

These columns have been on my files unread for ten years.

Since I started a Facebook page a number of readers have posted their wishes to read the early columns. Here they are, warts and all, exactly in the sequence in which they first appeared. In reading them you will be able to see how Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly and his supporting cast evolved. You will read again in brief some of the story lines that have been developed into full sub-plots in the books. If you know the novels you'll find yourself muttering, "I remember that." You will in essence be indulging in a bit of voyeurism by peering into a writer's sketch book. Look as hard as you like.

There are inconsistencies between the characters here and in the novels and even within these columns and I'll send an autographed copy of one of my works to the first person who can post one glaring discrepancy on my Facebook.

But I hope that you'll not get too engrossed in looking for literary merit. All of this was written tongue in cheek with one goal only. To make the readers laugh. Please feel free to do so.