Simon Delaney on losing his parents: "I was 26 and an orphan"

The multi-hyphenate Simon Delaney always has a few plates spinning, not least a raft of upcoming film and TV roles. He talks to Donal O'Donoghue about the forces that shaped him, the joys of fatherhood and publishing his first novel.

"I went to college to study to be an accountant," says Simon Delaney of how it all might have been so different for the actor, writer, radio host and stage producer and most recently, published novelist.

"Can you imagine me as an accountant?" he asks, arching an eyebrow and leaving a theatrical space that I’m unable to fill. In any case, Simon is already there. "The family would be living in penury under a bridge somewhere. We’d have a lot of craic, but we wouldn’t have an arse in our trousers. The thing is that four months into the accountancy course, I fell asleep during a lecture on taxation. I saw that as a sign. I walked out and didn’t look back."

Even so, I suspect that if the 54-year-old Dubliner put his mind to it, he would have made a decent numbers cruncher. Not only can the man sell sand in the desert, his work ethic is prodigious: hosting a Sunday afternoon show on lyric fm and a sheaf of acting jobs, including Guy Ritchie’s new series Young Sherlock ("hence the long hair"), the film Blue Moon (directed by Richard Linklater) in which he plays lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, and the true-life Sky drama Lockerbie, opposite Colin Firth.

His favourite film is Glengarry Glen Ross, a morality yarn set in the cutthroat world of real estate sharks. And not, I suspect, just because it stars his favourite actor, Jack Lemmon. It taps into something familiar. "The hustle of the self-employed is real" he says, offering the odyssey of getting his novel published as Exhibit A.

We meet at a café in the north Dublin village of Lusk, home to Delaney and his family for 19 years. I see him at a far table, tapping away at his laptop, mug of tea beside him as well as the remains of a sausage sandwich. It’s mid-morning and Simon has been up since before 6am: "I figured I’d get here early and do some work on my next novel" says the father of four.

We’re meeting to talk about his novel, Watching Over You (a breathless thriller about Nazi art thieves, enterprising restaurateurs and shady businessmen) but also there’s his relatively new gig on lyric fm (he sits in the Sunday afternoon seat that his broadcasting idol, Gay Byrne, once occupied) and he has just been nominated for an RTS Northern Ireland Best Actor TV award for his performance in The Woman in the Wall.

"Ah, there you are!" he says, putting the laptop to one side and getting down to business. Simon can talk. About anything. Listening back to the interview, which rolls out against the soundscape of the bustling café, my fingers struggle to keep up. He says he's a Virgo. Likes to keep lists. Is that significant? No idea.

He talks about the legacy of losing both his parents at a young age, of his need to be around positive people, of his love of acting and how his family are everything. He says he cries at least once a week, especially when his lyric fm playlist recalls memories of his folks, but at the end of the day it’s all about keeping the show on the road. "Someone's got to pay for the Pringles," as he puts it.

We need your consent to load this Instagram contentWe use Instagram to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

But first, the novel. He started back when he was still working weekends with Ireland AM on Virgin Media TV. Initially, it was to be a screenplay based on a film treatment hacked out some 25 years ago. "I realised it was too big and figured it might make a novel," he says. Six weeks later, it was finished: 125,000 words. He tracked down an editor who sent him 90 pages of notes. After ticking that box, he was told he needed a literary agent. "I already have three agents," he says.

Cue a gazillion mails before he secured an agent in Colorado; next stop a publisher (another gazillion rejections) and finally, five years after typing the first line, his book was born.

"My mam, Margaret, died when I was 18 and my dad, Billy, died seven years later, so I was 26 and an orphan," he says. "I have two sisters and a brother and we’re still very close. As I was the actor sat at home chasing work. I became the cook. In that situation, you very quickly learn how to knock something together from nothing."

We need your consent to load this Instagram contentWe use Instagram to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

He still misses his folks. "My mam was my best friend," he says. "She was only in my life for 18 years and I was at her bedside just before she passed away. I was a real mammy’s boy, clung to her apron strings. I couldn’t do anything wrong, even though I did plenty wrong (haha!) At four of years of age, I walked home from school because I wanted to go home to my mam. She was a great cook and I think I got into cookery through osmosis or maybe I was just so hungry!"

Delaney has always seemed like a man on a mission, driven by forces both practical and other less tangible imperatives. "I’m now four years older than my mother was when she died at the age of 50," he says of a milestone that has haunted him down the years.

"I’ve outlived my mother and that is not the natural order of things. My dad was just 69 when he died. Those were rough years. My dad took early retirement after mam died and it was the worst thing he could do because he just sat at home, grieving for the main part. My sister would come in and find him staring into the fire. It was the first time I ever saw someone whose heart was broken. Losing your parents at a young age recalibrates all that follows."

We need your consent to load this Instagram contentWe use Instagram to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

Simon met his wife, Lisa, on a local production of Cabaret 25 years ago. "The company was called Cameron Musical and Dramatic Society, which gave us the name of their first child," he says. Being a dad was always something he wanted. "I love being a dad and I always wanted a big family, ah Jesus yeah," he says.

"I even wanted a big Italian wedding." Like in The Godfather? "We had five groomsmen, five bridesmaids, 250 guests, a 14-piece big band (a nod to his dad, who played in one) and our wedding booklet was designed like a Broadway playbill, a nod to the life we were living.

"The week that Cameron was born, we had just moved into our new house. I was doing Stones in his Pockets at the Gaiety and filming another show during the day. It was mayhem."

Four children, aged from 8 to 18, is also mayhem, not that he would have it any other way. "I can now hear myself becoming my father, shouting various things at them like 'Don’t put your hand in there!’," he says. Other memories are stirred by his children too.

"My parents never saw me act professionally," he says. "They never saw me in the West End, in any of the Irish theatres or in films or on television or heard me on radio. That really doesn’t bother me, but the other things do. They weren’t at my wedding. They didn’t get to see their grandchildren. Them not being there at those family moments really breaks my heart. Now I have this ritual whenever I’m about to go on stage where I’ll always touch the back wall of the theatre and say a little prayer asking my folks to be with me."

We need your consent to load this Instagram contentWe use Instagram to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

He laughs, before taking a sly pull of his vape. Beneath the bonhomie, he must be pedalling like crazy. Occasionally, something’s gotta give, like when he jettisoned his gig with Ireland AM in late 2022. "I was working seven days a week for 29 weeks as I was doing eight shows a week at the Gate with The Snapper and my weekends were on TV with Ireland AM," he says. This year, for the first time in yonks, he won’t be helming a Christmas panto.

Unsurprisingly, he believes that his novel, with its screenplay roots, could work as a film or TV series. "One hundred per cent," he says. "As part of the publishing deal, I’ve retained the film rights, so yes, absolutely it can be a movie. And I know that from over 25 years reading screenplays."

In any case, he has already mapped out his second book, a historical yarn that starts in late 19th Century Dublin and ends up a few years later in St Louis, Missouri. It is loosely based on his own family tree (and inspired by his genealogical journey with the TV show Who Do You Think You Are?) and he is confident that he’ll have it wrapped sooner than later.

He has crunched the numbers, and right now things are looking up on several fronts. But if he has to hustle to pay for the Pringles, well he knows that road well too.

Watching Over You by Simon Delaney is published by Rare Bird Books.