An evening spent in the company of Joe Mac is good for the heart and soul. The quintessential Corkonian can still leave you rolling in the aisles.

For all who recall the golden days of the 1960s’ showband era, Joe was the funniest man on the stages of Ireland.

He co-fronted the famous Dixies with Brendan O’Brien. They enjoyed massive popularity in those times. Many still remember the famous sign on the Dublin road into the southern capital: Welcome to Cork, home of The Dixies.

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Joe Mac is a Cork institution. Former Taoiseach, the late Jack Lynch, would always greet him with: “How are you, Mac”.

I meet up with Joe in the comfortable surroundings of the Blarney Woolen Mills Hotel bar. At 77, he has lost none of the humour and wit that brought smiles to thousands of dancers in former times.

Joe McCarthy became a member of a five-piece jazz band in Cork back in 1954, a band that would later become The Dixies.

“The other members were Sean Lucey, Theo Cahill, Chris O’Mahony and Michael Murphy, who was on piano (Michael left before they started on the showband scene).

“Jimmy Mintern was lead vocalist for a time. He worked with Lucas Electrical and was transferred to Sligo. We approached a local lad, Brendan O’Brien, who often came up and sang with us at local gigs.

“Steve Lynch joined around that time. He was a good showman. Finbar O’Leary came on board too. He was solid, not a bit mad like some of us. We were managed by Peter Prendergast who also owned The Arcadia Ballroom in Cork city.”

“Brendan was handsome, talented and the women loved him. All the fellas loved me. The girls loved to watch Brendan do the Buddy Holly songs and all that stuff and the fellas kept watching me and my antics. Jerry Lee Lewis had a big hit that time with Great Balls of Fire.

We did it in the band and I always introduced it like this: ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.’ I was a complete lunatic, I don’t know how people put up with me at all.”

Little Arrows topped the Irish charts for Brendan. Joe often came out front to perform comedy songs and others like Boney Moroney.

“Most of us were fond of the drink at the time. We knew every bar in the country where you would get drinks after hours and hotel night porters that would let us in.”

During the years when they were drawing massive crowds, Joe recalls a memory that still makes him laugh to this day.

“Band lads had a habit of scrawling on walls and doors of dressing rooms in the dance halls. We were playing in The Olympia in Waterford one night when we noticed a message left for us by another band that had played the venue a short time before.

“It read: ‘Fame and fortune hasn’t changed The Dixies… they’re still bastards.’”

The Dixies made the first of a number of trips to America in 1964.

“Bill Fuller brought us out and we played New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. We did a date in Carnegie Hall, the same year as The Beatles were in New York. They were calling me Ringo.

“In 1969, Bill Fuller arranged an audition for us in the Desert Inn in Las Vegas and we did 15 weeks there. Brendan Bowyer and Tom Dunphy advised us about the kind of music to play. I was very friendly with Tom, he was a very nice guy.”

Joe Mac and Brendan O’Brien left The Dixies in late 1971 and formed Stage 2, playing their first date in Pontoon, Co Mayo.

“We always had a great following in the west and we loved playing there,” recalls Joe.

Joe quit the music scene for a few years in 1979 and went into the restaurant business in Cork city, operating two at one stage.

Joe and his wife Ann had a family of four: three sons, Aiden, Joseph and Paul, and one daughter, Jennifer. A terrible tragedy befell the family on 24 November, 1981, when Aiden (20) and his wife Linda (19) died in a road accident near Urlingford on the way back from Dublin to Cork. Their car was in a collision with a lorry.

“They had a four-month-old baby at the time who was at home in Cork with us. We raised Amy. She is now married and has a daughter named Chloe, so we have a great-granddaughter as well as nine grandchildren.

“I got through the tragedy by putting it in the back of my mind. There was a family to look after. I’d cry some other time, that was how I tried to manage. When people ask me, I tell them there’s nothing you can take to ease the pain, you are going to have to suffer it, but every year it gets a little easier.”

Joe feels blessed to have been part of the showband era.

“We had amazing times. We reformed for a few shows here in Ireland in the mid-1980s. We even travelled to America and Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Brendan’s death in 2008 was a big blow. He had it all. He was a hell of a nice guy.”

Joe has a long-time residency every Sunday evening from 5.30pm to 7.30pm in Canty’s of Pembroke Street in Cork, along with Oliver Kane.

“When people from other counties chance to drop in and see me still at it, many of them say to me: “Jeze, Joe, we thought you were dead.”

We are glad to report Joe is very much alive and kicking, still making ’em smile after all the years, a real legend by the banks of the Lee. Happy Christmas, Joe.