Television
Wunder boy
Clive Gammon
Finbarr Nolan, seventh son of a seventh son from County Cavan (though purists object that since girl children intervene in his family pattern he is not the absolute real thing) has provided plentiful material for feature writers and telly men for a good three years now but the load is still rich. Man Alive (BBC2 last week) was justified in having another bash at him (in the non aggressive sense) because of the expansion of his faith-healing activities into England. The treatment, in fact, was far from aggressive, though there was early promise in punchy lines like "the boy with the Jesus manner and the Jaguar habits."
Yes, Finbarr is on his third Jag now, via a Jenson that got written off in a 100 miles an hour smash, and he has a neat New Testament beard. In Ireland he is still very big, operating on both sides of the Border, his way eased_by safe conducts from both the IRA and the UDA. He is still soft-spoken to the point of a somewhat repellent humility, as if he were half expecting a belt over the ear from the Christian brothers. When pressed by an interviewer, a perceptibly whining note comes into his voice. "I'm only twenty-one, he pleaded when it was urged that, since there were still plentY of the sick to be healed in Ireland, even in County Cavan, there seemed no special need to be shooting off to England. One of the great fascinations of Finbarr — and I find myself as fascinated as anyone — lies in the way he can glide over serious questioning in a manner that makes the questioner sound 1110 an arrant bully (not that he WO
pressed very hard on this occasion.) In turning away wrath he was even more effective than the decidedly up-market PR man he employs who was shocked at the notion that he was there selling Finbarr. ("Sell him? That would be a dreadful thing!") Why had he given up using Holy Water as an aid to his laying on of hands? "I was very young when I used it," said Finbarr with just a hint of the self-pitying tone into which he so easily slides. What apparently happened was that these days a lot of his clients tend to be nonCatholic, so, just as the mass manufacturers of sausages leave out pungent spices and herbs to provide a bland mix that offends no one, he has had to yield to the dictates of the market. The nun Whose knee he manipulated, though, looked as if she could have done with a drop. Maybe he could include it as an optional extra in future.
Not that any direct question of Payment arises. Patients are handed envelopes in which to place donations. It is suggested that these should be not less than El a session. Finbarr certainly had overheads to meet. There's the PR man already mentioned, a trained nurse whose job it is to pass a disinfectant-laden hand cloth to Finbarr as he passes from ulcer to ringworm to undiagnosed scab, and other helpers including his brother Brendan who cannot walk Properly. There are medical ex penses for Finbarr himself, too, unless he uses the NHS while in England. He can't afford to stay in bed, he told us, so if he's laid up he has a doctor in swiftly to shoot him full of penicillin.
It can be a worrisome occupation, faith healing. Early on, his London tour looked like being disastrous. Only twenty-five patients were queuing outside on the first morning and Finbarr sought refuge in the kitchen, sitting there sadly smoking. As he candidly explained, he needs at least 900 clients a day," to cover me exPenses."
But from the second week on they came flocking just as they had done in Ireland and there as no lack of satisfied customers to testify to Finbarr's faith healing Powers. There was the mother of an epileptic child who declared that the frequency of fits in her little boy had sharply declined since Finbarr laid hands on him, though he still took his prescribed drugs. And an angina patient described a cure also.
Other claims of cures didn't seem to hold out. There were the cases of the boy with his leg in an iron brace and the multiple sclerosis patient, both said to have been miraculously cured. Neither stood up to investigation. Finbarr and his agent declared that they themselves made no such claim.
As the script said, "you can't Prove it works, and you can't Prove it doesn't work." Not Without exhaustive and expensive tests run parallel with orthodox medical treatment, and medical ethics prevent comment by doctors. For the moment, then, Jaguar sales look like holding up.
Previous page
