I was over on the Mainland Doing me act in some old civic hall It was the night before we stormed the hackney empire My adrenaline got pumpin' when the crowd demanded more I couldn't sleep a wink So I turned on to the BBC World Service Comin' at me from New Delhi Or some other long lost Colonial shore When a lovely English man came on the wireless With a gorgeous, sweet dulcet Portland placed clipped tone He announced that the winner Of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature
Was a British poet "Séamus Heaney from Londonderry", sez he As cool as cool could be So I roared out for tea and toasted muffins And a pair of hard-boiled eggs to calm my nerves You never claimed George Best nor Alex Higgins Nor you never claimed Bellaghy's other boys But that's the way things are upon the Mainland Where the Quarehawks are still s**ing The wee small birds' eggs dry. I was over on the mainland Doing me act in some old civic hall