Off Me Block!

Tommy and Gillian's big day has finally arrived. As friends and family gather around them to celebrate, the fates throw one more twist in Tommy's direction. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

With his nuptials fast approaching Tommy recounts what he can of his Stag weekend in Britain while swamping pints with the author in a small pub in County Wexford. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy and the author are reunited in Rosslare, County Wexford just a couple of days before Tommy's second wedding. Having turned a new leaf since reuniting with Gillian, Tommy has quit the booze, the cigarettes too, and he regales the author with tales of his new fitness regime and diet. However, all is not what Tommy has it cracked up to be. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy concludes the tale of how he ended up as top billing in a swanky Killarney hotel. He talks of his rekindled romance with Gillian and invites the author to their upcoming nuptials down in County Wexford. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Everything is coming up roses for Tommy, the minor hiccup of being stood up on a date can't even diminish his spirits.  Indeed, it brings a chance encounter with an old flame. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

A death in the family knocks Tommy for six and brings to him the realisation that he may not always have been the victim.  Fate and chance have once again delivered the erstwhile butcher an encouraging hand. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy takes a stumble while out on a stag night with members of his new band, and struggling as he is to start over it's not long before he is slipping into his old habits. After a nightclub skirmish he meets someone who will change the course of the rest of his life. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Reunited with his onetime promoter, Donny Parker, Tommy is whisked away into the glamour and opulence of the music industry. Rescued from his lowest ebb, he prepares to return to the stage as a part of a musical trio. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy recounts his darkest days. Penniless, jobless and now homeless, the reversal in his fortunes is now complete. Ready to throw in the towel, Tommy is literally teetering on the brink when a well timed phone call changes his world once more. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy and the author reestablish contact after a hiatus of five months. Tommy's life has changed drastically and an invitation to meet up with him in a swanky Killarney hotel is to good to turn down. While meandering down memory lane yet again, Tommy dithers in his explanation of his sudden reversal of fortunes. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

After a hiatus of several months, Tommy and the author reestablish contact, and Tommy has some surprising news. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Fearful that his world is about to implode, Tommy jets out to Cyprus to rescue the situation. Desperate to save his millions, Tommy is confronted with the worst possible news when he meets his old friend, Deni. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

As Tommy scrambles desperately to deal with the repercussions of his almost 'tryst' with Dymphna, he must face a furious and violently inclined Janine. Losing his grip on things as his life crumbles in the aftermath, he is confronted by his children, who hope to steer him back onto the straight and narrow. A phone call to his local off license to place an order turns Tommy's world upside down and sends his life into a tailspin. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Having secured his millions safely away from Niko's' grasp, Tommy and Janine settle back into life in Ireland. The arrival of summer coincides with the birth of Tommy's new grandchildren and a reunion with his estranged wife Dymphna. A reconciliation which for Tommy, proves to be yet another undoing. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy and Janine settle into their life back in Ireland until a row about renovations to their rented house gets too heated and kitchenware begins to fly about the room. In a snot with Janine and her ever growing snootiness, Tommy storms out of the house and soon finds himself nursing a few pints in an old haunt while reminiscing about an ill fated camping trip of his teenage years. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Despite his best laid plans, things begin to rapidly fall apart for Tommy and Janine, forcing them to flee their new lives in Cyprus in order to protect Noel's legacy and Tommy's inheritance. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

A chance encounter in a new haunt with a local Nicossian places Tommy's inheritance from Noel in peril. Desperate to protect his birthright Tommy puts in place a desperate plan to save his skin. But before he can hightail it anywhere, he must fulfil a favor promised to one of his new Cypriot friends. Back on stage for the first time in over 30 years a shadow from his past throws his comeback into disarray. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy takes us on a trip to July 1991 when, thinking he is off on a lad's bender to Santa Ponsa, he finds himself in Pamplona, Northern Spain chasing a blonde yank by the name of Marilyn whilst running from the horned fury called El Diablo. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Still nursing pints of Guinness in his favorite local pub, Tommy recounts to the author the ins and outs of his decision to relocate back to Ireland. Having grown increasingly fed up with the boredom which comes with wealth, Tommy struggles to find a niche for himself out in Cyprus. He recounts a wonderful Cyprian Christmas and the happy surprises which made it magic for him, and reminded him once more, of the ever turning wheels of time. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Christmas 2013 finds Tommy back in Ireland, bored with Cyprus and struggling to adjust, he wants to spend at Christmas at home. Catching up with the author in a local pub he bemoans his new found fortune and relates the tale of his very first holiday as a child. Organised by a well-meaning church charity, The Happy Times Hostel proves to be anything but a holiday for the young Tommy. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

The author meets up with Tommy in his new villa in Cyprus to see how he is settling into his new life as a millionaire. While loving not having to ever work again, Tommy cannot shake off the frugality of his younger days when he and his brothers would help their mother put food on the table in any way they could. Tommy tells the hilarious tale of he and his friend's foray into 'Boxing the Fox'. Feel free to send me a voice message regarding the podcast or the books at the link below, I'd love to hear from you. https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy and the author part company with a promise to meet up once again for a 'natter'. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

The offer of a very generous redundancy package proves too tempting to resist for Tommy, but his marital ties to Dymphna sour the opportunity. Another bomb shell from his estranged father rocks Tommy's world and changes his life forever. In the concluding chapter of Book One, Steaks and Stout, it would appear that everything has turned up rosy for our Tommy as he saunters off into a new life. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

The years continue to whistle by for Tommy, and after the Trojan effort he put in back in 1996, he is now firmly back on his feet and very much a part of his kid's lives. Saphina and Gareth for their parts have grown to adulthood and as Tommy comes to grips with a new relationship, his kids have each both found the first stirrings of a love of their own. These affairs of course, will no doubt spell mayhem for Tommy. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy struggles to get back on his feet after climbing out of a bottle. Relying on the kindness of family to help him, he fights hard to resist the urge to murder his sister's insufferable kids, as they make life on a couch unbearable for him. A long vanished ghost from his childhood rocks up out of the blue and drops a bombshell which will change Tommy's life forever. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

The years are flying past for Tommy. We pick up with him in 1990 as the family prepares for Saphina's First Holy Communion. Having long since succumbed to his new reality, Tommy is enjoying the butchering life and looking forward to a family holiday on the Algarve. Italia '90, however, beckons and Tommy cannot resist the urge to be in the thick of it at Ireland's first World Cup Finals. Having splurged the family's holiday money on a trip to Palermo, Tommy breaks the news to Dymphna on Saphina's Communion day and discovers the true cost of his Italian dream. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy and Dymphna head off on their honeymoon, at loggerheads over the melee at their wedding reception. Tommy settles in to a life behind a butcher's counter. After a search of several months, the couple finally find place they can call their own in a brand new council estate in Ballybrack. As Tommy adjusts to his new domestic situation, an early arrival brings both [panic and delight. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy's plans for hitting the big time in London are scuppered when he falls afoul of Dymphna's parents.  An early morning rendezvous goes awry and Tommy dines on gunmetal for breakfast.  Forced up the aisle at gunpoint, his dreams of stardom crumble as he takes up his butcher's knives and mourns his now lost future. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

After recovering from a bout of pneumonia, Tommy is intent on getting back to his gigs in a Killiney hotel so that he can begin to woo Dymphna. Good news comes to him from across the water, record labels are interested in him, but his new found romance with Dymphna makes him think twice. A first meeting with his future in-laws goes awry thanks to vomit and dog shit and a glorious holiday in Santa Ponsa comes to a depressing end when a medicinal mishap is identified. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Tommy brings us on a whistle-stop tour of his years in secondary school, where he discovers his singing voice and falls in love for the first time. Convinced that he is going to be a global superstar he forgoes sitting his Leaving Cert and signs up with a local promoter who puts him to work in a posh Killiney Hotel. There he meets his new love and soon to be wife, Dymphna, who steals his heart and his virginity in the back of a Fiat Ritmo. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

The young Tommy Costelloe begins school, and he's not at all happy about it. Join him on his hilarious journey to First Holy Communion, his first cigarette, and then onwards to confirmation and his first dalliance with alcohol and a member of the opposite sex. In between these milestones he discovers pornography, much to the disgust of his 4th class teacher, Sister Shite Breath. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message

Meet Tommy Costelloe, a Dublin butcher with a colourful, charming and hilarious outlook on life. Tommy recounts some of his childhood adventures, the various unflattering nicknames he picked up over the years and how he almost crippled his childhood friend. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stephenduffy-author/message