by Ronan Casey
The undertakers at Rev Ian Paisley’s funeral were not the first people to measure the late Northern Irish politician up.
Back in 1981 Mullingar man Patrick Fagan and his daughter Oonagh measured up Rev Paisley for the National Wax Museum, which Mr Fagan had founded a year earlier.
As he was getting the museum off the ground, Mr Fagan went around the country meeting people of note, including Paisley, to ask for their permission to be featured and if the answer was a positive, he set about measuring them up and taking all the essential details. Among these was the time-consuming, pains-taking task of constructing a mould of the subject’s face!
The meeting with Rev Paisley was not without its colourful moments, recalls Patrick’s daughter, Oonagh, who accompanied her late father on the trip to the Paisley’s and to most of his other measuring adventures alongside her brother, charity activist Brian Fagan.
Mr Fagan and his daughter left Mullingar for Belfast not knowing what to expect thanks to Rev Paisley’s ferocious reputation and his powerful performances on television screens. When they arrived at his Belfast home Oonagh remembers a totally different Paisley – one who was happy to chat to the “Freestaters” and who enjoyed the company of the Fagans for a full day.
“He was absolutely lovely, a real gent with an amazing presence,” Oonagh told Topic. “At the end of it he even gave me his bible which he signed for me and told me to ‘bring it to the nuns and see what they make of it’!”
The nuns, needless to say, weren’t impressed.
PAISLEY FOR TAOISEACH
Oonagh recalls the day vividly, and remembers her father, who passed away in 2004, asking Paisley if he ever could imagine himself as Taoiseach. His reaction was not what they expected.
“He told us he wouldn’t rule it out,” Oonagh remembers, laughing at the thought of such a question. “He was quite open to talking about politics on both sides of the border and was very open and receptive to what my father thought about what was happening in the North at the time.”
Also there was Rev Paisley’s son and two minders. There was a moment of high drama when Mr Fagan was applying the facemask to the future First Minister of Northern Ireland.
“It was normal practice to leave an opening in the mouth and nostrils with a straw to breathe through, but you had to close the airways for a couple of seconds and when we were moulding around his nose they thought we were trying to kill him!”
However, the drama was eased by Paisley himself who knew this was no far-fetched assassination attempt. As they relaxed afterwards in his kitchen with tea and sandwiches made by Rev Paisley’s wife, Eileen, the man himself was measured up from top to toe so his wax figure would be exact in every detail.
Oonagh remembers that afterwards Rev Paisley decided to give them some of his own clothes and vestments for the wax model, “for true authenticity.”
The wax figure went on display at the National Wax Museum at its old location on Parnell Street, Dublin and is now part of the new Wax Museum in Temple Bar.
