Breadmaking, horses and handball are musician’s escapes

An important figure in the life of Mick Foster, and of Foster and Allen, is Mick’s wife Moyra Fraser – or more accurately Dr Moyra Fraser, who is the band’s musical director.

Although together 31 years, the couple only married four and a half years ago. It was a second marriage for both. Moyra was widowed at the age of just 22: her pilot husband died in a plane crash; Mick’s first marriage ended in divorce although he and his first wife remain on good terms.

“We have Jackie my son, he the oldest and he’s a welder. Denise is next, a music teacher; Louise is one of the twins, she’s an accountant, and Sandra, the other twin, is what would be known years ago as a draughtsman or a draughtswoman. And then I have two grandchildren. Daniel is a schoolteacher in Curraghmore and Sarah has the video company, SJF Productions.

“Then Daniel has a little lad Ted, who’s four. So I’m a great grandfather.”

Moyra, a multi-instrumentalist, is from Aberdeen: “We were on tour in Scotland and Tony and myself happened to go into this music shop in Aberdeen and she was inside demonstrating the accordions and keyboards. And we got chatting to her and she knew who we were, but she was also a producer on a radio show in Aberdeen on North Sound radio. So every time we were over we would be in doing interviews with her,” says Mick.

Eventually Moyra made the move to this country. In their relationship, she is the gadget geek: “I have no patience with technology and no great interest in it,” he declares, although he concedes that if he was bored, he might go online and type in Jimmy Shand’s name and listen to some of his recordings.

“Then I’m lazy as well as everything else. It could be that I need to do something like send an email or whatever, and I’d say to Moyra, ‘How do you do this?’ And she’d say, ‘Look it, I’ll do it’. And I wouldn’t say ‘No: show me’. She’d have it done while I’d be messing at it.”

Soda bread, and horses

While it’s mainly Moyra who cooks, Mick has his own area of expertise in the kitchen – bread-making: “An aunt of mine who only died in July, at 102, taught me how to make white soda bread. I’d praise myself for this: I’m a great man to make white soda bread.”

The couple enjoy eating out, especially Indian and Chinese.

Mick has always had a passion for horses and was a regular at races and point to points: “About 1988 I was going to buy a racehorse. And I said it to Tony and he said ‘sure we’ll buy it between us’.

The Wicklow-based trainer Francis Flood found that first horse for them: “And it destroyed us because she won 19 races and so every other horse you got then after that you thought was going to be as good, but they weren’t a patch. So we’ve been involved in horses ever since. We only got rid of the last one two months ago because she was no good.”

It was only while in his 30s that Mick learned how to ride properly: “I used to be terrified of riding, but I wanted to do it that badly. I went out to Anthea Rainsbury in Lynn and I told her I had only ever ridden asses and working horses.

“She was a great teacher. And she had serious patience – and I mean serious patience. So I wound up Joint Master of the Westmeath Harriers and I hunted with the Foxhounds, the Harriers, the Longford Harriers, the Streamstown Harriers and it was great.”

Due to the fact that he is now 75, Mick doesn’t ride any more: “If I got a fall I wouldn’t bounce!” he quips.

Age hasn’t, however, stopped him playing handball and he has also recently started playing pickleball in Milltown.