Retired from his day job, Camillus still loves the stage

Kate Pendred

He may have given up the day job, after more than 45 years, but Camillus Egerton from The Downs, Mullingar, is still going strong on the entertainment scene and is in the thick of organising this year’s Carers Concert in the Greville Arms Hotel, Mullingar, at the end of March.

Camillus took to the stage with his parents and siblings when he was nine years old and is still going at the age of 66 with Heads Up, a band featuring himself, his sister Geraldine Delamere and neighbour Martin Monaghan. He started working for the HSE in April 1980 and retired late last year.

“I wouldn’t swap a month of my time. I had a fantastic career, workwise and music wise, and it is great to be still at it at my age,” he declared when he took time out of meetings in advance of the Carers Concert to talk to the Westmeath Examiner about his work on and off stage.

Camillus joined the HSE as a catering attendant at St Loman’s Hospital, Mullingar. “There were almost 900 patients in St Loman’s at that time, it was huge, and the staff and patients were great,” he recalled. “We used to play for them on a regular basis, St Patrick’s weekend, Easter, Christmas concerts and in the summer,” he said.

He then moved to the General Hospital, Mullingar, as porter on wards and then to the maintenance department, where he was responsible for medical waste collection and disposal of confidential patient documents.

“It was a lovely job and I enjoyed going to work every day, and I miss it,” Camillus said. He is grateful that he has got to retirement. “My father, Joe Egerton, worked for the HSE for years too, but he didn’t live to see retirement,” he said.

It was his father who encouraged Camillus to go for the HSE job. “He came home one evening and said, ‘there’s a job going in St Loman’s, you should apply’. Camillus had already applied for a job in the co-op on the Green Road, which Marius O’Sullivan, who worked there, had told him about and which was offering £5 more than the HSE. However, Camillus took his father’s advice and went for the pensionable Monday to Friday job. “I took it, and I never looked back,” he said.

Joe and May Egerton had seven children and they all played instruments and sang, except for Dermot, who took up football instead, Camillus said. They gigged in pubs, at weddings and on the cabaret scene.

“Celine Power on the Auburn Road was our first music teacher – the piano and the piano accordion. Our parents wanted to nurture us musically and we would be bundled into the back of the car every Saturday morning and dropped off for lessons, and I loved it,” Camillus said.

Their maternal uncle, Joe McEvoy, was also an influence. He loved music and bought a piano accordion he dropped off to them on his way home from work one night, and “that was the start of it”.

Their first gig was in Mary Lynch’s pub, where they played every Friday night. “We’d get a bag of Tayto and a large bottle of lemonade. A lovely old man, Paddy Delamere, used to come up and play the fiddle with us,” Camillus recalled. Then they started getting gigs in The Roadhouse, Coyne’s of Killucan, Cunningham’s of Riverstown, and The Beehive. They also travelled around to Fleadh Cheoils. Emigration took four of the family away, to Australia, the US, and the UK, and the “little band came to an end”.

“I had a steady job and stayed,” Camillus remarked.

Camillus has fond memories of “15 fantastic years” with The Professionals. “Some of them had played with Joe Dolan and the Drifters, The Times and The Swarbriggs. “Des Doherty was on keyboard, Jimmy Horan on bass, me on drums and vocals, Mick Fox, a porter in the Greville at the time, played acoustic guitar, and John Kiernan was on the electric guitar,” he said. He has fond memories of playing in Harry’s of Kinnegad, where the manager, Eamonn Gillane, and the staff “were brilliant”.

“I used to finish work in St Loman’s, rush home, wash, change and be back out to gig,” he recalled.

When The Professionals retired, Camillus formed Heads Up with Geraldine and Martin. They play at weddings, social dances, pubs, birthday parties. “I love it, especially now that I have retired and don’t have to be up early,” Camillus said.

Camillus is 66 years old but looks a lot younger. He never smoked or drank and kept fit by playing football, swimming and cycling.

He met his wife of over 40 years, Anne Marie, a native of Finea, in The Horizon Ballroom in Mullingar at a Gena Dale Hayes and The Champions gig.

Camillus had always loved country music and he has been to Nashville twice. His love of it was born in Kilroy’s of Pearse Street, Mullingar, where he had a holiday job while in school.

“I used to cycle in from The Downs on a bike I bought from Mickey O’Rourke’s bike shop at the top of Mount Street. They (Kilroy’s) had a stand in the middle of the floor with country music. I bought my first LP, Merle Haggard, for £2.25. I bought two of them and I learned every Merle Haggard song off them,” he remarked.

Camillus is now focused on the Carers Concert, the running of which he and Chris Loughrey took over when Billy Mac retired. “Billy contacted me 18 or 19 years ago and asked me to do a spot at the concert, and I am delighted to have been involved in every concert since, bar one,” he said.

Billy stepped back two years ago and it was feared that the annual concert would go. “I said it is a great concert and I am not going to let it stop. I decided to take it on, with Chris Loughrey.

“We first spoke with the Carers Association and they were thrilled it was going ahead,” he explained.

Camillus and Chris have been running the concert for two years now and are all set for this year’s concert on Tuesday March 31, in the Greville Arms Hotel.

“We have a huge line up of artists again. We could put 50 acts on, but unfortunately we can’t have all of them, but those we can’t have this year, we can have next year,” he said.

Tickets are €20 each and are available from the Greville Arms Hotel or Family Carers Ireland at Harbour House, Harbour Street, Mullingar, 044 934 7922, or contact Chris on 087 252 5379 or Camillus on 086 815 7260. All funds raised go to the Carers Association.