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| In a new BBC documentary, the Country Girls writer tells how she travelled to Africa to research the plight of the young girls who were taken by a terror group |
Irish author Edna O’Brien admits smuggling £15,000 in her UNDERWEAR to Nigeria in a bid to find kidnapped girls
IRISH author Edna O’Brien has revealed how she smuggled £15,000 in her underwear into Nigeria last year during a mission to track down kidnapped Boko Haram schoolgirls.
In a new BBC documentary, the Country Girls writer tells how she travelled to Africa to research the plight of the young classmates snatched by the terror group from a boarding school in the village of Chibok four years ago.
In her 19th novel, she took a sharp turn from writing about Ireland to pen a version of the horrific abduction and rape of hundreds of teenage girls.
Edna, 88, told how she arrived at the Nigerian airport last year with thousands of pounds sterling in wads of cash all over her body to help her persuade locals into speaking about the abductions.
She said: “It was a lot of money, £15,000, I needed it to give to this person and that person — there were many people to be interviewed and to be rewarded.
“I thought I’d break up the money into little wads of two thousand. By now I’m full of money in various parts of my underwear, clothing and sleeves.
“Whether it was the hand of God or whether this woman in the airport just said, ‘let her go by’, I left the customs area out into the lobby with the £15,000.
“I would never do that again. It all got spent.”
'FEARFUL AND FEARLESS'
Bob Geldof, who features in the BBC documentary, Edna O’Brien: Fearful and Fearless, said he wasn’t surprised she risked her safety to make the dangerous journey in her ninth decade.
He said: “When she sees a grotesque atrocity like what happened to young girls in northern Nigeria, immediately she’s on alert, puts on her knapsack and hiking boots, and off she goes. This would be absolute grist to her mill.”
Speaking about her time in Nigeria researching her book Girl, Edna said: “It was the doctors, trauma experts, the NGOs and the nurses who told me some of the more awful detail.
“I did say to myself there and then that I have to write the book.
“Why would I go to Nigeria twice to write a book about horrific material unless I wanted to go into the zone of hell and yet believe I can come out?
“I was fearful and fearless.”
LEGENDARY PARTIES
In the documentary on her fascinating life, her sons Sasha and Carlo recall entertaining some of the most famous stars in the world at her legendary parties in London in the Seventies and Eighties.
Her eldest son Carlo said: “The parties were very large and raucous — in a good way — maybe 100 people, 50 certainly.
"We would serve the alcohol, we would be sent to top up people’s glasses.”
The writer recalls how her guests — a who’s who of popular culture in Britain — would stream through the doors of her Chelsea townhouse,
She said: “People used to flock, as it were, by oracle as if they had been summoned. They would come through the door, many taking cannabis or whatever people took in those days.
“Elizabeth Taylor and the great Michael Caine and Susannah York. Marlon Brando stayed in my kitchen, I would like to say, and not my bedroom — but he was a magnetic man. He was an amazing person to talk to.”
Her youngest son, Sasha, remembers getting an impromptu bedtime story from the world’s most famous popstar, Paul McCartney, at the height of Beatlemania.
He said: “One evening I remember my brother and I were in bed and my mum came in and said, ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ and I said, ‘Really, who?’ and it was Paul McCartney. So he came and sat on the bed and sang us a little song.
“I think he made it up. It was something like, ‘Edna O’Brien, she ain’t lying, da, da, na, na, na’.
“Anyway, the next day, we went to school and no-one would believe us.”
The writer also revealed the long-lasting trauma she endured after taking LSD with the famous radical psychologist RD Laing in a bid to get her creative juices flowing. She said: “RD Laing was a very riveting man and I was smitten with him. I asked him, he didn’t ask me, if he would give me LSD.”
But Edna said she remembers begging him to help her during her terror-ridden trip. She recalls: “I said, ‘Take me out of hell, bring me back’. It changed me.”
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