Otto Skorzeny: The Bond Villain That Never Was

Otto Skorzeny, SS Poster Boy

He stood 6’4”, had shoulders like an oak beam, and bore a scar that ran from his left eye to his chin. The British called him the most dangerous man in Europe. He was Hitler’s favourite commando. He rescued Mussolini from his traitorous countrymen before they could hand Il Duce over to the Allies. In a glider. From a mountaintop.

This infamous warrior’s post-war years were no less colourful, with key roles in such Bond-esque gatherings of super-villainy as ODESSA, the Nazi old-boys’ club made famous by Frederick Forsyth, and the Paladin Group, a network of mercenary training schools and armies-for-hire. In Argentina, he saved Eva Perón from assassination, had an affair with her under the president's nose, and left South America with the $800,000,000 fund that Martin Bormann had siphoned from the Reich’s own coffers as it collapsed at the end of the war.

Any brief biography of SS Lieutenant Colonel Otto ‘Scarface’ Skorzeny reads like a character sketch from an Ian Fleming novel. A legend in his own lifetime, his exploits are spoken about in the kind of reverent tones normally reserved for the greatest of combat heroes, not an accused war criminal who escaped custody before he could fully face trial. But if Skorzeny’s resume reads a little too much like a far-fetched adventure story, it might be for good reason. If this real life Bond villain seems like he stepped from the pages of fiction, perhaps it’s because his legend is almost entirely that: fiction.

So much of Skorzeny's life is tangled up in half-truths and fabulous exaggerations it's perhaps inevitable that he has become a darling of not only World War II enthusiasts, but also of conspiracy theorists. The fantastical tales to be found online include that he faked his death in Spain in 1975 and reached the ripe old age of ninety whilst sunning himself in Florida, keeping in touch with everyone from Josef Mengele to Adolf Hitler. And there's the one about the little German boy Skorzeny helped smuggle into America, George Scherff Jr, son of George Scherff Sr, lab assistant to none other than Nikola Tesla, and family friend of both the aforementioned Bormann and Mengele. The conspiracy theorists posit that young Herr Scherff later changed his surname to Bush and became the 41st president of the United States.

Given the stories that surround Skorzeny, it's a wonder he didn't live out his days in a hollowed-out volcano along with Blofeld and Scaramanga. So where is the line between truth and fiction for this "Commando Extraordinary"?

Otto Skorzeny was born to a respectable middle class Viennese family in 1908. He was an unexceptional student, though gifted in languages; he was fluent in French from childhood, and mastered many other tongues throughout his life. While attending university, he earned his Schmiss – a fencing scar – while in a student tournament. There exists a photograph of Skorzeny, lined up in two rows with his fellow combatants, a tankard of beer in hand, his face and hands smeared with his own blood.

When military history buffs discuss Skorzeny so respectfully, they tend to focus on his daring strategies, his bravado, his innovations in commando tactics. They rarely address the most disquieting aspect of this anti-hero: his politics. Otto Skorzeny was not drafted into the German army, he was not destined for the Waffen-SS through an accident of birth. In reality, he was a committed Nazi, joining the Austrian wing of the party in 1931, as well as becoming a Brownshirt. He played a role in the 1938 Anschluss, Austria's fall to Germany, saving President Wilhelm Miklas from execution.

When Europe erupted in war in September 1939, Otto Skorzeny was working as a civil engineer in Vienna. Feeling such a mundane existence was not for him, Skorzeny attempted to enlist in the Luftwaffe as a pilot, but was refused due to his age and bulk. Here is where history and legend part ways.

According to some accounts, including Skorzeny's own memoirs, the Austrian then became part of Hitler's bodyguard regiment. Skorzeny's superiors quickly noted his daring and guile, and so promotion followed promotion, and soon he was at the front line. He embarked on a series of exploits around Europe, including singlehandedly forcing the surrender of more than fifty Yugoslav soldiers and officers. This brief but spectacular period of active combat was brought to a halt by a piece of Soviet shrapnel, though if Skorzeny is to believed, he refused all medical treatment but a bandage and a glass of schnapps before returning to the fray. The injury got the better of him, however, and he was soon evacuated to Berlin. Upon recovery, he was summoned before the Führer and tasked with the mission that would cement his legendary status: the rescue of Benito Mussolini from the Italian forces that had deposed him.

Leading a combined force of SS officers and commandos in Operation Oak, Skorzeny would locate Il Duce and liberate him from his captors. Months of reconnaissance eventually lead Skorzeny to the Campo Imperatore hotel on top of the Gran Sasso mountain. There, he and his men landed ten gliders on the cliff edge and overcame the Carabinieri who acted as guards, all without a single shot being fired. Skorzeny himself found Mussolini in room 201, announcing, "Duce, the Führer has sent me to rescue you!"

Skorzeny became an immediate sensation, poster boy of the SS propaganda machine, darling of the Reich. Even Winston Churchill expressed begrudged admiration for the Austrian's daring. Skorzeny's reputation became such that the mere suggestion of an assassination plot by him was enough to confine General Eisenhower to his quarters for the duration of Christmas 1944.

Skorzeny's fame continued to grow after the war. Having escaped American custody and been de-Nazified by the German government, he was free to carve out his life as an international man of intrigue, spending time in Perón 's Argentina, Franco's Spain, and most surprisingly of all, a decade in the Republic of Ireland, where he became much sought after in Dublin's elite social circles while raising prize-winning sheep. That is where my novel, Ratlines, finds him: up to his neck in conspiracy and murder under the protection of the Irish government.

So that is the legend. This Otto Skorzeny could have held James Bond suspended over a pool full of hungry piranha while holding the world to ransom with stolen atomic bombs. But what is the truth? Almost inevitably, it is less exotic.

According to the research of military historians such as Robert Forczyk, Skorzeny's advancement through the ranks of the Waffen-SS had more to do with handshakes in bierkellers than feats on the battlefield. In reality, Skorzeny spent the first years of the war as a mechanic, maintaining combat vehicles at a safe distance from the action. That Soviet shrapnel that sent him back to Berlin was actually a severe case of stomach colic. It was a loud mouth and a great deal of bluffing, rather than skill as a soldier, that won him a seat on a glider bound for Gran Sasso and Mussolini's prison.

It was indeed true that Skorzeny had been tasked with reconnaissance for the mission, but he carried out the task poorly, resulting in more than one false start, and several injured Kameraden due to badly mapped terrain on which the gliders landed. By blind luck, Skorzeny, who was supposed to be along purely as an observer, was in the glider that crash landed by the hotel first. Eye witnesses describe Skorzeny's circuit of the building, dodging guard dogs while he tried to find a way in, as bordering on comical. When met with a wall of around six feet in height, Skorzeny was unable to scale it, and had to climb on the back of a subordinate to reach the other side. He defied orders by running into the hotel and claiming Mussolini for himself, then insisted he travel to the Wolf's Lair to present the Italian to Hitler in person.

Desperate for some morale-boosting propaganda, Heinrich Himmler seized on Skorzeny's version of events, going so far as to stage a filmed re-enactment of the raid. Emboldened by the success of Operation Oak, Skorzeny accepted further daring missions, most of them resulting in abject failure as his true limitations became clear. Regardless, over the years and decades that followed, Skorzeny wove a shroud of mystery and danger around himself, eagerly lapped up by journalists, historians and politicians, garnering wealth and glamour along the way. It is possible the Austrian came to believe his own lies, seeing himself truly as the great warrior he claimed to be.

It is almost as disappointing to find our super-villains aren't quite so super as it is when our super-heroes let us down. In the end, Otto Skorzeny has proven to be no more real than Auric Goldfinger or Dr Julius No. But even if the legend is built on sand, the man Skorzeny pretended to be remains one of the great villains of the twentieth century.

Otto Skorzeny appears in my novel Ratlines, priced for a limited time at $1.99 for Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WL0JWE

The Green Lady: A Story for Hallowe'en

To mark the 31st of October, I'd like to share a short story I wrote almost six years ago, before my first book was published, before I had an agent, even. I never quite finished it at the time, but last night I decided to dig it out and polish it off.

The story is inspired by a river and surrounding woods close by where I grew up in Armagh, Northern Ireland, a stretch of land called Dobbin's Folly, known locally as just The Folly. There was a legend when I was a kid about the Green Lady who lived in the ruins of the Old Mill, who would snatch children away if they played alone by the river. Let me introduce her to you...

THE GREEN LADY

by Stuart Neville

Billy dipped his bucket in the water as the bright dart of a stickleback flashed against silt and pebbles. Too quick, it zipped past, lost amid the blinding patterns on the stream’s surface. The sun warmed Billy’s shoulders through his Starsky & Hutch T-shirt.

‘You near had him, then.’

Billy fell back at the sound of the voice. The bucket slipped from his fingers and the stream’s plucky current snatched it away.

The old lady resting on the opposite bank clucked. ‘Ah, now you’ve lost your bucket too.’

The orange plastic vanished around a bend in the stream. He’d only got it a couple of weeks ago when he went on a Sunday School trip to Portrush.

‘That’s a pity,’ the old lady said, drawing her green shawl around her shoulders.

Billy wondered how she didn’t melt. The telly said it would be the hottest day of the summer, and here she sat with a shawl and big layered skirts. Her shoes looked funny too; more like the kind of boots the soldiers wore when they patrolled the streets.

The old lady smiled. ‘Have you no one to play with today?’

Billy shielded his eyes from the sun and shook his head.

‘Speak up, wee man. Don’t be shy.’

Swiping dust from his jeans, Billy got to his feet. ‘I called for my friend, but he wasn’t in. His Daddy took him to Belfast.’

‘Have you no other friends?’ She tilted her head as she studied him, her grey-green eyes picking over every bit of him.

Billy sucked on his lower lip and looked at the baked earth beneath his feet. His Mum had taken him out of the Drelincourt School where all the other kids on the estate went and made him go to the big school in town. Because he was smarter than the others, she said. Now he had no one on the estate left to play with.

The old lady clucked and smiled, showing her stained teeth. Midges swarmed around her head, mingling with the loose silver strands of her hair to make a shifting halo in the sunlight. Somewhere in the trees a bird called. Billy looked around him. Down here at the water’s edge he couldn’t see the playground up above, or the houses beyond.

‘I remember when this was a real river,’ the old lady said. ‘It stretched from yon houses up there, all the way back to the houses on the other side. It cut this big bowl through the earth. But there were no houses then. Except mine.’

Billy looked downstream, wondering if the bucket might have snagged on some rocks. He should go after it.

‘I'm going to get—’

‘It’s gone, wee darling. Sure, it’ll be halfway to the sea by now.’

Billy knew that was nonsense. He wasn’t sure how far away the sea was from the Folly River, but he remembered it took the bus ages and ages to get to the seaside. His Mum had always told him to be polite to old people, so he didn’t want to argue. Instead he chewed on his lip and picked dirt from under his fingernails.

‘Where’s your house?’ he asked.

‘Oh, just down the river a wee bit,’ she said. ‘The Old Mill.’

Billy stopped picking at his fingernails. ‘No one lives there. It's got no roof or doors or anything.’

‘Is that right?’ She laughed and slapped her thigh, the sound muted by the layers of skirt. ‘And how do you know that?’

Billy went back to picking at his nails.

‘Have you been there?’ she asked.

He scuffed at the light brown earth with his worn plimsolls.

‘Does your Mummy let you play there?’

Billy raised his eyes to meet hers and shook his head.

‘I bet she doesn’t.’ Her smile dripped away. ‘Did you go on a dare?’

‘Yeah,’ Billy said.

‘And did you get scared?’

Billy shrugged.

Her smile returned. ‘Did you cry?’

Billy's cheeks grew hot. Sweat licked at his forehead and made the thin cotton of his T-shirt stick to his back. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his forearm.

‘No need to be ashamed, love. Sure, everyone gets scared.’ She pointed over Billy’s shoulder. ‘Even Michael there, and he’s a big boy.’

Billy spun on his heels to see a boy, about twelve, sitting cross-legged in the dirt. ‘Hello,’ Michael said.

He wore strange clothes, like the olden days photos Billy’s Grandad kept in a big book. A plain jacket and short trousers, with a collarless shirt. ‘What are you staring at?’ he asked.

‘Be civil, Michael,’ the old lady called from across the stream. ‘This wee man needs someone to play with.’

‘He’s too young to play with me,’ Michael said, scowling.

‘Michael’s a bold boy,’ the old lady said. Billy turned back to her, and his tummy fluttered up to his throat. Another boy sat next to her, and a girl just behind, peeking over her shoulder. ‘Never did learn his manners,’ she said. ‘Not like wee Kevin here.’

Kevin looked about Billy’s age, but his clothes were different. Not like Michael’s, but still strange. Still somehow … wrong. Billy couldn’t think why.

‘Hello,’ Kevin said. He lifted his small hand and waved.

Billy waved back.

‘You can play with me,’ Kevin said. He smiled.

Billy smiled back.

The little girl peered over the old lady’s shoulder, her blonde hair catching the sunlight. ‘What games do you know?’ she asked.

Billy hesitated for a moment before counting on his fingers. ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosies, Hide and Seek, Tig—’

‘I like Tig.’ She stepped out from behind the old lady. Her clothes looked normal, not olden days clothes, and Billy knew her face.

He thought hard about it for a few seconds before he remembered where from. The image formed in his mind. Mum at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, crying. Was it last summer or the one before? Billy had climbed up into her lap and looked at the newspaper while Mum wrapped her arms around him. Her cheek was warm and damp against his neck. She smelled of apples.

There was a picture of a little girl in the newspaper. Billy traced the headline with his finger, saying the words out loud. He didn’t get very far before he had to ask his Mum what some of them said.

‘Community,’ she said.

‘Shocked,’ she said.

‘Disappearance,’ she said.

The girl walked to the water’s edge and put her hands on her hips. ‘Who’ll be It?’

Michael sprung to his feet. ‘Me!’

The old lady laughed. ‘So, you’re not too big to play after all?’

Michael grinned.

Billy’s heart drummed in his chest. He looked back up the bank to where the trees heaved and whispered. The houses of Ballinahone stood just beyond them, and Orangefield, where he lived, just beyond that. Mum would have lunch ready soon. Jam sandwiches. Playschool would be on TV, and cartoons a bit later. Scooby-Doo. He never missed Scooby-Doo.

But he could play Tig for a little while. Mum might be cross if he was late for lunch, but he’d say sorry, and she’d give him his jam sandwiches anyway.

Michael crouched, his hands forming claws, bearing his teeth. ‘Ready or not,’ he said.

A dizzy giggle escaped from Billy’s stomach. ‘Wait,’ he said, and hopped across the river, using the stepping stones. When he got to the other side, another boy and girl were waiting. They looked like brother and sister, and wore clothes like Michael’s. But Billy had stopped caring about clothes, and tingled with the excitement of the coming chase.

The old lady hunkered down so Billy could see the red lines around her green irises, criss-crossed and snaking through the yellow. She brought her hand to his cheek and her skin felt like paper.

‘Better run,’ she said.

An animal howl came from the other side of the stream, and the children squealed as Michael took it in one leap. They scattered into the trees and Billy bolted after them. He heard Michael’s ragged laughter behind him and churned his arms and legs, ignoring the whipping of branches.

‘I’m going to get you!’

Billy chanced one look over his shoulder and saw Michael’s teeth bared, his tongue lolling. Spit slopped from the corners of his mouth. Billy laughed and ducked to the left between two trees whose branches intertwined to form a low tunnel. He had to keep his head down, his knees bent, to fight his way through. Branches crunched behind him and Billy heard Michael swear as he got tangled up in leaves and twigs.

Billy burst out onto an open path, one he didn’t recognise, and broke into a sprint through the clear air. Laughter bubbling in his chest, the breeze on his cheeks.

He didn’t know how far he’d run before he had to stop. His chest heaved, making him bend over, his hands on his knees, breathing deep until the dizziness passed. His thighs quivered with spent energy, his nerves jangling in the same way they did when he went on the Cyclone ride at Barry’s amusements in Portrush.

Billy listened.

Quiet all around, not even the chirp of a bird. He turned in a circle. There, off in the distance, he could see the rooftops of Ballinahone and Orangefield. Miles away, it seemed. How could it be so far? The Folly wasn’t that big.

‘You’re a fast runner for such a wee boy.’

Billy gasped and spun around.

The old lady stood there, a few feet along the path, her shawl still wrapped around her.

‘How fast can you run?’ she asked.

‘Dunno,’ Billy said.

‘Bet you can run faster, anyway.’

The voices of the other children rang through the trees, echoing along the path. The old lady’s eyes sparkled.

First Kevin, then the girl erupted from the dense growth on either side. They charged past the old lady, looking back over their shoulders at Billy, smiling, laughing. Then the other children, all shouting, telling him to come on, come on, run, run, run!

From behind, Michael’s hand slammed into Billy’s shoulder, almost knocking him off his feet.

Michael shouted, ‘You’re it!’ as he tore past.

His laughter receded along the path.

The old lady reached out her hand to Billy.

‘You heard him,’ she said. ‘You’re it. Come on. You can catch them. A fast runner like you. Run as fast as you can.’

Billy stood quite still, watching her.

‘Come on,’ she said, rippling her outstretched fingers.

Billy looked back towards the distant rooftops, barely visible above the trees. So far away.

‘You’ve no one to play with back there,’ the old lady said. ‘Come on with us. You’ll have so much fun.’

Billy took small steps closer to her. He let her take his fingers in hers.

‘Come on,’ she said again. ‘Let’s catch them. Let’s run.’

She took off, dragging Billy after her. So quick, her strange olden days boots barely touching the ground. Billy ran too, faster, until he kept pace with her, them faster, pulling her along behind him.

Up ahead, the other children, laughing and laughing.

And more, dozens now, all calling his name, all shouting can't catch me, can't catch me.

Deeper into the trees until he didn’t know where he was, until it he could no longer see the sky above, until he couldn’t have found the path home if he looked for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years. Still he giggled, the old lady’s hand in his.

So far away now, so far he would never hear his Mum's voice, no matter how loud and how long she called. Even if she searched all day and all night, she would never find him, not out here, not so deep and lost among the trees.

Billy felt like he could run for ever and ever and ever.

My Poor Neglected Blog...

This poor blog. This dusty little cranny of the interwebs. It crosses my mind every now and then, and I think about how I should post something now and again. I haven't written anything here since March, which is a bloody disgrace. Really, I should start posting, or just get rid of the damn thing.

So here's what I'm thinking...

I should expand the scope of this blog beyond it's primary purpose - posting about my books and the writing life - and look at the things that excite me in the rest of my dull little universe. Of course, among those would be my family. Having a wife, two very young children, and a rather boisterous dog, I have plenty to talk about. But I think that's more what Facebook is for.

The things I find interesting, and might want to talk about, include (but are not limited to):

Beer

I really, really like beer. If I wasn't already spoken for, I would marry beer. It would be a beautiful wedding. My interest has expanded beyond casual weekend supping over the last four or five years, largely inspired by my travels in the USA, tasting the variety and scope of local brews in every city and state. It's been a struggle to find interesting beers back home, but I've discovered a few decent outlets, as well as some terrific local brewers. My wife now has to endure me blathering on about bitterness, hops, mouth feel and such. Now you get to endure the same. If I revive this blog, expect beer reviews, rants against rubbish pubs, and maybe the odd tangental restaurant review. Oh, and I'm considering getting into home brewing, so that should provide plenty to complain about.

Steak

I have been journeying through a decade-long quest for the perfect steak. I mean, a completely obsessive search for the right piece of meat, the right method, the right seasoning, the right temperature, and on and on. I have three examples in my mind of truly great steaks that I've eaten in restaurants, and all my home efforts are measured against them. And I'm getting close. This is helped by the recent discovery that I live twenty minutes away from a source of some of the best aged beef in the world. Expect talk of sea salt flakes, flame grills, and Maillard reactions. Oh, and if I married beer, I'd have steak as my mistress.

Guitars

Guitars are my first love. If I married beer, and had steak as a mistress, the guitar is that school romance that haunts my middle-aged dreams. I have many guitars, most of them cheap pieces and junkers that I've fixed up and customised. There's an ever-present space in my collection for something different. Right now, I'm hankering after a good versatile acoustic, one of the new EVH striped electrics, a PRS Custom 22 or 24, and if enough of you buy my books and a movie deal ever pays off, a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul reissue. Expect discussions of guitars I'm in the process of mangling, the virtues of various alnico magnets, string gauges and many other things to make you yawn.

Miscellany

And there might be the odd mention of some dodgy old classic rock, or movies I like, and now and then, something about being a writer.

But no promises. This blog post could still be sitting here come Christmas, its promises unfulfilled.

Last Man Out, aka The Ghosts of Belfast, aka The Twelve

Over the last few weeks, I've turned down a bunch of interviews, mostly from Irish press, about the film adaptation of The Ghosts of Belfast -- retitled as Last Man Out -- that's currently in development. There are two main reasons why I turned the interviews down: 1. I don't know anything about the movie that hasn't been reported in the original news releases from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter; 2. The adaptation is still at an early stage, and so few films make it from development to production, and I don't want to make a song and dance about something that still has so many hurdles to clear.

Having said that, I have a few thoughts arising from the kinds of questions I've been asked, and comments I've been sent.

Pierce Brosnan as Gerry Fegan

Reaction to the former James Bond taking the role of Fegan has mostly been positive, but a small number of people have questioned this. Me, I'm very happy at this bit of casting. First off, Pierce Brosnan has far more range as an actor than his tenure as Bond might suggest. Anyone who has seen The Matador or Seraphim Falls can vouch for his ability to play darker, meaner characters. I imagine it must be frustrating for Mr Brosnan that some people can't move past Remington Steele, 007, or even the might-be-dad in Mamma Mia. Check out some of the lower budget movies he's starred in. You might be surprised.

But here's a point that some are missing: how close will the screen Gerry Fegan be to the character on paper? I recently re-watched Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, then read the Robert Bloch novel it was based on. The middle-aged, portly, bespectacled Norman Bates on the page could hardly be further removed from the twitchy, repressed young man that Anthony Perkins portrayed. Cinema is full of protagonists who varied greatly from their literary sources, yet the movies did not suffer for the changes.

Remember, Gerry Fegan on paper is a deeply unsympathetic character.  He's a mass-murderer with the blood of women and children on his hands.  In the novel, I had the luxury of being inside his head, filtering his world through his perception, which made the task of humanising him an awful lot easier. The screen version won't have that direct line to his conscience to make him more likeable. While I've no reason to believe the screen Fegan will be in any way watered down or smoothed off, I do expect him to evolve into a more empathetic character.

Speaking of taking liberties...

How faithful will it be?

I don't know. I haven't seen the script, so I've no idea what Craig Ferguson and Ted Mulkerin have done with the source. Frankly, my main concern is not that they've been loyal to the novel, but that they've written a good movie. Those two things don't always go hand-in-hand. A few examples...

One of the greatest Hollywood adaptations of a novel, in my view, is LA Confidential. James Ellroy's typically sprawling narrative must have been a hard beast to tame for Brian Helgeland, but he did it in style. And it's a very, very liberal adaptation that cuts to the very core of the story, leaving out large tracts of the book.

Peter Benchley's script based on his own novel is an undisputed classic. Has there been a better creature feature since Jaws? But the movie diverges from the book in many, many ways, not least of all in its portrayal of Hooper.

Stephen King famously hated Stanley Kubrick's take on The Shining, but that doesn't stop it being one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

Ken Kesey was similarly unimpressed with the screen version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but again, it's rightly considered a landmark moment in American cinema.

That's not to say that faithful adaptations are bad; going back to Stephen King, Misery and The Shawshank Redemption stick pretty closely to their sources, and are great movies. Likewise, Silence of the Lambs is both a faithful translation to the screen, and a masterpiece of a thriller. On the other hand, Red Dragon suffers from, at times, being too slavish to the source.

In short, I'm not feeling at all precious about my novel being adhered to by the screenwriters. I'd just like them to make a good movie.

Will I have any input?

Nope. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

Truthfully, I'm quite happy to have nothing to do with it. I really don't think I could have been objective enough in adapting my own debut novel.  I'm too close to it emotionally to be able to stand back and see what needs to be changed in order for it to work as a screenplay.

I don't feel that way about all my books. I've been developing my own screenplay based on Ratlines, for example, but that book means something very different to me than my first did.

So, who else is on board?

I've heard a couple of things, but nothing concrete. Really, like I said, what has already been reported elsewhere is the complete sum of what I know. The producers have a hell of a track record, so that's encouraging, and I'm glad they've gone with a Belfast director. Terry Loane's work in film and TV to date speaks for itself, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with the movie.

So...

When I travelled to LA in late 2009 to record my segment for The Late Late Show, Craig Ferguson was in talks with my Hollywood agent about The Ghosts of Belfast. At that stage, it was far from certain we would sell him the option, but I was impressed by how passionate Craig was about it. We only spoke very briefly on the topic, but he was at pains to tell me how he wanted to do this right. I have no reason to believe he won't.

But it's important to remember how hard it is to get a movie into production, how many planets have to align in order to get the cameras rolling. That a star and director are attached to the project is a huge step forward, but we're still a long, long way away from seeing Gerry Fegan merrily killing half of Belfast in our local cinemas.  But I think if anyone can get this film made, Craig Ferguson can.