Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

As somebody who spent more than 12 years abroad, I have green-tinted memories of St Patrick’s Day, a celebration that definitely meant more abroad than at home, at least back then.

While it went largely unnoticed when I was in Middle Eastern countries and South Africa, it was a big day even among the gruffest Bavarians on the factory floor of BMW in Munich. The Israeli foreman of a construction crew I worked with on a hotel site in Eilat at the bottom the country agreed to allow the Irish contingent off early without docking our 10 shekel-an-hour wages – that indeed was a small victory.

And as every young Irish person will realise if this is their first March 17 Down Under, it is a huge community celebration across the Antipodes.

I was one of those saddos who got up for the 6am breakfast in the Mercantile Hotel in The Rocks, Sydney’s oldest quarter, which would be taken over by revellers, music and dancing for the full day.

Irish people and dedicated members of the diaspora have always been synonymous with Irish pubs and the world of hospitality around the world. Indeed, they don’t even have to claim ancestry to jump on the bandwagon. I once worked in a South African pub in what was regarded as the most racist suburb of Johannesburg and the owner had never left the African continent never mind step on the Emerald Isle.

In 2009 London Irish siblings, Catherine and Gavin Hanly, founded the publication Hot Dinners, which covers the London food and drink scene that has grown to be London’s biggest independent dining out website.

Pictured: The creators of the Murphia List Gavin and Catherine Hanly.