In Nireland, we do not talk with terrorists, only former terrorists…

I first met Mr. Wolfgang Moneypenny through his second or third wife. It is no matter which, as revolutionary convention has it that spouses round concurrently, not sequentially. He, and they, had recently moved to Belfast, following an incident in, then, South London, which I may not yet be at liberty to discuss.

This was the year 2000 and they lasted, I think, twelve months here. During this time, he was the door manager of Giro’s, a commune-come-nightclub, and it was here that we became familiar. I was intrigued, I must admit, by his unbridled enthusiasm, unbridled energy, and unbridled mouth. He operated, initially, under an assumed name, but, when we struck a confidence, he revealed himself as Mr. Moneypenny, the Mr. Moneypenny, of the incident in South London that I may not yet be at liberty discuss.

I am wary of extremists, as you know. Who in Nireland is not (apart from the electorate)? However, though our views sometimes clashed, I developed a fondness for Mr. Moneypenny; were we not, after all, just two men who loved their countries, their cultures, and their indigenous peoples? We were two men looking towards the future with both eyes forward.

His swooping departure from Belfast was as swift, sudden, and poorly explained as his arrival. I, and none of my friends, heard anything of him for some years after. It has only been in the last few months that his mating call to action (“Free South London!” I remember it well!) has resounded across the internet, naming and shaming postmodernity, hyper capitalism, and tired ideology. Of Hegelian dialectics he warned, in one of his pamphlets: “when two ideologies try to bust the zeitgeist, they risk crossing streams… Don’t cross the streams… It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” This is sage advice. He was once just a voice in the wilderness, but that was before urban sprawl. Now he has united people across suburbs and ‘bourhoods, from Norbury to Deptford, calling for a Free South London.

If nothing else, he is an interesting chap. Some would say dynamic. Some would say dynamic is a polite word for what he is.

He and his third or fourth wife were recently in Belfast and all four of us bumped into one another at a very drunken party. We discussed the changes we had seen; those socio-economic, historico-political, anarcho-aesthetic, and Romano-Catholic. Who would have thought, ten years ago, that we in Belfast would have come further in our journey towards self-governance and cultural solidarity than that leading world capital, South London? It is not all champ and champagne, though, I told him; we have our problems too.

He arranged to interview me, as soon as he got home, for his show on the pirate station, Radio Free South London. He hoped that, outside the party setting, our conversation would be even more informative and coherent: I would be less drunk, he told me, and he would be moreso.

Radio Free South London has a ‘listen again’ function through Mr. Moneypenny’s website, here. The interview was edited because of time constraints: Mr. Moneypenny added ums, stutters, and pauses into my speech, so that it would fill the full length of the show. Perhaps, I am a little reticent, a bit unsure… maybe I am just tired; his call came through in the early morning due to the time different between Belfast and Revolutionary Metric Time. My opinions were, as always, incredibly liberal and Mr. Moneypenny was very liberal with his use of them.