'It was my son who came across all my old bodybuilding magazines in the attic. He offered to get rid of them for me but rather than throw them out, I decided to put an ad in the Irish Daily Mirror to check if anyone wanted them. It's hard to believe now but bodybuilding magazines were very hard to get in the '60s. They weren't sold in Ireland because they had ads for contra­ception in them and the censorship board wouldn't allow them in the country. A friend of mine used to loan me these American magazines that he got off a fella at the airport who could smuggle them in from the States so he started to get them for me as well.

I started bodybuilding when I was about 18 or 19. I was living in Ranelagh at the time and I met a few guys who did a bit of weight- training down the back of an old chip shop in Donnybrook, so I decided to tag along and that's how I got into it really. The club was very ramshackle. It was basically an old shed. Times were bad back then and the guy who owned it couldn't afford any weights so he made most of them himself. He'd get the hubcaps off cars and fill them with cement, then he'd put nuts and bolts on them, weigh them and let them dry out for a few days. When they were dry, he'd drill a hole in them and put them onto a bar and that was it – homemade weights. That was the kind of thing that went on. There was another club where the owner didn't pay the ESB bill and we went down one night only to find the place in complete darkness but we were still hell bent on training so I went and bought a load of candles and someone else brought in their bicycle lamp and a torch. That went on for a week or two. It was madness when you think back on it.

It was a very innocent time. I remember there were a lot of people joining the guards back then and to get in you had to be 5ft 8in – irrespective of your education. You could be Einstein but if you weren't 5ft 8in then you weren't getting in, so this chancer that ran a bodybuilding club had a brainwave. He started running these 'height increasing' courses and guys actually fell for it. He'd have them hanging off bars and putting weights on their legs and charged them for it. They really thought it would stretch their legs.

It was probably the '70s when body­building got very popular here with all the Spartacus and gladiator-type films. There was a guy called Steve Reeves and he was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the time. He made all those action films first. I remember they used to run shows in the Adelphi years ago where they'd have one of those films on and during the interval they'd have a contest to find a 'Mr Dublin' or a 'Mr Adelphi'. They'd have 10 or 15 bodybuilders come on stage and do a few poses and the winner would be announced later on. I didn't take part in those competitions. They weren't my thing. I'd mostly do the power lifting and bench- pressing ones instead. I was pretty bulked up back then because I'd eat everything and anything and we didn't really know how to train in those days. We'd lift weights for three or four hours and there was no need. Nowadays they train for 45 minutes at most, which is far more sensible but you've the drugs in it now as well apparently, which is a real shame.

In the '80s I took up marathon running instead of bodybuilding. I suppose I'm pretty fit for a 67-year-old but a few years ago I developed a heart condition and it meant that I now have to walk the marathons instead. But I've no intention of stopping."