‘We all call him baby Jesus’: Welcome to Marty Morrissey’s Marty Party on tour in Alicante

There is a small Irish colony in the Diamante Hotel in sunny Calpe, Alicante, Spain. There, by the palm trees, kidney-shaped pools and skinny apartment blocks, around 500 Irish people are holidaying for seven nights with sports commentator and showbiz phenomenon Marty Morrissey, TV personality and hotelier Noel Cunningham, musicians Seán Keane, Johnny Logan, Niamh Kavanagh, Dana, The Newbridge Gospel Choir and a host of others. The Marty Party is not hard to find. In the airy lobby of the hotel, near a circular bar, there is a small tower of boxes of Barry’s Tea. In the ballroom there are pictures of Marty hanging like “the Stations of the Cross” (according to his friend Noel Cunningham). There are cutouts of him deploying finger guns all over the hotel.“It’s not a cult,” say the crew members in Marty T-shirts.“It feels a little like a cult,” says Nick Bradshaw, The Irish Times photographer.READ MOREIf this is a cult, readers, I promise you I will completely drink the Kool-Aid. I am neither Woodward nor Bernstein. I will totally miss the big exposé.. At dinner, we sit with John and Mary Gillespie who have recently retired from Gillespie’s shop in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo. It was set up by John’s great aunt in 1888 and recently taken over by their daughter Emma. She’s a dab hand at social media, recently coming to the attention of the 2 Johnnies for getting the whole family to do a haka on Instagram. They love the food, but John’s red wine is a little cold. “Normally I stick it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Just on defrost.”Mairead McDaid, a youthful looking 70-year-old from Buncrana, Co Donegal, passes us some ready poured glasses of wine from her table. She’s a retired teacher and is just back from a cruise but agreed to come here with her 80-year-old neighbour Margaret McCallum. Donal Bradley, Margaret’s brother, and his wife Denise celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary the week before. Marty gives out prizes to those celebrating anniversaries. “What’s the secret of 49 years of marriage?” he asks one man. “Plenty of drink and drugs,” he replies.[ Marty Morrissey: ‘I’m an only child of an only-child dad and an only-child mum. I’ve no aunts, uncles or first cousins’Opens in new window ]In the ballroom, Noel introduces the evening’s festivities. He tells us about a woman he met on the plane who had, last year, flatly refused to go to hospital because she didn’t want to miss the Marty Party. “She’s here tonight having had the operation and she’s doing fantastic.” Marty Morrissey and Noel Cunningham having laugh at The Marty Party. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times The Marty: Noel Cunningham.Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Marty takes to the stage and tells everyone to give the person on their right a big hug. Pat Slattery, a recently retired quantity surveyor from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, throws an arm around me. He’s a nice man. He gives every act a standing ovation irrespective of whether anyone else is doing it. He and his wife came down to Knock the night before and visited the shrine before flying out. He likes Marty because he’s open about his emotions, he says, and he likes the Marty Party “because you talk to someone different at breakfast every morning”.Marty is an incorrigible flirt. “I’d like to introduce all of my ex-girlfriends,” he says when he introduces the (excellent) Newbridge Gospel Choir.Noel is also an incorrigible flirt. “When Paul moved his hips, I thought Noel Cunningham would have a heart attack,” says Marty after a performance by the singer Paul Byrom.“Marty, I’ll see you again in an hour, I’m away after him,” says Noel.There are rousing performances from the likes of Seán Keane, all-female trad band Cherish the Ladies and a harmonising folk trio made up of Don Stiffe, Trevor Sexton and Ger O’Donnell. A tombola is rolled out with Marty’s face on it. The quiz question: “Who won the All-Ireland?” demonstrates the kind of low-friction event this is. Marty flirts with all the winners and says they have to take him on the various trips he gives out as prizes. One prize is won by former minister and presidential candidate Heather Humphreys. “I swear it’s not a fix!” says Marty.Marty Morrissey during The Marty Party in Calpe, Spain. Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times The Marty Party in Calpe, Spain. Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times There’s a wild panto feel to it all but it’s touching and warm too. Everyone here has lived a bit. Life is full of troubles, says Marty at one point. “I hope everyone can forget their worries for a week.”Later, Noel says: “If you see someone on their own go up and ask them to join you for a cup of tea or a drink.”The next morning, a mulleted saxophonist plays Sade’s Smooth Operator as we queue for their breakfast buffet. People were up dancing until 3am. Marty and his friend Angela O’Dwyer make their way through the room pressing the flesh. Angela laments how difficult it is to get Marty from A-to-B because he never refuses a selfie. Everyone heads down to a square downtown to see the Newbridge Gospel choir sing as the Rock of Calpe looms nearby. Marty is there. He looks freshly pressed at all times. A white jacket over black slacks and a black shirt at night, a black polo shirt and white shorts and runners during the day. That evening at dinner, Mary and Denis Murphy, retirees from Ovens in Cork, are discussing how sharp Marty looks. He comes over.“Your legs are a lovely shape,” says Mary.“Leave Marty alone,” says Denis, protectively.Marty Morrissey with the Newbridge Gospel Choir whilst playing in the town square, Calpe. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Newbridge Gospel Choir playing in the square, Calpe, as part of The Marty Party. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Sitting behind me at the concert is 76-year-old Donnycarney widower David Mehlhorn. He has fallen in with Jersey-resident John Gordon, also a widower, who is here with his sisters Goreti Callaghan and Breidge Kennedy and his brother-in-law, Paddy. John and Breidge are both retired psychiatric nurses. “I fell on my feet there in case anything happens,” says David with a wink. Much later that evening, I find John and David drinking pints in the hotel lobby, laughing together like teenagers. It feels a little like the Gaeltacht for retirees.Tonight’s performance kicks off with Noel talking about a very expensive shirt he bought by accident. “It’s in a safe in my room.”“I wouldn’t pay €8 for that shirt,” says Marty. “It glows in the dark!”Liam O’Connor, the Guinness-certified fastest accordion player in the world, plays a set (“I was worried there’d be heart attacks,” says Deirdre Grant, who organises all this for Killester travel). Later a woman sits at the feet of Paul Byrom as he sings. A fire alarm goes off temporarily when Joanie Madden from Cherish the Ladies is in full flight. “That’s in E flat and we’re playing in D,” she observes.Some local Spanish staff jig along to the music. Others seem nonplussed by Irish tomfoolery. Irish tomfoolery like cheering whenever their county is named. Irish tomfoolery like a man hanging on to a large tankard he got with his beer earlier, because he noticed it was bigger than the other glasses. Irish tomfoolery like jokingly pretending to haggle.The Marty Party in Calpe, Spain. Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Paul Byrom serenading at The Marty Party in Calpe, Alicante. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times “Would you take a fiver for the two pints?” says one man to a stonyfaced barman.“€7.20,” says the barman.“But would you take a fiver?”“€7.20,” says the barman.“Go on, take a fiver.”For many people this is just what they needed. Siobhan Webb is from Bath in England and when her husband Michael died, her best friend Catherine convinced her to come to the Marty Party with her. Both Siobhan and Catherine are the daughters of Irish nurses. “As someone who grew up in England, I always feel: ‘Am I Irish yet?’” Coming here, she says, “It felt like coming home.”I see Limerick woman Sharone O’Loughlin perform an energetic step dance to the music of a youthful trio called Plain Sailing (“The others were all from Clare ... They do a battering step in Clare”). She had no strong thoughts on Marty until she met him when she was with her sister, who has special needs. “He knelt down on the ground in order to talk to her,” she says. She has been to the Marty Party every year. The first two years she came with friends. This year she happily came alone.I sit at a table in the hotel bar with David Punch, the Marty Party floor manager. He’s also Marty’s stats man for his RTÉ commentaries. A crew member shows me a Photoshopped image of Marty on top of the Rock of Calpe “like Christ the Redeemer”. “We all call him ‘baby Jesus’,” he says. They also coin an nickname for Nick the photographer and myself: “The Hairy Bikers.”Their driver Gerry Howard is also at the table. The first year of the Marty Party in the Costa del Sol, Gerry Howard drove a van full of gear over from Ireland. This year he brought two articulated trucks. His daughter Sophie is, he tells me, the youngest ever female articulated lorry driver in Ireland. Recently,Gerry was driving a truckload of Kerrygold butter to Poland and Sophie was on the same route. “I never had a prouder moment in my life,” he says.The next morning everyone is up early for the Marty Party Mass. “We’re going to say a prayer for The Irish Times,” Marty says on his way in. His parish priest Father Donagh O’Meara is officiating (frankly, I’m surprised Marty isn’t). The theme is gratitude. Dana sings. So do the Newbridge Gospel Choir. The priest quotes TS Elliot, Kahlil Gibran and Bob Dylan. “We’re used to getting blessed by Bob [Dylan] every second Sunday back home,” says Marty.The Marty Party: Fr Donagh O’Meara. Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Johnny Logan sports a leopard-print suit for his performance. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times Six of Ireland’s seven Eurovision winners are performing tonight. We witness Linda Martin sit on the laps of not one but two members of the Newbridge Gospel Choir. We witness Johnny Logan pelvic-thrusting in a leopard-skin suit. We witness Niamh Kavanagh break three octaves. We witness Noel dancing on a chair.Outside by a table filled with Marty merchandise (T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards that speak with Marty’s voice) a woman throws her arm around Niamh and says: “Girl, I’d like to lick the sweat off you.” Vera from Tallaght comes up and tells her about her son who died suddenly. “Those songs brought me back to a time I was happy,” she says. People are remarkably open here. Last year, retirees Sheila and Mike Fox befriended a couple who had recently lost a child. “When people are away, they talk about things they might not talk about when they’re at home,” says Sheila.[ We’re apparently rolling in money, but everyone feels poorer and nobody is happyOpens in new window ]Niamh and Noel, who are good friends, tell me how important it is to cultivate a sense of belonging for people. “That’s why I make no secret of the fact I’m gay,” says Noel. “You’d never know who in the hall that might help.”Niamh raises an eyebrow and says: “You’re gay, Noel? When were you going to tell me?”Eurovision night at The Marty Party: Paul Harrington, Dana, Linda Martin, Niamh Kavanagh and Charlie McGettigan. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times The Marty Party: Some of the merchandise available to purchase. Photograph Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times It’s The Irish Times’s last day at the Marty Party. At breakfast, Annette Nagle, Isabel Jones and Eileen King (who sat in adoration at the feet of Paul Byrom) recall the night before. “Johnny Logan told Annette she had beautiful eyes,” says Isabel.“He did!” says Annette.“You have beautiful eyes too, Patrick,” says Isabel, lest I get jealous. “We’ll get Dana to tell you.”This trio came here alone but they now have a WhatsApp group called the Calpe Cailins. There’s a lot of kindness at the Party. The day before there was a special event for people travelling solo. “A lot had lost husbands and partners and it was the first time away on their own,” says Marty.There were tears, says Noel. “It validates the hurt and the pain.”[ Marty Morrissey: The most famous man in GAAOpens in new window ]Marty is a busy man. He has a full-time job he loves at RTÉ and this involves a lot of work too. But he really enjoys being with people. “Maybe it’s personal in the sense that I’m the only child of two only children and when my mother died [in 2021], I felt I needed that sense of community,” he says. “People don’t call in to each other anymore and I think there’s a lot of loneliness in Ireland ... They come as strangers but leave as friends.”And then we head to the airport and Marty and Noel head off to the pier where each of them is captaining a Marty Party-themed catamaran. I believe everyone survived. The Marty Party is run in association with Killester Travel and costs €1,599 per person sharing, all inclusive (The Irish Times paid its own way).