So welcome to another episode of The Restless Politics Leading and I'm absolutely delighted

to be in Dublin and I'm very happy to be sitting opposite somebody that I've known for

over a quarter of a century now and who was fundamental to the delivery of the Belfast

Good Friday Agreement coming up to 25th anniversary. Welcome Bertie Hohn. Thank you very much

Alistair, the honour to be on your program. I've got to tell you though Bertie, first thing

I'm going to tell our listeners is the fact that Bertie is not your real name. You're

like a kind of Irish Boris Johnson. Alexander Boris De Pfeffold. Now come on, tell our

listeners what your real name is. Well, I am Bartolomew is the real name, but I think

my grandfather was a Bartolomew and I think with great grandfather was a Bartolomew, but

none of them were ever known as Bartolomew. I don't think I was ever called that. It was

Bertie from the time I was born I think. And tell us a little bit about your

about your childhood and about your parents. Your parents were pretty political, weren't they?

Yeah, they were, you know, they weren't in a political party, but my father was an active

member of the IRA. The old IRA is instead back in the 20s. And what did that mean being an

active member of the IRA about then? Well, he would have been in, he was in

Clark and my father, my mother, were both in Clark. So he would have been in the war of

independence and he was too young in 1916, but in the war of independence, he was active and he

he was jailed. He was in three or four jails during his time. So he was out in active service.

He was out with us, with us gone. And he rarely, rarely spoke about it. I don't know,

but the unity was involved that were in the, they were in Clark. So it was the heat at the battle

against the Tans. And my mother and father used to call it the TAN war. And then, you know,

they would have been certainly in the take of it. And my mother, my mother was a staunch,

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