By Acting the Fool: Take a Trip Back to The Heady Days of 1976 with the Memoirs of a Second Generation Irish Teenage Mancunian Proto-Punk
As punk rock celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, this zesty and thought-provoking memoir could not be more timely. Tracing a young lad’s infatuation with punk rock, which blasts through the established order and storms into the life of young Peter “PJ” McKeown – second generation Irish and ostensibly a mod – but “Something Better Change” as The Stranglers shouted. And for Peter, 1976 takes him on a full-scale, headfirst immersion in the youthquake going on around him.
In the teenage wasteland of 1970s Manchester, the choppy currents of punk collide with PJ’s Irish background, and ‘The Troubles’ loom over life like a dark cloud.
This heartfelt and exhilarating joyride of a book is by turns invigorating and disturbing – as PJ McKeown has plenty to say about issues of conformity, deviance, community and identity – but above all it’s a must-read for anybody who was a teenager in the 1975-9 period – and a vivid and stirring time capsule for anyone who wasn’t.
About the Author
PJ McKeown was born the youngest of six children to Irish parents in central Manchester in 1965. He grew up in the north central district of Cheetham and attended local Catholic primary and grammar schools.
Like millions of other people worldwide he grew up being of Irish descent and supporting Manchester United. His experiences and ideas can resonate with very many members of the book buying public.
He has successfully written and presented standup comedy shows, one man plays ,radio sketches, and articles for magazine, newspaper and academic journals.
He studied for his A Levels, degree, master’s degree and PGCE at a variety of colleges in the Manchester area (he likes Manchester). He then went on to work as a social sciences lecturer in further and higher education in the northwest of England, in Dublin, and in Wales. He has also held roles as a cloakroom attendant (in the Hacienda), a car valeter, a furniture salesman, in construction, as a carer, as a manufacturer of women’s stockings, as a painter and decorator, as a storeman and as a clerical assistant – leaving him with lively tales to tell, and yet to be told, from each section of his varied CV. He now lives in Manchester with his companion – coeliac disease
Along the route he has performed as an alternative stand-up comedian and MC, a radio DJ, an organiser of alternative comedy clubs . He has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows, and in documentaries, discussing both comedy and social issues.
PJ McKeown’s first volume of memoirs: ‘Nobody’s Hero Volume One – My Generation :The Memoirs of a Second Generation Irish Wimpy Kid’ was published on January 2025.
