Fergie’s Friday Tweets are a welcome relief in Limerick’s Lockdown

Fergie’s Friday Tweets are a welcome relief in Limerick’s Lockdown

HIS job in newspaper sales became a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Fergal Deegan is delivering a message of hope from a platform online.

“Fergie’s Friday Tweet” video is recorded from Deegan’s front living room every Friday, with the father of one sitting at his piano, belting out a self-penned ditty, to welcome in another weekend, which is beamed out to the world via social media.

Deegan’s Twitter profile says he’s “on a new journey”.

“I had never been on social media in my life and I was working in the media, and when I lost my job, so my wife persuaded me to get set up on Twitter as my first venture into social media, during the lockdown,” Deegan tells the Limerick Post.

“On the 9th of April last year I set off on my first tweet, and every Friday, I either rewrite the words of a well-known song or pick a topic and sit at the piano — it doesn’t last a minute — and I put it out there.”

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Deegan says his tweets are “always happy, just to cheer people up, a bit of fun”.

Last Friday, he reworked Cliff Richard’s Christmas classic Mistletoe and Wine into an Easter frolic, while some of his other performances include a reworking of Tom Jones Delilah into a Munster-themed tune marking the retirements of rugby legends CJ Stander and Billy Holland.

He jokes there has been plenty of “slagging” for his use of a “Tweety-bird” in each of his Tweets, which he jokes “is actually a duck”.

The reaction has been “overwhelmingly positive”, he offers.

“Since the 9th of April we have been going strong; on a bad week I’d get 900 views, my top view was 20,000.”

His recent introduction to the online world has buoyed his profile in the real world: “The thing about it now is that I’m meeting people at the Milk Market on a Saturday morning, or I’m meeting people in the town during the week, and they’re asking ‘what’s the song for this week’; it has become amusing, and I don’t know half these people”.

“I get a kick out of it because I get a reaction out of people and it’s always positive.”

The pandemic delivered a blow to his prospects but, but he’s found solace in his other passion music and putting that out into the online world: “People are telling me to ‘keep going’ with it and that they always look forward to it, so every Wednesday I’m trying to figure out what am I going to do for Fergie’s Friday Tweet, people are expecting it now, it’s quiet a buzz.”

His family “initially thought I was mad, now they think I’m worse”, but he adds, “they have begun to contribute now”.

“My daughter Ciara used to record the videos for me when she was living with us at home, but she moved out. My wife now does it, but she thinks she is the artistic director and she starts to make comments — and we are going to kill each other one of these days — we may have difference of opinion artistically now and again,” Deegan laughed.

Despite the odd ribbing here and there, Deegan’s catchphrase “Get Tweeting Folks” – which he says at the end of each one of his videos — will continue.

“Somebody said I should be quacking and not tweeting, but we’ll keep going for another while longer,” he says.

The former President of Young Munster RFC, who is also well known for busking at parties and organising charity fundraisers, “and generally being with people”, is working on an instagram profile, and other ventures which will be revealed in the future.

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