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INTERVIEWER
What’s the difference between an Irish eccentric and an English eccentric?
TREVOR
That’s difficult to say—it’s like asking what the difference is between English humor and Irish humor. It’s a dry quality that you get with English eccentricity at its best; Irish eccentricity is much more outlandish. Crazier. English eccentricity is something you hardly notice until all of a sudden you realize that you’re in the presence of an eccentric mind. It’s not like that at all with an Irish eccentric; you know about it all very easily and quickly. English eccentricity has a suburban quality—it’s like a very neatly trimmed garden in which you suddenly realize that the flower beds aren’t what they seem to be. There’s a kind of well-turned-out quality about English eccentricity, whereas the Irish equivalent is higgledy-piggledy and sometimes even noisy. The marvel of the English version is that it’s almost secretive. I’ve never quite believed in the obvious English eccentric, the man who comes into the pub every night and is known to be a dear old eccentric. I always suspect that that is probably self-invention. What I do believe in is the person who scarcely knows he’s eccentric at all. Then he says something so extraordinary and you realize he perhaps lives in a world that is untouched by the world you share with him.
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