Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Via the Nielsenhayden Sidelights, a link to an unusual obituary which begins, as follows,

Sammy Duddy was a colourful Belfast character who combined membership of one of the city's most lethal paramilitary groups with a career as “Samantha”, a highly suggestive drag act.

Maybe my life is just boring. And maybe that's a good thing.

By the way, this guy is for real. There's also an article about him in an Irish newspaper,

ALMOST every journalist who covered the Troubles in the North has a story about the Ulster Defence Association spokesman, Sammy Duddy who died of a heart attack last week, aged 62.

As well as his role in the UDA, Duddy was a cabaret comedian, often dressing in drag, whose lewd acts were a great draw in loyalist drinking clubs across Belfast in the 1970s. He took serious exception to one New York-based journalist who innocently described him as a transvestite, thinking it suggested he was homosexual. Duddy was married at the time and had five children.

He was also a serious terrorist whose day job involved gathering intelligence and directing attacks against suspected republican terrorists.