Debt-Ridden Teen Resorts To Starring In Richie Kavanagh Video
IN A gut-wrenching exclusive interview with WWN, one midlands teenager has spoken of the desperate circumstances she found herself 2 years ago, at which time she resorted to starring in a video for Irish music legend Richie Kavanagh to help pay off her crippling debt.
Wishing to remain anonymous, the pretty Carlow girl spoke candidly about the lure of the music video lifestyle, the shoot itself, and the heartbreaking aftermath as friends and family stumbled across the 3 minute and 15 second clip online.
“I was 17 at the time… I’d gotten in pretty deep with a gang of session heads in town, and we lived it up pretty big. Out on the rip, dropping yokes, going to all the clubs… it doesn’t take long for the money you earned stacking shelves all summer to dry up. I owed everyone; I owed my sister 60 euro for phone credit she had bought me, I owed a friend 90 euro after spilling a can of Dutchie into her DVD player… that’s when I met a girl in Carlow town that told me she knew a way to make some fast cash, no questions asked, for just one day’s work starring in a Richie Kavanagh video”.
“Of course, I said no straight away… but then the more she told me about it, the more I got interested. She’d done it a few times herself, she told me. The money was good, you were only on set for a few hours, and most of the time nobody would ever see the finished video. She gave me a number of the production company, to ring them if I was interested. I spent the whole night looking at that business card, and my bank balance. I made the call first thing the next morning”.
“A week later, and I was on set… I say on set, I’m on a farm in Athlone somewhere, wearing overalls while being driven round on a trailer pulled by a Massey Ferguson that Richie himself was driving, while he sang about Pringles cans or something like that. There were four of us on the trailer, and we had to… sorry, it just gets me sometimes… I’m okay, I promise. We had to… hold up potatoes to our faces and smile while sitting on hay bales. It was a blur. I didn’t know what was happening, and then the director shouted cut and it was over”.
“Life was good for a while after that… I got paid, settled my debts, met a nice lad and started going out with him, started doing a course in Carlow IT. I forgot about the video, more or less. Then one day, I walked into a lecture hall before class started, and I could see all my fellow students huddled around an iPad, laughing their heads off. They all went quiet when they saw me, and went to their seats… but I could see them looking over at me, giggling. That’s when I knew they’d found the video”.
“It had been posted online and someone put it on Facebook, and after that it was everywhere. Everywhere I went, you could hear people whispering….’that’s the girl with the spuds from that Richie Kavanagh video’. I was heartbroken. I got home to my mum and just started sobbing, and told her the whole thing. She took it well, but my dad was disgusted. ‘Oh, so my daughter is in a Richie Kavanagh video is she, well, why don’t we just see what everyone is laughing at’ he said, and put the video playing on his phone. ‘Yes, there she is, my daughter, my little girl, throwing spuds around with two young fellas, wonderful. What a proud parent I am!’ he was sobbing the whole time, it was the worst 3 minutes of my life”.
“Today, I’m getting by as best I can. My boyfriend stayed with me, even though he gets stick from his friends over it. People who come into the garage recognise me from time to time, but you can tell they don’t want to mention it because then they have to admit they were watching a Richie Kavanagh video in the first place. But most importantly, I’m still at college and I’m determined to get my degree next year, and go on to be a success. If I have kids someday and one day at school someone shows them their mother in a Richie Kavanagh video, I’ll just explain the circumstances and hope that they can move on, like I have. I won’t let one mistake I made as a teenager define the rest of my life”.