The Breakaway Burke: We Speak To Shunned Brother Damo

ON a week where more Burke siblings were dragged screaming out of court in greater numbers than any other time in recent memory, one man shook his head and sighed more than any of the rest of us – runaway older Burke brother Dathan, who now goes by the more regular sounding ‘Damo’.

“Every time I see the name ‘Burke’ trending on Twitter, I pray that it’s not one of our lot. Other than that, I don’t pray at all,” said Damo, who has been living in Dublin since leaving his family home in Castlebar at the age of three.

Now four, Damo claims that the family’s unflinching devotion to the absolute letter of the law they imagine is laid down in the Bible became too much for him when his ten siblings staged an intervention after catching him peeking at a ‘blasphemous’ episode of ‘PinkFong’ playing on another child’s iPad while his family waited to be called into Castlebar court over ‘some fucking nonsense or another’.

“They said I would be damned to an eternity of punishment if I kept up my wicked ways, but it’s funny, you haven’t seen me being fucked out of the Four Courts by a team of Gardaí lately have you?” laughed Damo, eating a Liga.

“These things are great by the way, I’m mad into them. I wasn’t allowed them at home, they were called Satan Biscuits for some reason. Then again, walking was considered ‘too prideful’ in that house. I took my first step before I was 1 and I had to pray for a day for forgiveness for being ‘too full of myself'”.

Damo concluded that he hoped his brothers and sisters could muster enough self-esteem to break free of their religious upbringing and live a life of their own, adding that if he could do it at three, maybe they can do it now they’re in their mid-thirties.