Gerard Hutch recounted last week how he got his famous nickname. It turns out that our very own Harry McGee, now an Irish Times political correspondent, coined the moniker in the 1990s. McGee wrote a long profile in the Irish Press of the gang behind the Brinks Allied robbery in Clonshaugh, north Dublin, in January 1995, the then largest cash robbery in the history of the State.
Gerard Hutch, who was linked to the IR£3 million (€3.8 million) heist but still denies any involvement, couldn’t be named at the time due to strict libel laws. He is running as an election candidate in the Dublin Central constituency.
Trying to avoid repeating “gang leader” throughout the article, McGee thought about the character he was writing about. Unlike most Dublin criminals, he didn’t take drugs or socialise excessively and was known to exercise, in particular by running. Pondering this cloistered, ascetic existence in Clontarf, McGee came up with the image of a monk.
The following week Paddy Clancy, the then chief of The Sun’s Irish office, splashed the nickname across the front page of the tabloid and it stuck. It was probably a fortuitous turn of events for Hutch, who described McGee as “a good lad” last week on the Crime World Podcast. One of his other nicknames from the time, although maybe not said too often to his face, was Mr Bean.
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Speaking on The Irish Times Election Daily podcast this week, McGee said “It was me!” when asked about the origins of the name.
“He wasn’t typical of your Dublin criminal, he was a very moderate drinker, he didn’t smoke, at the time he went running every day, his family lived in Clontarf well away from the north inner city where he was brought up, his kids were going to school in Clontarf”, McGee added.
“So I was searching around for a moniker and I came up with the Monk”. Clancy, McGee says, latched on to the name and “bigged it up, as it were, and the legend of the Monk was born”.
Listen to the excerpt from the podcast below.
Harry McGee speaking about how he named Gerard Hutch 'The Monk'
In this excerpt from The Irish Times Election Daily podcast, political correspondent Harry McGee explains how gangland figure and political candidate Hutch got his famous nickname
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