Peter O'Toole @ The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin 1984

In October 1984, when the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin held a gala performance to mark its reopening after refurbishment, Peter O’Toole was invited to do the opening turn. Presumably, the expectation was that he would do a bit of Shakespeare, perhaps, or a Yeats poem. He decided to read, slowly and deliberately, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, with its suggestion that the children of the Irish poor be sold as food for their landlords, “who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children”.
Some members of the dress-suited audience began to heckle; others walked out. RTÉ, which was broadcasting the show live, cut O’Toole off in the middle of the reading and went to an ad break. The Irish Times reported next day that it had received “a number of calls, which were preponderantly critical of O’Toole”.