Sammy Duddy

Oct 24 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

ONE of the founding members of the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association, the self-styled “Dolly Parton of Belfast”, has died, aged 62.

Loyalist paramilitary Sammy Duddy became well- known on the cabaret circuit of Northern Ireland as a flamboyant, fishnet-wearing drag artiste, and even performed for British troops on tour.

His alter-ego, Samantha, saw him escape danger by the skin of his teeth on several occasions, when his trademark get-up of long dress, black wig, falsies and scarlet lipstick left him unrecognisable as the burly freckled soldier from Belfast’s tough Rathcoole estate.

Born Evan Abbott Samuel Duddy, he was one of the UDA’s founding members when it began as a Loyalist umbrella group in 1972. He became a fixture at the association’s headquarters, working by day as its public relations officer and editing its magazine, Ulster, while doing his drag act at night. Although briefly a suspect in the murder of Pat Finucane, the Catholic lawyer shot dead by the UDA in 1989, he was not charged and was never known as a frontline gunman or bomber.

While Duddy was never regarded as a leading figure in the UDA, he was interesting in a group not noted for artistic pretensions. In 1983, he published a volume of poetry, Concrete Whirlpools of the Mind – but such sensitivity was balanced with risqué adult jokes and a handiness with his fists.

In 1970, Duddy was chatted up by a policeman as he sat in full drag in his car at a check point and there was another heart-stopping moment when his car developed a flat in a staunchly nationalist area of Belfast. “Two guys pulled up and asked for my keys,” he recalled. “They opened the boot, got the spare wheel out and changed it. I drove away, blowing them kisses.”

Duddy’s flirtation with cabaret ended in 1981 after a paedophile scandal which implicated Loyalists, meant he was instructed to drop his act.

In 1990, Duddy spent 11 months in jail following the Stephens Inquiry into collusion between Loyalists and British security forces but charges against him were later dropped. He retired from active Loyalism in the 1990s, and was involved in the negotiations leading to the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

He died from a heart attack, and is survived by his second wife, Joyce, and three children.

Sammy Duddy, activist and cabaret artiste; born August 24, 1945, died October 17, 2007