In a recent post I’d  detailed Jimmy appearing on Kathy Burke’s podcast, Where There’s a Will, There’s a Wake, and then, by pure coincidence, saw a number of press articles about Jimmy’s childhood brush with death.

Chatting to Kathy Jimmy told how he had almost died from meningitis as a toddler. Meningitis is an infection that thrives in the brain and spinal cord and, if not treated fast enough, can lead to permanent brain damage or death.

He was 3 years old and had to stay in Limerick General Hospital and have a lumbar puncture and was told, by his mother, that he almost didn’t make it.

When the Doctor told him that the injection was going to hurt mini-Jimmy had apparently said “You’ve got to be cruel to be kind”. He remembered it as probably being the first thing he’d ever said that his mother thought was funny.