{"id":2221931,"date":"2026-01-04T18:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2221931"},"modified":"2026-01-04T18:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:47:12","slug":"my-father-held-me-in-his-arms-four-days-after-i-was-born-but-i-never-met-him-says-phil-lynott-actor-peter-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/my-father-held-me-in-his-arms-four-days-after-i-was-born-but-i-never-met-him-says-phil-lynott-actor-peter-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My father held me in his arms four days after I was born, but I never met him\u2019 \u2013 says Phil Lynott actor Peter Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Actor and singer Peter Smith tells how his family life mirrored that of his rock idol Phil Lynott who died 40 years ago today.<\/p>\n

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Peter (46), set to perform in the Phil Lynott anniversary concert at Dublin\u2019s 3Arena tonight, was born to a Dublin mother and a Nigerian father.<\/p>\n

He grew up in Dublin\u2019s Drimnagh, close to where Philo was raised in Crumlin. Like Philo, his father, Peter, wasn\u2019t in his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father held me once when I was four days old and he went off to make his own life in the United States because he was from Nigeria,\u201d said Peter.<\/p>\n

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Singer Peter Smith in Phil Lynott tribute<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cNone of us heard anything from him until I made my first RT\u00c9 appearance when I was 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father fought in the Biafran civil war that tore Nigeria apart in the late 60s and early 70s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis best friend that he fought alongside had two children in Waterford where he was married and they saw me on Derek Mooney and Ciara Carroll\u2019s Saturday TV show and they put two and two together and they said, \u2018That\u2019s Uncle Peter\u2019s son.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a sort of a relationship then. My father passed away in 2021 and while I never met him in the flesh we\u2019d speak on the phone from time to time. He was married, living in Texas and I have half-siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s mother Eileen Smith met his father in a Dublin nightclub called Lord John\u2019s. \u201cHe was doing a master\u2019s degree in engineering in Dublin at the time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a brief but intense romance and fortunately for me I came along as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Singer<\/div>\n<\/div>
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Singer and actor Peter Smith<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Peter believes that his 73-year-old mother never stopped loving his father until the day he died.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only when he died that me ma moved on with her life because I think she was always in love with me dad,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe waited until there was no hope with him, obviously after he passed away in 2021. My ma is a beautiful woman and she\u2019s married now in England to a lovely man called Dennis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Philo, who was sent to live with his grandparents in Crumlin, Peter says he was brought up by his grandmother in Drimnagh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised by my grandmother here in the house and my mam was more like my sister,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn those days if you had a child young you ended up handing it to your mother. I was attached to the hip of my grandmother Molly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was the only black in the village in those days,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThe irony is, in those days all you wanted to be was just like your mates, so you kind of did everything to conform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only now you realise the currency in being a little bit different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter says he\u2019s often mistaken as a son of Phil Lynott. \u201cI\u2019ve had that a few times. But I always point out that my skin is a little bit darker than Philip\u2019s was,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately I can\u2019t claim that one, but I wish I could. I\u2019ve had people walk up and touch my face and touch my hair and do you know it\u2019s lovely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an awful lot of people that still grieve Philip\u2019s loss. If you can give them that moment of almost disbelief then why not, that\u2019s your job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although there have been false dawns about a Phil Lynott movie with Peter tipped for the lead role, he says it may yet happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf ever there was a chance it\u2019s going to be now with the stage production, Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma,\u201d he says of the theatre show that has enjoyed rave reviews and whose fans include Johnny Depp.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Merrigan has written a brilliant script for Moonlight and I know it could easily be converted into a screenplay<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great story and it doesn\u2019t touch any of the salacious stuff. I know Jim Sheridan wanted to do a warts-and-all and that posed a problem for the family, understandably.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think it could definitely happen based on the Moonlight script. But I\u2019ve been here before, so I won\u2019t count my chickens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Smith is one of the performers with the RT\u00c9 Concert Orchestra at the Dedication to Phil Lynott concert to mark the 40th anniversary of his death in Dublin\u2019s 3Arena tonight. Tickets are available in advance through ticketmaster.ie or on the door of the venue this evening.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.ie \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor and singer Peter Smith tells how his family life mirrored that of his rock idol Phil Lynott who died 40 years ago today. Peter (46), set to perform in the Phil Lynott anniversary concert at Dublin\u2019s 3Arena tonight, was born to a Dublin mother and a Nigerian father. He grew up in Dublin\u2019s Drimnagh, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2221932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2221931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\u2018My-father-held-me-in-his-arms-four-days-after.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2221931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2221933,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221931\/revisions\/2221933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2221932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2221931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2221931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2221931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}