I had known Philip to see long before I ever met him. He was definitely one of the more colourful people who hung around Grafton Street in early Seventies Dublin. I was tall ,with long red hair nearly down to my waist , denim bellbottoms with batik patterns , a black t-shirt with white stars and a zodiac necklace. I thought that I looked the business but Lynott always managed to look just that bit cooler, not just because he was black (it certainly helped) and beautiful with big brown eyes and an afro; he dressed to kill like Jimmy Hendrix with an attitude to match. We would pass each other on Grafton Street, often quite deliberately - as we found out later- and give each other the nod. We both hung around the same bars, Nearys and the Bailey, and it was in Nearys that we were finally introduced by the poet and publisher Peter Fallon. We got on like house on fire in spite of our mutually competitive natures. I would wind him up, he would wind me up and then we would all have a good laugh about it.

Our backgrounds were startlingly similar ; we were both brought up by single mothers in the harsh environment of a confining, conservative Ireland. Like myself he was an only child and we were both raised by strong, independent women who were also the breadwinners. We were both determined to be different and therefore to make a difference; I as an artist, he as a musician.

"We have to work together", Philip said at our first meeting,"we'd be a deadly combination". It was decided there and then that I would do the album covers for his band Thin Lizzy, who had a hit at the time with a rocked up version of an old Irish tune called 'Whiskey in the Jar'. Over the next couple of years we became as close as two brothers: we had a very similar outlook on life and we shared the same humour and sense of the absurd. I produced what I regard as my best graphic work for Thin Lizzy. I did everything. Flashing logos, some cool covers and singles and a raft of stuff from t-shirts to tour jackets. When I got into financial trouble after I returned from the U.S.(I lived there for about a year and a half-more later) Philip bailed me out by commissioning two of the best pieces of work that I produced in that period. One was a painting of Philip in that off-white suit, poised at the chess board, cigarette in hand and the other was a hyper-realistic family portrait set in the gardens of his home GlenCorr, just down the road from where I now live. It was one of those beautiful, idyllic sun drenched summer days (we don't get too many of them around here) and I took a roll of photographs of Philip, Caroline, and their baby daughters Sarah and Kathleen rolling about on the lawn.