ITV 3 had yet another old episode of Heartbeat. The police sergeant’s wife had developed a severe psychosis and the backing music used was Behind Blue Eyes by The Who.

The song was the most memorable among those played by The Who at Marlay Park in Dublin on a June evening some seventeen years ago.

The Irish rain had stopped for a couple of hours and the crowd of 30,000 were transported through decades of music.

Among the casual concert goers, there were real aficionados. One twenty-something was a real fan. Dressed in a parka and khaki cap with 1960s haircut and sideburns, he sat on a friend’s shoulders for much of the concert, singing along with every word.

When it came to the song Behind blue eyes he turned to everyone around him and joined in the words animatedly. A friend standing near me joked that maybe the man wouldn’t be singing if he knew what the words were about.

The song by Pete Townshend was intended as a lament filled with anger and angst:

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

No one knows what it’s like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

None of us know what it is like to be behind the eyes of another, whatever their hue. Perhaps we pretend it is possible, perhaps, by the law of averages, we can be right most of the time, but what about those who bite back on their anger? What of those for whom none of the pain and woe show through?

It was on a May morning some seven years ago that a psychotherapist said, ‘Everything you say is confidential, but with one reservation, if at any time I feel you are in danger of self-harm, I reserve the right to contact your doctor’.

Being transparent, it was not a hard condition to which to agree, but what of those who were capable of a greater degree of opacity? What of those who felt sad and bad? What of those who felt hated, fated to telling only lies? Would they even have articulated their feelings that no-one knew what it was like to be them?

Perhaps we might reveal ourselves in other ways, perhaps unlikely things can reveal what lays behind our eyes. But even if they did, no-one really knows.