We all have a need to belong, to have a place and people we feel tied to: our nation, our family, our hometown or house. So how come one can find these feelings of belonging in a place that one has never visited before? Is it something about Ireland as a physical entity - its landscape - or its people that offered itself up as a mother's bosom to John McCarthy? Where do the roots come from - the soil or the nation? This is not just another jolly journey meeting those funny Irish people and their eccentric ways. As well as humour and eccentricity this is a look at the other side, the sadness beyond the Craic. With sections on the language, literature, music, politics and religion, we follow John McCarthy as he looks to his past and explores his own relationship with Ireland.