McCollum joins UTV in March 2000. As well as presenting and reporting for UTV Sport, she has also presented UTV News bulletins and Sport on Sunday.
In February 2009, McCollum announces she is leaving UTV as part of a voluntary redundancy scheme at the station. In an interview with a regional newspaper, she announces her intention to become a freelance broadcast journalist.
Following her departure from UTV, McCollum builds up her portfolio with BBC Northern Ireland. She becomes synonymous with many of Northern Ireland television’s highest profile events. She co-hosts BBC Proms in the Park at Titanic Slipways, the Olympic flame arriving at Belfast City Hall and the Clipper Homecoming in Derry.
McCollum also presents and reports on two series of the popular BBC Northern Ireland consumer programme In Your Corner and covers many major sporting events including the North West 200, Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Northern Ireland’s Football World Cup qualifiers, Tennis Legends in Belfast and the Belfast International Horse Show. She is also a regular presenter on Balmoral Agricultural Show and Children In Need programmes and hosts the second glittering ‘Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing’ extravaganza for Children in Need.
McCollum and Clarke have two children and reside in her hometown of Newtownabbey, County Antrim.
Morgan is born in Dublin on March 31, 1952. Educated at Oatlands College, Stillorgan, and University College, Dublin (UCD), Morgan comes to prominence as part of the team behind the highly successful RTÉ television show The Live Mike. Morgan makes his debut in the media on the Morning Ireland radio show produced by Gene Martin. Between 1979 and 1982 Morgan, who has been a teacher at St. Michael’s College, Ailesbury Road, plays a range of comic characters who appear between segments of the show, including Father Trendy, an unctuous trying-to-be-cool Catholic priest given to drawing ludicrous parallels with non-religious life in two-minute ‘chats’ to camera.
Morgan’s success as Father Trendy and other characters leads him to leave teaching and become a full-time comedian.
Morgan’s biggest Irish broadcasting success occurs in the late 1980s on the Saturday morning radio comedy show Scrap Saturday, which mocks Ireland’s political, business, and media establishment. The show’s treatment of the relationship between the ever-controversial TaoiseachCharles Haughey and his press secretary P.J. Mara prove particularly popular. When RTÉ axes the show in the early 1990s a national outcry ensues. Morgan lashes the decision, calling it “a shameless act of broadcasting cowardice and political subservience.”
Already a celebrity in Ireland, Morgan’s big break comes in Channel 4‘s Irish sitcom Father Ted, which runs for three series from April 21, 1995, until May 1, 1998. Writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews audition many actors for the title role, but Morgan’s enthusiasm wins him the part.
Father Ted centres on three disparate characters. Father Ted Crilly, played by Morgan, lives a frustrated life trapped on the fictional Craggy Island. Irish TV comedy actor Frank Kelly plays Father Jack Hackett, a foul-mouthed and apparently brain-damaged alcoholic, while child-minded Father Dougal McGuire is played by comedian Ardal O’Hanlon. The three priests are looked after by their housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle, played by Pauline McLynn, with whom Morgan had worked on Scrap Saturday. Father Ted enjoys widespread popularity and critical acclaim. In 1998, the show wins a BAFTA award for the best comedy, Morgan wins a BAFTA for best actor, and McLynn is named best actress.
On February 28, 1998, one day after recording the last episode of Father Ted, Morgan has a heart attack while hosting a dinner party at his home in southwest London. He is rushed to hospital but dies soon afterwards. Morgan’s Requiem Mass in St. Therese’s Church in Mount Merrion, south Dublin, is attended by the President of IrelandMary McAleese, her predecessor, Mary Robinson, and by political and church leaders, many of whom had been the targets of his humour in Scrap Saturday. He is cremated at Glasnevin Cemetery and his ashes are buried in the family plot in Deansgrange Cemetery.
On February 26, 1978, film critic Ciaran Carty hails the Irish language film Poitín for its deromanticization of the west.
Poitín is partially conceived as a response to The Quiet Man, also set in the coastal area of Connemara, and its sentimental portrayal of the Irish landscape. Poitín tells of a small community centered on a home-distiller of Irish moonshine whiskey, or poteen.
In Gaelic dialogue, using local actors, with Cyril Cusack as the moonshiner, it shifts between a humorous, whimsical account of two men’s bumbling attempts at theft and a harsh series of revenges. Director Bob Quinn, a strong advocate of Gaelic culture, calls it “a horror story told amusingly.” Carty suggests that Quinn “implicitly deromanticizes the Robert Flaherty image of the rugged West as a place of primal dignity where man does noble battle with the elements.”
Since incurring the wrath of his first editor in 1960 by making Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho his film of the year, Carty has consistently championed the arts, developing a career as one of Ireland’s leading critics and broadcasters. He serves as deputy editor of the Sunday Independent (1961–65) before becoming arts editor for the Sunday Tribune (1985–2011). Since 1988 he has edited the New Irish Writing page for both the Tribune and the Irish Independent, and is curator of the prestigious annual Hennessy Literary Awards. He is the author of Confessions of a Sewer Rat (1995), a two-volume biography of the artist Robert Ballagh (1985, 2011), and has co-edited, with Dermot Bolger, two anthologies of Hennessy fiction (1995, 2006).
McKenna makes his film debut in the IRA–Nazi drama The Night Fighters (1960) and from this uncredited beginning he moves up to tenth billing in The Siege of Sidney Street (1960). His next major movie is Girl with Green Eyes (1964), by which time he has also started a successful television career, making his TV debut in Espionage (1963) and over the next few years appears in several more TV shows. His versatility enables him to play three characters in The Avengers (1961). He is also featured in such well-regarded shows as Adam Adamant Lives! (1966), Dixon of Dock Green (1955) and The Saint (1962).
McKenna dies on February 13, 2011, at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London, at the age of 81 following a long period of illness. He is buried alongside his wife at Teampall Cheallaigh Cemetery in his native County Cavan.
Following his death, tributes are paid by President of IrelandMary McAleese, Prince Charles, and Ireland’s Minister for Tourism, Culture and SportMary Hanafin, who says that McKenna was “one of a great generation whose talents on the screen and stage both at home and abroad gave us all great pride in his accomplishments.” In County Cavan, he is commemorated by the T. P. McKenna Drama Scholarships (VEC) and the T. P. McKenna Perpetual Trophy presented as part of the Millrace Annual Drama Festival.
Potter is educated at St. Mary’s school in Fairview. She has a long career in Irish theatre, mainly as Ireland’s première comedienne, but also as a straight actress. She first appears professionally with Jimmy O’Dea in pantomime and appears frequently on television and in cabaret. She is a regular performer at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin and for many years stars in Christmas pantomime. She becomes the first star to have a bronze cast of her handprints outside the theatre. She marries Jack O’Leary in 1959, an Irish army officer whom she had first met in 1943, and he writes most of her comedic material.
Among Potter’s many dramatic roles in the theatre is that of Maisie Madigan in Juno and the Paycock. While still a teenager, she tours abroad before World War II as a singer and dancer with Jack Hylton and his orchestra. On a tour of Germany, they once perform in front of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis. She plays the role of Dante Riordan in Joseph Strick‘s film, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977). In September 1938, she appears on the BBC Television Service with Jack Hylton and his band. Film of her performance is held by the Alexandra Palace Television Society. In 2001, the Archivist of the Alexandra Palace Television Society gives Potter a copy of her 1938 television appearance.
Potter is conferred with the Freedom of the City of Dublin in 1984, and is later awarded an honorary degree from Trinity College, Dublin. She dies in her sleep at her home in Clontarf on April 7, 2004, at the age of 79. She is survived by her husband Jack O’Leary, and her sons John and Hugh.
In 1948 he is joint composer of music for a song in a play by Irish playwrightTeresa Deevy called Light Falling. This is performed by the Abbey Experimental Theatre Company in the Peacock Theatre, Dublin.
The Gerard Victory Commission is a prize named in his honour that is awarded to the most promising individual composer.
Gerard Victory dies in Dublin on March 14, 1995. His papers are held in Trinity College and a number of his scores are held at the Contemporary Music Centre.
Alistair Cooke, British journalist, television personality, and broadcaster, who describes himself as a “Lancastrian Irishman,” is born in Salford, Lancashire, England on November 20, 1908. He is best known for his lively and insightful interpretations of American history and culture.
From the late 1930s, Cooke reports and comments on American affairs for BBC Radio and several major British newspapers. His weekly 15-minute program, Letter from America, broadcast from 1946 to 2004, is one of the longest-running series on radio. The texts of many broadcasts are collected in One Man’s America (1952) and Talk About America (1968). From 1956 to 1961 he hosts and narrates the weekly television “magazine” Omnibus, which wins numerous broadcasting awards.
Cooke’s interpretation of the American experience culminates in his BBC-produced television series America: A Personal History of the United States (1972–1973). In thirteen installments, filmed on location throughout the United States, he surveys some 500 years of American history in an eclectic and personal but highly coherent narrative. Alistair Cooke’s America (1973), the book based on the award-winning program, is a best-seller in the United States. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, as host of Masterpiece Theatre, he serves as an interpreter of British culture through the presentation of BBC dramatic television programming to American audiences.
Cooke’s other works include the critical biography Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Actor (1940), Generation on Trial: The USA v. Alger Hiss (1950), based on his coverage of a celebrated Congressional investigation, The Vintage Mencken (1955), The Patient Has the Floor (1986), America Observed (1988), Memories of the Great and the Good (2000) and, with Robert Cameron, The Americans (1977).
On March 2, 2004, at the age of 95, following advice from his doctors, Cooke announces his retirement from Letter from America—after 58 years, the longest-running speech radio show in the world.
Alistair Cooke dies at midnight on March 30, 2004 at his home in New York City. He had been ill with heart disease, but dies of lung cancer, which had spread to his bones. He is cremated and his ashes are clandestinely scattered by his family in New York’s Central Park.
Maureen O’Hara, Irish actress and singer, dies peacefully in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho on October 24, 2015. The famously red-headed O’Hara is known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She works on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne and is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
O’Hara is born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, County Dublin and grows up in an “eccentric” devout Catholic family and aspires to become an actress from a very young age. She trains with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She is given a screen test, which is deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton sees potential and arranges for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moves to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and is given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she goes on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquires the nickname “The Queen of Technicolor,” which she detests, believing that people see her only for her beauty rather than talent.
O’Hara appears in her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated, with Rio Grande (1950). This is followed by The Quiet Man (1952), her best-known film, and The Wings of Eagles (1957), by which time her relationship with Ford has deteriorated. Such is her strong chemistry with Wayne that many assume they are married or in a relationship. In the 1960s O’Hara increasingly turns to more motherly roles as she ages, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Rare Breed (1966).
O’Hara retires from the industry in 1971 after starring with Wayne one final time in Big Jake but returns 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991). In the late 1970s, O’Hara helps run her third husband’s flying business in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, and edits a magazine, but later sells them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland. She is married three times and has one daughter, Bronwyn, born in 1944 to her second husband.
Her autobiography, ‘Tis Herself, is published in 2004 and becomes a New York Times Bestseller. In November 2014, she is presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription “To Maureen O’Hara, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength.”
Maureen O’Hara dies of natural causes in her sleep at the age of 95 on October 24, 2015, at her home in Boise, Idaho. O’Hara is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles F. Blair, Jr.
Boyle is born to Alice (Lewis) and Francis Xavier Boyle. His paternal grandparents are Irish immigrants, and his mother is of mostly French and British Isles descent. He eventually moves to Philadelphia, where his father is a sought-after local TV personality and children’s show host. Following a solid Catholic upbringing, he is a sensitive youth and joins the Christian Brothers religious order at one point while attending La Salle University in Philadelphia. He leaves the monastery after only a few years when he “lost” his calling.
Bent on an acting career, Boyle initially studies with guru Uta Hagen in New York. The tall, hulking, prematurely bald actor wannabe struggles through a variety of odd jobs as a postal worker, waiter and bouncer while simultaneously building up his credits on stage and waiting for that first big break. Things start progressing for him after appearing in the national company of The Odd Couple in 1965 and landing TV commercials on the sly. In the late 1960s Boyle joins Chicago‘s The Second City improv group and makes his Broadway debut as a replacement for Peter Bonerz in Paul Sills’ Story Theatre (1971).
Boyle gains acclaim for his first starring role, playing the title character, a bigoted New York City factory worker, in the 1970 movie Joe, directed by John G. Avildsen. The film’s release is surrounded by controversy over its violence and language. The role leads to major notoriety, however, and some daunting supporting parts in T.R. Baskin (1971), Slither (1973) and as Robert Redford‘s calculating campaign manager in The Candidate (1972). During this time his political radicalism finds a visible platform after joining Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland on anti-war crusades, which also includes the anti-establishment picture Steelyard Blues (1973). This period also sees the forging of a strong friendship with former BeatleJohn Lennon.
Destined to be cast as monstrous undesirables throughout much of his career, Boyle plays a monster of another sort in his early film days, and thus avoids a complete stereotype as a film abhorrent. His hilarious, sexually potent Frankenstein’s Monster in the cult Mel Brooks spoof Young Frankenstein (1974) sees him in a sympathetic and certainly more humorous vein. His creature’s first public viewing, in which Boyle shares an adroit tap-dancing scene with “creator” Gene Wilder in full Fred Astaire regalia, is a show-stopping audience pleaser. Late 1970s filmgoers continue to witness him in seamy, urban settings with brutish roles in Taxi Driver (1976) and Hardcore (1979). At the same time, he addresses several TV mini-movie roles with the same brilliant darkness such as his Senator Joe McCarthy in Tail Gunner Joe (1977), for which he receives an Emmy nomination, and his murderous, knife-wielding Fatso in the miniseries remake of From Here to Eternity (1979).
While the following decade finds Boyle in predominantly less noteworthy filming and a short-lived TV series lead as remote cop Joe Bash (1986), the 1990s bring him Emmy glory for a guest role in an episode of The X-Files (1993). Despite a blood clot-induced stroke in 1990 that impairs his speech for six months, he ventures on and caps his enviable career on TV wielding funny but crass one-liners in the “Archie Bunker” mold on the long-running sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). A major Emmy blunder has him earning seven nominations for his Frank Barone character without a win, the only prime player on the show unhonored. He survives a heart attack while on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond in 1999 but manages to return full time for the remainder of the series’ run through 2005.
Together with Kevin Gildea and Barry Murphy, O’Hanlon founds the International Comedy Cellar, upstairs in the International Bar on Dublin’s South Wicklow Street. Dublin has no comedy scene at the time. As a stand up, he wins the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition in 1994. For a time, he is the presenter of The Stand Up Show.
O’Hanlon moves into straight acting alongside Emma Fielding and Beth Goddard in the ITV comedy-drama Big Bad World, which airs for two series in summer 1999 and winter 2001. He also plays a minor role in The Butcher Boy and appears in an episode of the original Whose Line is it Anyway?.
In 2000, O’Hanlon stars in the comedy series My Hero, in which he plays a very naive superhero from the planet Ultron. His character juggles world-saving heroics with life in suburbia. He stays in the role until the first episode of series 6 in July 2006 where he is replaced by James Dreyfus during the same episode.
O’Hanlon also provides the voice of the lead character in the three Christmas television cartoon specials of Robbie the Reindeer. He appears in the 2005 BBC One sitcom Blessed, written by Ben Elton. Towards the end of 2005, he plays an eccentric Scottish character, Coconut Tam, in the family-based film, The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby. Although more commonly on television, he also appears on radio. In 2015 he appears as incompetent angel Smallbone in the sitcom The Best Laid Plans, also on BBC Radio 4.
In 2006, O’Hanlon writes and presents an RTÉ television series called Leagues Apart, which sees him investigate the biggest and most passionate football rivalries in a number of European countries. He follows this with another RTÉ show, So You Want To Be Taoiseach? in 2007. It is a political series where he gives tongue-in-cheek advice on how to go about becoming Taoiseach of Ireland.
O’Hanlon appears in the Doctor Who episode “Gridlock“, broadcast on April 14, 2007, in which he plays a cat-like creature named Thomas Kincade Brannigan. He appears in Series 3 of the TV show Skins, playing Naomi Campbell’s Politics teacher named Kieran. He then goes on to form a relationship with Naomi’s mother, played by Olivia Colman. He plays the lead role in Irish comedy television programme Val Falvey, TD on RTÉ One.
O’Hanlon has written a novel, The Talk of the Town, which is published in 1998. The novel is about a teenage boy, Patrick Scully, and his friends.
In February 2015 O’Hanlon officially launches the 2015 Sky Cat Laughs Comedy Festival which takes place in Kilkenny from May 28–June 1. In 2015 he plays the role of Peter the Milkman in the Sky One sitcom After Hours.
On February 2, 2017, it is announced O’Hanlon will play the lead role in the BBC crime drama Death in Paradise taking the role of DI Jack Mooney following Kris Marshall‘s departure the same day.
On February 26, 1978, 
The prolific Irish 
