seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: RTÉ


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Birth of Joe Burke, Button Accordion Player

Joseph Burke, Irish musician noted for being a pre-eminent button accordion player, is born in Kilnadeema, south of Loughrea, County Galway, on April 11, 1939. He records and performs traditional Irish music for over half a century.

Burke starts playing traditional at age four and purchases his first accordion in the 1950s. He wins the All-Ireland Senior Accordion Championship in Thurles in 1959 and again in Boyle the following year. Together with fiddler Aggie Whyte, he wins the All-Ireland duet championship in 1962 in Gorey, County Wexford.

Burke co-founds the Leitrim Ceili Band with Padden Downey in 1956. Other members of the east Galway-based band, which wins All-Ireland Championships in 1959 and 1962, includes Irish flute players Paddy Carty, Ambrose Moloney and Tony Molloy, button accordionists Mick Darcy and Sean McGlynn, fiddlers Michael Joe Dooley, Paddy Doorhy, Aggie Whyte and Séamus Connolly, drummer Sean Curley and pianist Anne-Marie Courtney. The band tours in England and releases an LP on the New York-based Dublin label.

Burke first tours in the United States in 1961, and lives mainly in New York from 1962 to 1965, during which period he forms a musical partnership with fiddler Andy McGann. With McGann and pianist Felix Dolan, he records an LP, A Tribute to Michael Coleman, first released in 1966 on his own Shaskeen label. He records again with this trio, issuing The Funny Reel LP on the Shanachie Records label in 1979. Other musical collaborators over the years include Belfast fiddle great Sean McGuire, piper Michael Cooney, harpist Máire Ní Chathasaigh, fiddler Kevin Burke, pianist Charlie Lennon and his wife Anne Conroy Burke, whom he marries in 1990, on guitar and button accordion.

Burke’s first solo LP, Galway’s Own, is released in 1971. He also tours extensively for the next two decades, including with groups sponsored by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. From 1988 to 1991, he lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has a musical residency at John D. McGurk’s Pub and hosts radio programmes at two stations, one of them the “Ireland in America” programme on KDHX. He represents Ireland in 1989 and 1992 at the International Accordion Festivals, in Montmagny, Quebec, along with accordion greats who include Cajun accordion player Marc Savoy and jazz accordionist Art Van Damme.

After residing in the United States from 1988 until 1991, Burke returns to Kilnadeema in 1992. There, he carries on teaching and performing music. He dies at the age of 81 on February 20, 2021, at Galway Hospice.

Burke is named RTÉ‘s Traditional Musician of the Year in 1970. He goes on to win both the AIB Traditional Musician of the Year and the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Irish World in 1997. A Joe Burke Tribute Concert is held in April 1997 at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, on his reception of the AIB award. Three years later, he receives an award in Musical Mastery from Boston College. He is later conferred Gradam an Chomhaltais in 2003.


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Death of Jonathan Philbin Bowman, Journalist & Radio Broadcaster

Jonathan Philbin Bowman, Irish journalist and radio broadcaster, dies in a fall at his Dublin home on March 6, 2000.

Born in Dublin on January 6, 1969, Bowman, the son of the historian and broadcaster John Bowman and Eimer Philbin Bowman. He is the brother of comedian and journalist Abie Philbin Bowman. He is educated at Sandford Park School and at Newpark Comprehensive School in Dublin. He chooses to leave formal education in his early teens, a decision he announces to the nation on RTÉ‘s flagship talk programme The Late Late Show.

Bowman works mostly as a freelance journalist. He co-presents a radio show, The Rude Awakening, on Dublin’s FM104 with Scott Williams, George Hellis and Margaret Callanan for two years between 1993 and 1994 before joining the Sunday Independent newspaper as a columnist. He later presents television programmes on RTÉ, such as the quiz show Dodge the Question.

Bowman dies in a fall at his home on Fitzgerald Street in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, on March 6, 2000. He is found lying in the kitchen near the foot of the stairs. His death is believed to be the result of a fall down the stairs or from a stool, which is found nearby.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says that he is deeply saddened on learning the news of Bowman’s death. His thoughts and prayers he says are with his family at this very sad time.

The leader of the Labour Party, Ruairí Quinn TD, expresses his shock and sadness on hearing of the death. He says that Bowman was without doubt one of the bright lights of Irish journalism. He extends his deepest sympathies to Bowman’s son, Saul, and to his parents John and Eimer.

The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, says that few people he knew brought a smile to the face of anyone they met more readily. He says that his infectious good humour and iconoclastic attitude to life conveyed itself to all with whom he came into contact. He adds that Bowman will be missed for many years to come.

The editor of the Sunday Independent, Aengus Fanning, says that Bowman was one of the most brilliant journalists of his generation.

Bowman is survived by his parents, his sister Emma, his brothers Abie and Daniel and his only son Saul Philbin Bowman.


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Birth of Leland Bardwell, Poet, Novelist & Playwright

Constan Olive Leland Bardwell, Irish poet, novelist, and playwright, is born Leland Hone in India on February 25, 1922. She was part of the literary scene in London and later Dublin, where she was an editor of literary magazines Hibernia and Cyphers.

Bardwell is born to Irish parents William Hone and Mary Collise and moves to Ireland at the age of two. Her father’s family are of the Anglo-Irish Hone family. She has a difficult childhood growing up in Leixlip, County Kildare. She is educated at Alexandra College and briefly studies in Switzerland. She works in a variety of jobs in Ireland and later Scotland, where, in 1948, she meets poet Michael Bardwell. The couple has two children and later separate.

Bardwell becomes a part of the literary scene of Soho in London, where she socialises with fellow writers, including Anthony Cronin, Francis Bacon, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Burgess. In the 1950s, she meets Fintan McLachlan, with whom she has three children, including the composer, John McLachlan. The family moves back to Dublin, where she works as a reviewer for Hibernia magazine and as a poetry editor.

From 1970 onward, Bardwell’s work is published regularly, starting with her first volume of poetry, The Mad Cyclist, which is later followed by her first novel, Girl on a Bicycle. She writes a number of plays and short stories, such as Outpatients, and her works are produced for RTÉ and the BBC. In 1984, she writes a musical play, No Regrets, based on the life of Édith Piaf. It opens at the Gaiety Theatre starring Anne Bushnell, and later tours across Ireland.

Bardwell’s work is heavily influenced by her difficult upbringing and her experiences in London and Dublin. In her memoir, A Restless Life, she describes her life as “a crescendo of madness.” She is considered an important poet by her contemporaries, who include Patrick Kavanagh, John Jordan, Paul Durcan, Macdara Woods and Michael Hartnett. On the publication of her fourth collection of poetry, The White Beach, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain states “it is good to see her work of the decades collected – it has inspired many Irish poets, male and female, and should be much more widely known,” adding that her work is “witty, full of sharp intimate honesty, full of truth and surprises.”

In 1975, Bardwell co-founds the long running literary magazine Cyphers with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Macdara Woods, and acts as a co-editor until 2012. She is the recipient of the Marten Toonder Award in 1993, and the Dede Korkut Short Story Award from Turkish PEN in 2010.

In later life, Bardwell moves to Annamakarraig in County Monaghan and later to Cloonagh in County Sligo, where in 1993 she co-founds the Scríobh Literary Festival. She is a member of the Irish artists’ association Aosdána and acts as one of Patrick Kavanagh’s literary executors.

Bardwell dies at the age of 94 in Sligo, County Sligo, on June 28, 2016.

(Photo by Pat Boran)


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Death of David Kelly, Film & Television Actor

David Kelly, Irish actor who has regular roles in several film and television works from the 1950s onwards, dies on February 12, 2012, in Goatstown, Dublin, following a short illness. One of the most recognisable voices and faces of Irish stage and screen, he is known for his roles as Rashers Tierney in Strumpet City, Cousin Enda in Me Mammy, the builder Mr. O’Reilly in Fawlty Towers, Albert Riddle in Robin’s Nest, and Grandpa Joe in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Another notable role is as Michael O’Sullivan in Waking Ned.

Kelly is born on July 11, 1929, in Dublin, and educated at Dublin’s Synge Street CBS Christian Brothers school. He begins acting at the age of eight at the city’s Gaiety Theatre, encouraged by a teacher at school. He also performs with the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society and goes on to train at the Abbey School of Acting. As a backup career, he additionally trains as a draughtsman and calligrapher, and also learns watercolour painting. He appears onstage in the original production of Brendan Behan‘s The Quare Fellow, and gains his first major career attention in Samuel Beckett‘s Krapp’s Last Tape at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1959. By then he has made his screen debut in a small part in director John Pomeroy’s 1958 film noir Dublin Nightmare.

One of Kelly’s first television appearances is on RTÉ in O’Dea’s Your Man (1964) in which he plays the part of Ignatius opposite Jimmy O’Dea. He goes on to become a familiar face on British television with the BBC comedy Me Mammy, opposite Milo O’Shea and Anna Manahan. He goes on to often-memorable guest roles on such series as Oh, Father! and Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, and particularly during the 1970s with a long-running role as the one-armed dishwasher Albert Riddle in the Man About the House spin-off Robin’s Nest. He also has a regular long running role alongside Bruce Forsyth in both series of the comedy Slinger’s Day from 1986 to 1987, and, in 1991, he appears in the first series of the BBC sitcom 2point4 Children as the cafe-owner Paddy.

Kelly gains some of his greatest recognition in 1975, playing inept builder Mr. O’Reilly on the second episode of Fawlty Towers (“The Builders”).

Kelly is in the voice cast of The Light Princess, a partly animated, hour-long family fantasy that airs on the BBC in 1978.

In Ireland, Kelly may be most famous for his portrayal of the character “Rashers” Tierney in the 1980 RTÉ miniseries Strumpet City, which stars Peter O’Toole, Cyril Cusack and Peter Ustinov. He goes on to have starring roles in television shows such as Emmerdale Farm in the 1980s and Glenroe in the 1990s, as well as playing the grandfather in Mike Newell‘s film Into the West (1992).

Following his appearance as Michael O’Sullivan in the 1998 film Waking Ned, Kelly plays roles in such films as Tim Burton‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), in which he plays Grandpa Joe, and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004). He plays title character Frank Kovak in the mystery film The Kovak Box, in a rare villainous role. In 2007, he appears in Stardust, which features Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and which is also his final film. He also does extensive radio work, including a guest appearance on the BBC Radio 4 series Baldi.

Kelly is married to actress Laurie Morton, who survives him, along with children David and Miriam. He dies at age 82 after a short illness on February 12, 2012. The Irish Times refers to him as the “grand old man of Irish acting.” A Catholic funeral mass takes place on February 16, 2012, at the Church of the Miraculous Medal, in his hometown of Dublin. He is cremated at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium.

Kelly wins a 1991 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Performer, Non-Resident Production, for a Kennedy Center revival of The Playboy of the Western World. As well, he earns a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for the 1998 film Waking Ned. In 2005, he wins the Irish Film & Television Academy‘s Lifetime Achievement Award, in addition to earning a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


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Death of Seán Keating, Romantic-Realist Painter

Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter who paints some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland, dies on December 21, 1977, at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin.

Keating is born in Limerick, County Limerick on September 28, 1889. He studies drawing at the Limerick Technical School before a scholarship arranged by William Orpen allows him to go study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin at the age of twenty. Over the next few years, he spends two weeks or so during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depict them as rugged heroic figures.

In 1914 he wins the RDS Taylor award with a painting titled The Reconciliation. The prize includes £50.00 which allows him to go to London to work as Orpen’s studio assistant in 1915. In late 1915 or early 1916, he returns to Ireland where he documents the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War. Examples include Men of the South (1921–22) which shows a group of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men ready to ambush a military vehicle and An Allegory (first exhibited in 1924), in which the two opposing sides in the Irish Civil War are seen to bury the tri-colour covered coffin amid the roots of an ancient tree. The painting includes a self-portrait of the artist.

Keating is elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1918, and a full member in 1923. One of the cardinal achievements of the Irish Free State in the 1920s is the building, in partnership with Siemens, of a hydro-electric power generator at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. Between 1926 and 1927, at his own volition, he produces a considerable number of paintings related to this scheme. He exhibits several examples of the paintings in the RHA exhibitions in 1927 and 1928. Most of the paintings are now in the collection of ESB Group.

In 1936 group of prominent Limerick politicians, artists and patrons establish the first Limerick City Collection of Art from various donations and bequests. Keating is part of this artist-led initiative to form a municipal art gallery in Limerick similar to those already in Dublin and Cork. The collection is formed primarily out of donations and bequests. As a pivotal member of the committee, Keating himself donates many works to the collection which is first exhibited as a municipal collection in the Savoy Cinema, Limerick City on November 23, 1937. It is not until 1948 that an extension to the rear of Limerick Free Library and Museum becomes the home to the City Collection as the Limerick Free Art Gallery. In 1985 the Library and Museum are transferred to larger buildings.

In 1939 Keating is commissioned to paint a mural for the Irish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. He is President of the RHA from 1950 to 1962 and shows at the annual exhibition for 61 years from 1914. Although he is an intellectual painter in the sense that he consciously sets out to explore the visual identity of the Irish nation, and his paintings show a very idealised realism, he fears that the modern movement will bring back a decline in artistic standards. Throughout his career, he exhibits nearly 300 works at the RHA and also shows at the Oireachtas.

Seán Keating dies on December 21, 1977 at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin and is buried at Cruagh Cemetery, Rathfarnham. The 1978 RHA Exhibition features a small memorial collection of his work.

Posthumous exhibitions of his work are mounted by The Grafton Gallery, Dublin (1986) and the Electricity Supply Board (1987). Sean Keating – The Pilgrim Soul, a documentary presented and written by his son Justin Keating, airs on RTÉ in 1996.

(Pictured: Photograph of Keating’s “An Allegory” painted between 1922 and 1924. The painting represents Keating’s own disillusionment and loss of idealism resulting from the outbreak of the Irish Civil War. The only figure of the group addressing the observer is a self-portrait of the artist.)


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Birth of Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, Teacher, Author, & Campaigner for Irish Language

Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, teacher, author, critic, and campaigner for the Irish language, is born on December 13, 1905, in Gort an Ghabhainn, Banagher, King’s County (now County Offaly), son of Francis McGuiness (surname thus on his birth certificate), farmer, and his wife, Rosanna (née Egan). He is educated at La Sainte Foi, Banagher, Reachra national school, Shannonbridge, and Naas CBS. He qualifies as a primary school teacher from De La Salle Training College, Waterford, in 1926 and has the distinction of being the first person to sit all exams through the medium of Irish. He graduates BA at University College Galway (UCG) in 1933 and his further education includes a diploma in Spanish literature from University of Barcelona and an MA on the Irish scholar Tomás Ó Máille.

Mac Aonghusa’s teaching career begins in 1926 when he becomes headmaster on Inis Treabhair, County Galway, spending fourteen months there. Afterwards he transfers to Gort Mór, Rosmuc, County Galway, where he continues teaching until 1962. He remains an active member of Cumann na Múinteoirí Náisiúnta throughout his life. Between 1962 and 1972 he is employed as an ad-hoc examiner at the civil service commission. An active member of Fianna Fáil, he helps to organise the party in County Galway in the 1920s and 1930s and is elected a member of Galway County Council in 1934.

Mac Aonghusa is a prominent advocate of the Irish language and together with his close friend Máirtín Ó Cadhain and another Connemara schoolteacher, Seosamh Mac Mathúna, founds Cumann na Gaeltachta to agitate for the civil rights of the Gaeltacht communities and of Irish speakers in general. He is one of the main campaigners for the establishment of the Rath Carn Gaeltacht in County Meath and forms part of the delegation that meets Éamon de Valera on November 11, 1932, and receives from him a promise to provide land in County Meath for that purpose. The Gaeltacht is established in 1935. Mac Aonghusa continues to support the project throughout his life and is involved in further campaigns relating to the area, including the recognition of Rath Carn’s Gaeltacht status. He is also an active member of Conradh na Gaeilge in the 1940s and is later involved in the campaign for the establishment of an Irish-language television broadcasting service.

Mac Aonghusa is a prolific writer and begins publishing short stories and articles from 1926 onward. His contributions appear in An tÉireannach, An Phoblacht, The Irish Tribune, An Stoc, and Ar Aghaidh. From 1948, he is a regular contributor to Feasta and his essays and reviews on Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s works appear in Comhar. He is a member of several literary organisations, including Cumann na Scríbhneoirí and the Galway Literary Society. His first book, An Cladóir agus scéalta eile, appears in 1952. Between 1963 and 1972 he is a contributor to The Irish Press and works also as a literary journalist. An essay on Pádraic Ó Conaire earns him a prize from Acadamh Liteartha na hÉireann.

Mac Aonghusa speaks a number of European languages including German, Spanish, French, Romanian, and Greek and travels widely throughout Europe. In the early 1970s he lives in Russia, and a collection of essays entitled Ó Rosmuc go Rostov is published in 1972. For health reasons he lives in Málaga, Spain, from the middle of the 1970s until 1987. While there, RTÉ produces a documentary on his life entitled Ó Ros Muc go Malaga.

Mac Aonghusa dies on April 9, 1991, in Portiuncula General Hospital, Ballinasloe, County Galway, and is interred in Clonmacnoise. In 1930 he marries Mairéad Ní Lupain, a nurse from Annaghvane in Connemara, and has four children, Proinsias (1933), Micheál (1937), Róisín (1939), and Máirín (1944). The couple separates in the 1940s. Proinsias follows in his father’s footsteps as a writer and journalist and becomes president of Conradh na Gaeilge and chairman of Bord na Gaeilge.

(From: “Mac Aonghusa, Criostóir” by Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Jerome de Bromhead, Composer & Classical Guitarist

Jerome de Bromhead, Irish composer, classical guitarist, and member of Aosdána, is born in Waterford, County Waterford, on December 2, 1945.

De Bromhead studies with A. J. Potter and James Wilson at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, with further studies with Seóirse Bodley in 1975 and Franco Donatoni in 1978. He holds an M.A. in music, art history and English from Trinity College Dublin. As a guitarist, he studies with Elspeth Henry (1967–68) and at the Guitar Centre, London (1969).

De Bromhead’s compositions include works for solo guitar as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His Symphony No. 1 (1986) represents Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers at UNESCO‘s headquarters in Paris. He describes his style as “neither a Postmodernist nor a deaf-as-a-postmodernist. Above all I am suspicious of anything that seems like dogma.”

De Bromhead’s harpsichord piece Flux (1981) is performed at the ISCM World Music Days in Germany in 1987 and is now published by Tonos Verlag of Darmstadt.

According to guitarist John Feeley, de Bromhead’s solo guitar composition Gemini (1970) is “a sophisticated work, both technically and compositionally. It has the dynamism of youth, with a sense of freshness and it projects an attractive, driving energy […] It is an effective concert work, which speaks well on the instrument and is particularly gratifying for the performer.”

De Bromhead works at RTÉ as a television news director and announcer, as well as a senior music producer for radio, until a serious accident forces him to retire in 1996. He currently lives in Dublin.

The Contemporary Music Centre (www.cmc.ie) provides scores and sample recordings of a selection of de Bromhead’s works, available here.


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Birth of Feargal Quinn, Businessman, Politician & TV Personality

Feargal Quinn, Irish businessman, politician and television personality, is born in Dublin on November 27, 1936. He is the founder of the Superquinn supermarket chain and serves as a Senator in Seanad Éireann representing the National University of Ireland constituency from 1993 to 2016.

Quinn’s father, Eamonn, founds a grocery brand and later the Red Island resort in Skerries, Dublin. He is a first cousin of Labour Party politician Ruairi Quinn and of Lochlann Quinn, former chairman of Allied Irish Banks (AIB). He is educated at Newbridge College and is a commerce graduate of University College Dublin (UCD). He builds a career in business and later takes on a range of public service roles.

Quinn founds the national supermarket chain Superquinn (originally Quinn’s Supermarkets), of which he remains non-executive president for some years after his family sells out their interest in August 2005 for over €400 million. Superquinn is known for its focus on customer service and pioneers a number of innovations, including Ireland’s first supermarket loyalty card in 1993, SuperClub. It also introduces self-scanning of goods by customers in a number of its outlets. Superquinn becomes the first supermarket in the world to guarantee the absolute traceability of all its beef from pasture to plate, using DNA TraceBack, a system developed at Trinity College, Dublin by IdentiGEN.

Quinn becomes the chairman of the Interim Board for Posts and serves as chairman of its successor An Post (the Irish postal administration) until 1989. He also serves on several other public authorities and boards. From 1993 to 1998, he chairs the steering committee which oversees the development of the Leaving Certificate Applied. In 2006, he is appointed an Adjunct Professor in Marketing at National University of Ireland Galway. He is also chairman of Springboard Ireland.

Quinn is a former President of EuroCommerce, the Brussels-based organisation which represents the retail, wholesale and international trade sectors in Europe. He also serves on the board of directors of CIES, the Food Business Forum based in Paris, as well as the American-based Food Marketing Institute.

In 2009, Quinn works with independent shops and helps them to revamp, modernise and stave off stiff competition from multi-national retailers. It airs as RTÉ‘s six-part television series, Feargal Quinn’s Retail Therapy. A second series airs in 2011, and a third series airs in 2012. In 2011, he fronts RTÉ’s Local Heroes campaign in Drogheda, County Louth, which is an assembled team of experts to kick-start the local economy. It airs as RTÉ One‘s six-part television series, Local Heroes – A Town Fights Back.

Quinn is first elected as a senator in 1993 from the National University of Ireland constituency and is re-elected in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2011. He is a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, the Joint Committee on Finance and Public Service and is an Oireachtas member of the National Economic and Social Forum, along with the Joint Committee on Jobs and Innovation.

Quinn is one of the co-founders and is a driving force behind Democracy Matters – a civil society group that is formed to oppose the Government’s plans to abolish Seanad Éireann. In May 2013, with Senators Katherine Zappone and Mary Ann O’Brien, he introduces the Seanad Bill 2013 to reform the system of electing the elected members of Seanad Éireann (as provided for in Article 18.10 of the Constitution of Ireland) through a one-person, one vote franchise. The Seanad Bill 2013 succeeds in being passed at Second Stage in the Seanad. During the Seanad abolition referendum campaign, the Bill demonstrates to the electorate, in a very palpable way, that reform of the Seanad is achievable if they vote for its retention. In a referendum held in October 2013 on the Abolition of Seanad Éireann, the people vote to retain the Seanad by 51.7%.

In 2014, Quinn reveals that since being first elected to Seanad Éireann, he has donated his entire salary to charity and in more recent years he has refused to accept any salary. In March 2015, he opposes the Marriage Equality bill in the Seanad, and votes ‘No’ in the referendum. He serves as Chairman of the Independent Alliance. He does not contest the 2016 Seanad election.

Quinn is the recipient of five honorary doctorates from education institutions, including NUI Galway in 2006, a papal knighthood along with a fellowship and the French Ordre National du Mérite. He shares with Oprah Winfrey the 2006 “Listener of the Year” award of the International Listening Association.

Quinn dies peacefully at his home in Howth, County Dublin, on April 24, 2019, following a short illness. His funeral Mass takes place at St. Fintan’s Church in Sutton, north County Dublin. In attendance is President Michael D. Higgins, a representative for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister for Children Katherine Zappone, Senator Michael McDowell, and a host of other current and former politicians, business figures, and past colleagues of the “Superquinn family.” Fittingly, the coffin is carried from the church to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”


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Birth of Brendan O’Carroll, Actor, Comedian, Director & Producer

Brendan O’Carroll, Irish actor, comedian, director, producer and writer, is born in Finglas, Dublin, on September 17, 1955. He is best known for portraying foul-mouthed matriarch Agnes Brown on stage and in the BBC and RTÉ television sitcom Mrs. Brown’s Boys. In 2015, he is awarded the Irish Film and Television Academy Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Irish television.

O’Carroll is the youngest of eleven children. His mother, Maureen, is a Labour Party TD and his father, Gerard O’Carroll, is a carpenter. His father dies in 1962 when O’Carroll is six years old, and his mother raises the eleven children with little money. He attends Saint Gabriel’s National School and leaves at the age of twelve. He has a string of occupations, including being a waiter and a milkman.

Having become well known as a comedy guest on The Late Late Show, O’Carroll releases four stand-up videos, titled How’s your Raspberry Ripple, How’s your Jolly Roger, How’s your Snowballs and How’s your Wibbly Wobbly Wonder.

O’Carroll writes the screenplay to Sparrow’s Trap, a boxing movie. The film, which has Stephen Rea cast in the lead role, runs into financing difficulties midway through the shoot when the distributor withdraws, and it is abandoned. Incurring debts of over €1 million, he becomes bankrupt, and the film has never been produced.

O’Carroll presents a quiz show called Hot Milk and Pepper on RTÉ One, with long-term collaborator Gerry Browne.

In 1992, O’Carroll performs a short radio play titled Mrs. Brown’s Boys and shortly afterwards he writes four books titled The Mammy, The Granny, The Chisellers and The Scrapper. In 1999, a movie named Agnes Browne, starring Anjelica Huston, is released, based on his book The Mammy. He also co-writes the screenplay. He then decides to put together his own family theatre company, Mrs. Browne’s Boys, and dresses up as a woman to play his part, as the actress he had originally hired did not show up.

From 1999 to 2009, O’Carroll writes and performs in five plays. Since 2011, the stage shows have been re-toured across the UK. In 2011, his plays are adapted into a television sitcom, with the name “Browne” shortened to “Brown.” From its beginning in 2011 through January 2022, 28 episodes have aired, across three series, several Christmas-special episodes and a one-off live episode that aired in 2016 on RTÉ One and BBC One. Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie is released on June 27, 2014, and is a significant success in the UK, staying at number one in the box office for two consecutive weeks. However, the film has negative reviews with one saying it is not just unfunny but “close to anti-funny.” O’Carroll’s wife, his sister Eilish, his son Danny, and his daughter Fiona all appear or have appeared on episodes of Mrs. Brown’s Boys.

It is announced in January 2015 that the BBC wants O’Carroll to do “other stuff,” due to the fact that Mrs. Brown’s Boys has become so successful. He reveals plans to adapt his first ever written play, patser grey, into a television sitcom.

O’Carroll is married to Doreen O’Carroll from 1977 to 1999. He marries Jennifer Gibney in 2005. They live in Davenport, Florida. He has three surviving children: Fiona, Danny, and Eric. Their first son Brendan dies of spina bifida at just a few days old. He has six grandchildren, four children from Fiona and two children from Danny.

O’Carroll’s paternal grandfather, Peter O’Carroll, a father of seven and a prominent republican, is shot dead on October 16, 1920, at his home in Manor Street, Dublin. Two of his sons are Irish Republican Army volunteers. The incident is investigated in the television series Who Do You Think You Are?

In March 2016 O’Carroll appears in the BBC Two documentary Brendan O’Carroll – My Family at War, which explores the involvement of three of his uncles — Liam, James and Peadar O’Carroll — in the Easter Rising.


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Birth of Cathal O’Shannon, Journalist & Television Presenter

Cathal O’Shannon, Irish journalist and television presenter, is born in Marino, Dublin, on August 23, 1928. He is a reporter with The Irish Times, and television reporter/presenter and documentary film maker with RTÉ. The Irish radio and television broadcaster Terry Wogan describes O’Shannon as possibly the greatest Irish television journalist of the 20th century.

O’Shannon is the son of Cathal O’Shannon (Sr.), a Socialist and Irish Republican. He receives his formal education at Colaiste Mhuire School, in Parnell Square, Dublin. Despite his father’s politics, as a 16-year-old he volunteeres for war time service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Belfast in 1945 during World War II. He utilizes a forged birth certificate to disguise being underage for enlistment with the British Armed Forces. After air crew training, he is posted to the Far East, as a tail gunner in an Avro Lancaster bomber to take part in the Burma campaign, but the war ends with the downfall of the Japanese Empire before he is required to fly combat sorties.

O’Shannon first becomes a journalist with The Irish Times on leaving the RAF in 1947. Later he joins the Irish state broadcasting service Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ).

In July 1972 O’Shannon records a notable television interview with 31-year-old Muhammad Ali, when Ali is in Dublin to compete at Croke Park in a bout with Alvin Lewis.

O’Shannon receives a Jacob’s Award for his 1976 TV documentary, Even the Olives are Bleeding, which details the activities of the “Connolly Column” in the Spanish Civil War. Two years later he is honoured with a second Jacob’s Award for his television biography Emmet Dalton Remembers (1978).

In 1978, O’Shannon leaves RTÉ to join Canadian company Alcan, which is setting up an aluminum plant at Aughinish, County Limerick, in 1978. He is head-hunted to become its Director of Public Affairs, an important post at a time when there are environmental concerns about the effects of aluminium production. He admits that he was attracted by the salary, “five times what RTÉ were paying me,” but he also later says that one of the reasons for the move is that he had become unhappy with working at RTÉ, stating in an interview that “The real reason I got out of RTÉ was that they wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do journalistically.” He had submitted proposals to the station’s editors for a television documentary series on the Irish Civil War, and also one on the wartime Emergency period, but they had been rejected. While he enjoys the social life with lavish expenses which his public relations duties involve, his friends believe that he missed the varied life and travel of journalism. He retires early from Aughinish in 1992 and returns to making television documentaries with RTÉ.

In January 2007, O’Shannon’s last documentary, Hidden History: Ireland’s Nazis, is broadcast by RTÉ as a two-part series. It explores how a number of former Nazis and Nazi collaborators from German-occupied Europe go to live in the Republic of Ireland after World War II — the best known of whom is Otto Skorzeny, who lives for a period in County Kildare. Others include such Breton nationalists as Alan Heusaff, Yann Fouéré and Yann Goulet, as well as two Belgians, Albert Folens and Albert Luykx.

O’Shannon announces his retirement at the age of 80 on January 12, 2007.

O’Shannon is awarded lifetime membership in the Irish Film & Television Academy in 2010, to which he says is “particularly gratifying that it occurs before I pop my clogs.”

After weakening health for two years, and spending his last days in hospice at Blackrock, O’Shannon dies at the Beacon Hospital in Dublin on October 22, 2011. His body is reposed at Fanagans Funeral Home in Dublin on October 25, 2011, followed by a funeral the following day at Glasnevin Cemetery Chapel, where it is afterwards cremated.

O’Shannon’s wife, Patsy, whom he met while they were working for The Irish Times office in London, dies in 2006. They are married for more than 50 years. In a 2008 television documentary O’Shannon admits that throughout his marriage he had been a serial womaniser, who had repeatedly engaged in extra-marital affairs unbeknownst to his wife.

Director-General of RTÉ Noel Curran says O’Shannon had brought into being “some of the great moments in the RTÉ documentary and factual schedule over the past five decades.” In tribute, RTÉ One shows the documentary Cathal O’Shannon: Telling Tales on November 10, 2011. It had originally aired in 2008 to mark his 80th birthday.