Irish novelist Edna O’Brien was born on December 15, 1930, in Tuamgraney, County Clare, to Michael O’Brien and Lena O’Brien (neé Cleary). She was educated at the primary school in Scariff, and, as a boarder (1941-46), at the Convent of Mercy, Loughrea, Co Galway. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village as “enclosed, fervid and bigoted”.
According to O’Brien, her mother was a strong, controlling woman who had emigrated temporarily to America and worked for some years as a maid in Brooklyn before returning to Ireland to raise a family. She has said that her father was an “angry drinker” and frequently caused herself and her mother to feel “in danger”.
After leaving school Edna O’Brien moved to Dublin where she worked in a chemists and studied pharmacy. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. She read writers such as Tolstoy, Thackeray, and F Scott Fitzgerald. The first book she ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by T.S. Eliot. She has said that Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man made her realise that she wanted to pursue literature for the rest of her life.
In 1954 she married – against her parents’ wished – the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler, nearly twice her age, and the couple moved to London in 1960. They had two sons, Carlos and Sasha, but the marriage was dissolved in 1964. Ernest Gébler died in 1998.
Carlos Gebler in a RTE documentary, Flesh and Blood (2009) said that his father was intensely jealous of his mother’s swift rise to fame as a writer in the early Sixties. He revealed how her volatile marriage to his father broke up over bitter rows when he tried to claim success for her best-selling novels. “They had terrible arguments about money and she had to leave the house and didn’t see her children for a few years. For her, it was a nightmare,” he said.
Edna O’Brien published her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960. It met with much criticism and was swiftly banned by the Irish Censor for its perceived explicit sexual content. A copy was burned by the curate of her local church in Co Clare. Her following five books, published during the 1960s, met the same fate at the hands of the Irish Censorship Board. O’Brien became a controversial figure in a conservative Catholic Ireland, a legacy that some would argue has impinged upon the critical reception of her work long after the disappearance of such moral indignation.
Edna O’Brien has written plays, children’s books, essays, screenplays, and non-fiction about Ireland. “Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire. Ireland has always been a woman, a womb, a cave, a cow, a Rosaleen, a sow, a bride, a harlot, and, of course, the gaunt Hag of Beare.” (from Mother Ireland, 1976) Virginia (1981) her play about Virginia Woolf presented the softer side of the feminist writer.
As a short story writer she has published regularly in the New Yorker. Her tribute to her homeland, Mother Ireland (1976), appeared in 1977. It includes seven autobiographical essays, in which O’Brien weaves her own personal history with local customs and ancient Irish lore. Her other non-fiction works include James and Nora, a study of James Joyce’s marriage.
In several of her works O’Brien has focused on the bitterness of women who have experienced failures in their relationship with men. Her women are often victims of their upbringing and her male characters violent or weak or treacherous, as in Time and Tide (1992), which tells of Nell Steadman, an Irish editor living in London, her disappointments in love and marriage with a sadistic husband.
O’Brien also fictionalised real-life events: in the novel In The Forest (2002) based on the murder near where the author grew up of Imelda Riney, her son and a priest in a forest and written soon after the event, was criticised by some as insensitive.
Her impact upon modern Irish writing is considerable. She has received numerous awards for her works, including a Kingsley Amis Award in 1962, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1990 for Lantern Slides, a collection of short stories, set primarily in Ireland. In 2006, Edna O’ Brien was appointed adjunct professor of English Literature in University College, Dublin, to which she also donated her literary papers. In 2009, she was honoured with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at a special ceremony for that year’s Irish Book Awards in Dublin. She has also been conferred a Doctor of Letters by the University of Limerick in 2004. The CountryGirls was turned into an immemorable film. Zee & Co, her 1971 novel about marital discord and an ill-advised love triangle, was luckier, featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Susanna York and Michael Caine.
However, fame and success have not necessarily brought her a fortune. As she pointed out in an RTE documentary in 2012, it takes her between two and four years to complete a book, and she’s missed out on the largesse available from the big wallet literary prizes. And then there are the subjects she chooses: “The only things I can write are stories that don’t have Hollywood stamped on them,” she drily observed.
Until 2010 she owned a holiday home in Co Donegal, The Pink House, in Carrickfinn. Her memoir, initially titled Country Girl, is due to be published in 2012 by Faber. The publicity for the book says it will detail her encounters with Marlon Brando, Sam Beckett, Jackie Onassis, Bill Clinton, Robert Mitchum and Gerry Adams, among others. To a journalist who asked her about Brando, she merely said: “I met him at a dinner and we had a very interesting talk. Then he came to my house.” She later added that he stayed in her kitchen.
Popular Irish radio broadcaster of the 1950s Denis “Din Joe” Fitzgibbon was born in Cork city and educated at the Presentation College. He played rugby for Dolphin and Munster. He studied accountancy and after working for Batchelors Foods in Dublin joined the motor trade with Ford’s Smithfield Motors, working his way up to manager of Toyota Ireland in 1975.
But his distinctive clear voice blended with a Cork accent was to give him a second career in radio. In the early 1950s he took part in a quiz show with Joe Linane and “Din Joe” was introduced to the Irish public.
By 1953 he was hosting his own recorded radio entertainment show, Take the Floor, the main feature of which was Irish dancing (music supplied by the Garda Ceili Band) but including music, storytelling and humour. His programme, hosted at venues throughout the country, made household names of the Rory O’Connor Dancers (see video below), harpist Kathleen Watkins (later to marry Gay Byrne) and actor Eamonn Keane.
Din Joe has gone down in modern Irish lore as the radio host who introduced Irish dancing on radio. His live style was so vivid that it seemed audio-visual. As can been seen in a section of the YouTube video, he also used to call out the moves in the same manner as was done at American barn dances.
Apart from Take the Floor, he would go on the host Round the Fire and Can You Beat It?, a series that inspired his book of humour Laughter Unlimited With Din Joe, published by Mercier in 1957. His stories and anecdotes took a wry look at aspects of life at home and abroad.
Din Joe knew his strengths and didn’t take to television work in the 1966 on a show called Be My Guest and returned to radio. Long after his show ceased in 1978, mere mention of “Din Joe” or Take the Floor would raise quizzical eyebrows at the mere thought of dancing on the radio.
Denis “Din Joe” Fitzgibbon married Emer in June 1948 and they had five daughters and one son – journalist Frank Fitzgibbon. He died after a short illness in November, 1998.
Born on February 12, 1930, in Holycross, Co Tipperary, John Doyle was regarded as one of the greatest defenders in hurling. An only child, whose mother died in the week of his birth, he was raised by his father on the family farm. He was educated at the local St. Michael’s national school in Holycross, and later attended Thurles CBS. From an early age he showed a great interest in hurling. He came to prominence as a minor, helping Tipperary to an All-Ireland title in 1947. The following year, he helped his club, Holycross-Ballycahill.
In a top-class senior county career which began at the age of 19 in 1949 and continued until his retirement after an All-Ireland defeat by Kilkenny 18 years later, John Doyle won eight All-Ireland medals (a feat he shares with Christy Ring), 11 National Leagues medals and ten Munster titles. He was later voted into the GAA’s Hall of Fame, Team of the Century and Team of the Millennium. He is one of only a handful of players to have won All-Ireland medals in three separate decades.
His mastery of the shoulder tackle (he was six feet tall), allied to an above average number of deliveries out of defence, marked him apart. Collectively, with fellow inner-defenders, Michael Maher (Holycross) and Kieran Carey (Roscrea), he completed a very formidable trio as Tipperary’s last line of defence for a ten year period from the late 1950s. Their marshalling of territory in front of goal was famously known as “Hell’s Kitchen” because of the often tempestuous nature of the exchanges which greeted the dropping ball arriving from mid-field.
Hurling was a different game in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, wrote Sean Ryan in the Sunday Independent, with forwards allowed to rush the goalkeeper and put him into the net As a result, the first duty of defenders such as John Doyle was to defend their ‘keeper.
“In the Munster final of 1960, Doyle and Cork forward Paddy Barry had a great scrap. They put down their hurleys and adopted the Marquess of Queensberry rules, while the referee ignored them and the play went on around them. It was the proverbial Munster final where the ball went out of play, but the match went on.”
After his playing career ended, Doyle served Tipperary as a selector and Central Council delegate. He also entered politics, running unsuccessfully for Fianna Fáil in the 1969 and ’73 general elections and spending the interim years in the Seanad, to which he was elected on the agricultural panel.
He died on December 28, 2010. He is survived by his wife Anne, two sons and five daughters. His sons, Johnny and Michael, played for Tipperary at all levels, and Michael, who won a Munster title with Tipperary in 1987, was manager of the county hurling team.
Miranda Daphne Jane Smiley was born on August 19, 1940, and brought up in Castle Fraser, Aberdeen. Her mother Lavinia Pearson, inherited Castle Fraser in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, from her father, and married Major Michael Smiley, who was one of the British prisoners of war who escaped from Colditz.
In 1963 she married Benjamin Guinness, heir to the Guinness billions, and future Earl of Iveagh: he was 26 and she was 23. She borre the title Countess of Iveagh. He was chairman of Guinness from 1965 to 1995. They had four children: Edward, now 4th Earl of Iveagh; Rory Guinness; Emma Guinness Barnard; and Louisa Guinness Ulroth.
They resided at Farmleigh, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, but by the late Seventies, their marriage was deteriorating and they divorced in 1984. They remained close, and he spent the final months of his illness with cancer at her then home in Cottesmore Gardens, in Kensington, London, before dying at 55 in 1992.
She had an affair with the racing driver Vivien Candy. After her liaison with Candy, she had an affair with a well-known Irish television personality.
She also had a six-year affair with Ryanair founder Tony Ryan. It’s been suggested it was for her that he originally bought Castle Lyons Estate at Newcastle, Co Dublin, and that she had a huge say in the restoration of the house. She was also influential in helping him build up his collection of emerging Irish artists.
A society beauty, she was always eager to promote the clothes of Irish designers and in 1979, she was chosen as one of the world’s best-dressed women.
She moved to London, selling Farmleigh to the Irish State, and bought a Georgian townhouse at Cottesmore Gardens in Kensington.
In 1996, she bought Wilburry, a mansion in Wiltshire. Having spent six years renovating Wilburry before moving in, she was awarded a building conservation award by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors for her work on it.
Around 2005 she formed a relationship with the 9th Marquess of Londonderry.
In July 2010, she made headlines when she sold her 1981 red De Lorean DMC12 coupé car for € 16,100 at auction. Prior to its sale, she had said: “I love this car. I have many happy memories of driving my sons to school in it. They weren’t so positive about it since I had a knack of knocking myself out on the gull-wing door.”
For her 70th birthday in August 2010, she hosted a party at the Guinness Store House in Dublin, which in essence was really a farewell party for old friends. Speaking on that occasion, she said: “If you behave as if you’re 70, you’re done for.”
She died on December 30, 2010, at her home in Wiltshire after a long illness.
Stephen Gately was born on March 17, 1976, in the Sheriff Street area of Dublin, the fourth of five children (four sons and a daughter) to painter and decorator Martin Gately and his wife Margaret. As a teenager he took part in various musicals and stage productions at school.
Stephen Gately
At 17 he joined Boyzone, after answered an ad placed by Louis Walsh, promoter and soon-to-be music entrepreneur. Walsh had observed the huge success of Take That (an outfit itself modelled on American boyband New Kids on the Block) and was seized with the urge to launch an Irish equivalent. After auditioning 300 hopeful applicants, including future Hollywood star Colin Farrell, Walsh settled on a prototype six-piece line-up. Only a day after their formation, the group were hastily shoved in front of the cameras on RTE’s The Late Late Show, dancing to a pre-recorded backing track, in a performance that later on brought blushes to the participants’ faces.
After some reshuffling, Boyzone settled into a stable five-piece format, featuring Stephen alongside Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Mikey Graham and Keith Duffy. They smoothed away the rough edges by performing in clubs across Northern Ireland, and signed a recording contract with Polygram in 1994. Their first single, a version of the Four Seasons favourite Working My Way Back to You, with Stephen sharing lead vocals, was a No 3 hit in Ireland. Their first British hit was a cover of the Osmonds’ Love Me for a Reason, included on their debut album Said and Done, which topped the charts on both sides of the Irish Sea. A Smash Hits award for best new act duly followed, along with further hits including Key to My Life and a version of Cat Stevens’s Father and Son. Their first chart-topping single came at the end of 1996 with Words.
Boyzone had entered a golden period of hit-making, enjoying huge success with the albums A Different Beat (1996) and Where We Belong. The latter included their bestselling single No Matter What, which won them Song of the Year in 1998 and was later recorded by Meat Loaf. A greatest hits collection, By Request, followed in 1999, but this was the year when cracks began to show in the Boyzone facade. Keating made his first solo single, When You Say Nothing at All, and Gately sent shockwaves through Boyzone’s mostly female fanbase by announcing that he was gay.
The story broke in the Sun newspaper, under the headline “Boyzone Stephen: I’m gay and I’m in love”, detailing his relationship with Eloy de Jong from Dutch boyband Caught in the Act. Gately apparently went to the paper to pre-empt the story being sold by a former Boyzone employee. “This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do but I owe it to our fans – as well as myself – to be completely honest,” the singer said. Louis Walsh said that he probably would not have selected Stephen for Boyzone if he’d known he was gay, because “it wasn’t cool then to have a gay guy in a band”.
It was an opportune moment to launch a solo career, and Stephen’s debut single New Beginning reached No 3 in the UK charts. The ensuing album of the same name included a version of Bright Eyes, which was used in a new TV version of Watership Down, and I Believe, which featured on the soundtrack of the film Billy Elliot. Yet Stephen was dropped by Polydor in May 2001, despite the fact that his third single, Stay, was still in the charts. He confessed he had experienced a period of depression after separating from Boyzone.
Nonetheless, Stephen embarked on the transition from teenage pop idol to mainstream showbusiness performer. At the end of 2002 he took the lead role in a new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which played in Liverpool over Christmas and went to London’s West End in February, 2003. By now, he was in a relationship with businessman Andrew Cowles. The couple held a commitment ceremony in a Las Vegas chapel in 2003, and in 2006 entered into a formal civil partnership in London.
Stephen was back on stage as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium in 2004, and after regional appearances in Cinderella and The Wizard of Oz, he joined a touring production of Godspell in 2007. His television work included appearances on Five’s All Star Talent Show and ITV’s Dancing On Ice, and he was a regular presenter on the Film24 channel.
In 2008, once again inspired by the example of Take That, Boyzone reformed. A major British tour was blighted by poor ticket sales, though they managed to trigger a whiff of controversy with the video for the single Better, where Stephen appeared embracing a fictional boyfriend.
Stephen died in his sleep on October 10, 2009, after being out drinking while on holiday with Cowles in Majorca. He was 33. At the time he had working on a novel for children, The Tree of Seasons.
Billy Flynn was an Irish private investigator who came to national prominence during the Morris Tribunal inquiry into corruption in the Garda force in Donegal.
He took up the case in 1997, when Frank McBrearty from Raphoe claimed that he was being set up as a murder suspect and subjected to garda harassment. He bombarded the then Minister for Justice, Nora Owen, with over 100 files of documents outlining the McBreartys’ case.
When critics dismissed him and gardai privately said he was out to destabilise the force, Mr Flynn proved them all wrong. He produced evidence that threatening phone calls to members of the McBrearty family were made from the home of a garda. He was later praised for his work by the Morris Tribunal, the inquiry set up five years after Billy Flynn had started his investigations.
One unexpected visitor to his Enfield, Co Meath, home was the then Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, driving by in 2005 on his way to his holiday home. Mr McDowell had studied the letters that Mr Flynn had sent to Ms Owen. A few days later, Mr McDowell produced one of the letters on RTE’s ‘Questions And Answers’ to suggest that she had prior knowledge of garda corruption in Donegal.
Billy Flynn’s work had been limited to professional negligence cases when, in 1984, took on the case of Frank Kelly from Birmingham, who had invested life savings of £7,000 in a Dublin-based, Gibraltar registered company called International Investments. The money disappeared, and the investigation into the financier Finbarr Ross – a rogue investor who had left more than a thousand pensioners high and dry - which followed, led to Mr Flynn publishing ‘Gibgate – The Untold Story’ in 1992.
In the foreword, Mr Flynn wrote: “If I had known what I was taking on, I would have stuck to negligence cases. In the eight years since that phone call, my fight for justice for the victim …. has taken me all over the world. It has driven me to drink and a heart attack, caused me to neglect my family and bankrupted me twice.” He estimated it cost him £500,000.
Married with five daughters and three sons, he wrote that he was in the motor trade before starting his private investigator business. He described himself as a lifelong supporter of Fianna Fail at the time of writing, and stubborn by nature with a natural distrust of the establishment.
Billy Flynn ran several missing-person investigations and probed a number of unsolved murders. In later years, he worked as an insolvency practitioner.
Demand for his services soared in the worsening economic climate. He hoped for a final Big One to go out on and thought he had found it in sub-prime lenders. He knew many people who had borrowed excessively during the boom and were now left with mortgages they couldn’t repay for properties worth half the price.
Prior to his sudden death at his home in Enfield, Co Meath, on October 31, 2010, at the age of 64, he had been working on a campaign to legally challenge mortgage lenders trying to repossess homes. He believed that the information he had gathered in his investigations could be of help in future test cases against lenders.
Predeceased by his parents Patrick and Elizabeth, he is survived by his wife, Eileen; family, Patrick, Sharon, Eileen, Jackie, Peter, Elizabeth, Claire and Andrew, brother Patrick and 22 grandchildren.
Moira Deady was born in Cork in 1922.
She learned her craft as an actor in fit-ups and worked in mainstream theatre. Fit ups were touring theatre companies that brought plays to towns and villages around Ireland in the 30s, 40s and 50s, playing in theatres, halls and even tents. She acted in the long-running rural soap The Riordan’s from when it was first screened by RTE in 1965 until the series ended on TV in 1979 and was switched to radio.
She played the part of Mary, the wife of Tom Riordan, a farmer, played by John Cowley. The couple, along with their eldest son Benjy (Tom Hickey) and his wife Maggy (Biddy White Lennon), were at the centre of the action throughout the series.
Set in the fictional townland of Leestown in Kilkenny, although filmed on location in Dunboyne, Co Meath, The Riordans was immensely popular. For example, in 1971 the parish priest of Caherline, Co Limerick, rescheduled the Sunday evening devotions for 7.15pm to avoid clashing with the show.
Not that the Catholic church was comfortable with The Riordans, particularly since it dealt with issues such as mixed marriage, marital breakdown and contraception at a time when the liberal agenda was unheard of.
Other members of the cast included Tony Doyle, Chris O’Neill and, in the final episodes, Gabriel Byrne.
Tom Hickey described Mary Riordan as the archetypal mother. “She was fierce in defence of her family,” he said.
Mary Riordan blazed the trail for the frenetic tea-making of Mrs Doyle in Father Ted. Her response to every crisis, real or imagined, was to say: “Ah, you’ll have a nice cup of tea.”
Controversy followed when The Riordans was axed in 1979. Cost was given as the main reason by RTE. The matter was raised in Dáil Éireann, but to no avail. The radio version of the show was not a great success.
Moira Deady appeared in the two shows which succeeded The Riordans on television – Bracken and Glenroe .
She worked on stage throughout her career and was a member of the successful Abbey playwright Louis D’Alton’s company, which brought drama by writers like O’Casey to a wide audience. In the 1960s she appeared in plays such as Francey, with Leo McCabe, and Carrie, starring Ray McAnally, both at the Olympia. In the 1970s she was a member of the Four-in-One Players, with whom she toured in Peg O’ My Heart.
Her film credits include This is My Father (1998), Angela’s Ashes (1999) and The Tiger’s Tale (2006), as well as a number of shorts.
Her son Kevin said her family had a great sense of pride in her achievements. She was a staunchly independent woman who managed to balance her family and her career “at a time when it was not fashionable for women to do so”.
She lived in Greystones and was married to the actor Johnny Hoey, another stalwart of The Riordans, who predeceased her. She died on November 15, 2010, at the age of 88 and is survived by her son Kevin and daughters Mary, Bernie and Brenda.
Patrick Mullins was born into a farming family at Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny, on January 28 1919. He was educated locally and at the De La Salle Brothers at Bagenalstown. He would cycle four miles to the school every day.
The family was steeped in the world of hunting and point-to-points, and, after a spell as an amateur jockey, Paddy began training pointers before taking over his father’s licence when he was 34. His first winner as a trainer was Flash Parade, at Punchestown, on April 29 1953.
His first big winner on the flat came with Height O’ Fashion in the Irish Cesarewitch in 1962. In 1967 he sent out Vulpine to win the Irish Grand National, taking the race again the following year with Herring Gull. He went on to win the race again with Dim Wit (1972) and Luska (1981).
Mullins’s career on the Flat and over the jumps spanned 52 years. He was champion Irish National Hunt trainer in Ireland on ten occasions, and in 1984 became only the third Irish trainer to send out 100 winners.
Among his big race victories were two successive Ladbroke Hurdles at Leopardstown (1989 and 1990) with Redundant Pal. As recently as 2003 he took the Irish Oaks, with Vintage Tipple, ridden by Frankie Dettori. After the race, the voluble Italian told the trainer: “I liked the instructions you gave me, boss – none.”
He will forever be associated in the minds of racegoers with the great mare Dawn Run, the only horse to win both the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
A brave front-runner, Dawn Run won the Champion Hurdle in 1984. Two years later she added the Gold Cup after an epic struggle with Forgive ‘n’ Forget and Wayward Lad, entering the winners’ enclosure amid scenes of ecstatic celebration.
On both occasions she was ridden by Jonjo O’Neill, an arrangement insisted upon by the horse’s owner, Charmian Hill, a formidable horsewoman labelled by the tabloids “the galloping granny”.
Although Paddy’s son, Tony, was Dawn Run’s regular jockey (and had once ridden her to six successive victories), Charmian Hill insisted that O’Neill partner the horse on certain big race occasions.
This may have been why Mullins later admitted that, after the Gold Cup, he had felt no emotion at all; and he would always say that he was more proud of sending out Hurry Harriet to win the Champion Stakes at 33-1 in 1973. “It was the highlight of my career,” he declared, “as she beat the best filly in Europe, Allez France.”
Dawn Run, who also won the Irish and French Champion Hurdles, died in the summer of 1986, just months after her Gold Cup triumph, when falling at Auteuil under a French jockey, Michel Chirol.
There were happier Cheltenham moments for Mullins when his eldest son, Willie, rode Hazy Dawn and Mack’s Friendly to win big amateur events, while Herring Gull (1968 RSA Chase) and Counsel Cottage (1977 SunAlliance Hurdle) also scored at the festival. Paddy Mullins retired in 2005, handing over the licence to his son Tom.
A reticent and diffident man, Mullins seldom gave interviews. The racing commentator Tony O’Hehir observed: “He dealt with them like someone gingerly escaping from a minefield, and the impression he gave was always of someone who just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else.”
Mullins married Maureen in 1954. The couple combined their eforts to put their Doninga stable firmly on the map, Paddy concentrating on the horses and Maureen looking after administration and liaising with the owners — not to mention scoring locally at Gowran Park on her sole outing race-riding. They also bred and raced many winners under both rules over the years in Maureen’s colours, with that prolific scorer Grabel one of their best standard-bearers when landing the $750,000 Duelling Grounds Hurdle in America.
They had five children who have continued the family tradition in racing. Willie Mullins became Irish champion trainer and won the Aintree Grand National in 2005 with Hedgehunter. Tom, Tony and Sandra also train, while George runs a horse transport business. All five won at least one race under rules of racing.
Tony Mullins said at the time of his death: “Everyone knows he was a great trainer, but he was an even greater family man. He was certainly the greatest family man I ever knew and we all stayed around him and trained within five miles of home. The family has always been very unified and he kept it that way all his life. He taught us all we know – whatever we know.”
Frankie Dettori fondly remembered Vintage Tipple’s victory in the Irish Oaks and said: “Obviously I had heard of Paddy but I had never met him until the day. He had a great aura about him and he didn’t give me any instructions. He said I had been riding horses all my life and left it to me.”
Paddy Mullins died on October 28, 2010, aged 91.
Although he didn’t start playing rugby until he was in his early 20s, Moss Keane became one of Ireland’s most successful and popular rugby players. Less than four years after taking up the game, he was playing for Ireland in Paris in 1974, the first of 51 Irish caps in an international career that lasted 11 seasons. An imposing second row, he was never dropped by his country.
Maurice Ignatius (Moss) Keane, was born on July 27, 1948, one of three sons of Willie and Cissie Keane, and grew up on the family farm at Currow, Co Kerry. He played Gaelic football at St Brendan’s College, Killarney, and at University College, Cork. He played full-back for Kerry at under-21 level and captained the UCC tream. He won three Sigerson Cup medals playing with UCC. In those days, the GAA’s ban on “foreign” sports, which included rugby, was still in place.
So when Moss Keane was invited by a fellow student to play in an inter-faculty rugby match in 1970, he used the name “Moss Fenton”. It was only when the ban was lifted the following year that he played rugby regularly. “When the ban went, I could play any game I wanted,” Keane recalled in 2005. “I was asked by the rugby crowd. I had seen the game on television and reckoned you did not need to be a rocket scientist to be a second row.”
Moss Keane rose swiftly through the rugby ranks. In his second full season as a senior player, he played for Munster in a 3-3 draw against New Zealand. Before the match, Munster coach Noel Murphy famously told him: “Moss, you are no longer an experiment, you are a Munster man picked to play the All Blacks . . . Just go out and cause mayhem. Disrupt their lineout. Stop them getting quick ball. Stand up for yourself and your team. Kerrymen have won more All-Irelands than anyone else – you’re afraid of no one. Kerry are the All Blacks of Ireland. That’s why we picked you.”
Hemade his debut for Ireland the following year. His international career coincided with the national side’s revival. Ireland won their first Five Nations title for 25 years in 1974, and in 1982 clinched the Triple Crown for the first time since 1949.
In all he was capped 51 times for Ireland, he was a member of the team that won the Triple Crown and Five Nations championship in 1982. He was also capped for the British and Irish Lions, playing 12 tour games including a Test match on the 1977 tour of New Zealand.
The sport enjoyed a new popularity. Rugby had been seen by many in Ireland as not only an exclusive, middle-class sport, brought to the country by English public schoolboys in the 1850s. Moss Keane, a farmer’s son from the heart of the nation, helped change that perception.
“Moss almost single-handedly brought rugby to a whole new audience,” said the former Ireland international Tony Ward.
Moss Keane, who was known for his foot-pumping bursts with ball in hand, played hard and enjoyed the camaraderie off the field that rugby was then renowned for.
When he toured New Zealand with the 1977 Lions, he played in the first Test despite having been concussed four days earlier. He had revealed his renowned wit earlier on the tour when asked for his comments after a game. “The first half was even,” he said. “The second half was even worse.”
In 1981 he was one of a group of players who refused to travel on Ireland’s tour of South Africa in opposition to apartheid.
Ciarán Fitzgerald, who captained Ireland in 1982, said: “He was a giant in every way; he was a giant physically and a giant mentally – he was as clever as a whip, and I’d say nobody had a bigger heart.”
The former England and Lions hooker Peter Wheeler recalled being invited to stay with him in Kerry. “I flew in to Dublin and then caught a train,” he said. “Moss was going to meet me at the station, but was not there. It was late at night and I managed to find his house. A woman answered the door and when I asked if Moss Keane lived there, she replied: ‘Yes. Bring him in.’”
Keane gained a degree in dairy science, then a master’s, and moved to Dublin in 1973 to work for the Department of Agriculture. He played for Lansdowne until his retirement in 1985, often turning out for the club the day after playing for Ireland. His autobiography, Rucks, Mauls and Gaelic Football (2005), was a bestseller. He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2008.
“He was one of Irish rugby’s greats, a player without peer,” said the journalist Edmund van Esbeck. His friend Con Houlihan accurately and affectionately summed him up as “a man of few airs and many graces”.
Moss died on October 5, 2010, aged 62. He is survived by his wife, Anne (nee Dunne), and his daughters, Sarah and Anne Marie, granddaughter Ellie and brothers Brian and Matt.
Dorothy Hayden Cudahy was born on May 29, 1922, and grew up on the west side of Manhattan. She was the daughter of James Hayden, a native of Ballyraggett, Co Kilkenny, and Delia Brennan, from Curry, Co Sligo. She graduated from the New York Institute of Technology.
Her broadcasting career began in 1943 after her father died. He had presented a Sunday evening radio programme on WEVD, a station founded to honour the memory of the labour leader Eugene Debs. He also wrote for Irish American newspapers. As a child, she had been a fixture in the studio with her father. She even emceed an act, the ”Dorothy Hayden Irish Dancers,” which later appeared on the ”Ed Sullivan Show” six times.
Despite some misgivings among the station’s managers – women broadcasters were few and far between – she took over the slot, and made a great success of it. Broadcast from the Empire State Building, the programme was relayed by various local stations including Fordham’s WFUV. Known as the “First Lady of Irish Radio”, she presented the popular Irish Memories programme for 47 years.
She regularly visited Ireland, returning with the latest recordings and introducing new performers to her listeners. Her playlist ranged from John McCormack and Delia Murphy, to Carmel Quinn and Connie Foley to the McNultys the Clancys and Tommy Makem, the Bothy Band and Planxty.
She also formed the Dorothy Hayden Entertainers comprising singers, dancers and musicians, which performed in a number of east coast cities. In 1951, the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.
She married John Cudahy, a son of Co Clare immigrants, and was active in the Irish American community. With Paul O’Dwyer she was a founding member and trustee of the Irish Institute of New York.
In 1960, when Irish Memories was no longer paying the bills, she became one of New York City’s first 100 meter maids. By the time she retired in 1982, she was chief of administration, the first woman to reach that position.
In 1985 she challenged the rule that barred women from holding the position of grand marshal of the St Patrick’s Day parade in New York. She said at the time: “I do not wish to be pushy, but there is no reason to wait.”
Notwithstanding the support of the New York Times, the old order prevailed. But only for a year; the rules were changed in 1986 and she stood for election.
Asked what the attributes of a grand master were, she said: “I think the grand master should be very knowledgeable in Irish music, sports, dance and literature. She should be very knowledgeable about the political situation in Ireland and be able to speak up on it. That’s me.”
She failed to be elected in 1986, however, but was successful in 1989 at the age of 66.
Albert Reynolds, then Irish Minister for Finance, accepted an invitation to take part in the parade despite opposition allegations that she was too close to the IRA support group Noraid. Her defeated opponent Mary Holt Moore went on to lead the 1990 parade and Maureen O’Hara subsequently did the honours.
She was the first woman, and first American-born, president of the city’s Kilkenny Association and was Chief Brehon of the Great Irish Fair in Brooklyn. She also was a member of the Ladies’ Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Dorothy Hayden Cudehy died on August 5, 2010, aged 88. Her husband died in 1994 and their son Sean in 1997. She was survived by her grand-daughter Mary Kate, nieces and nephews. Donated Library Collection
Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village as “enclosed, fervid and bigoted”.
However, fame and success have not necessarily brought her a fortune. As she pointed out in an RTE documentary in 2012, it takes her between two and four years to complete a book, and she’s missed out on the largesse available from the big wallet literary prizes. And then there are the subjects she chooses: “The only things I can write are stories that don’t have Hollywood stamped on them,” she drily observed.
