Bridie Gallagher greeted by Daniel O'Donnell in 2000.

Singer Bridie Gallagher was born on September 7, 1924, in Creeslough, Co Donegal, the second youngest of ten children. Her father James was from Ards and her mother, Bridget Sweeney, who played the melodeon, was  from Creeslough. She was educated at Massinass national school and started her singing in the Creeslough Hall with a local ceili band formed by Bill Gallagher.
She shot to fame in 1956 with her recording of A Mother’s Love’s A Blessing and achieved international acclaim with her rendition of  The Boys From County Armagh. During her career, which spanned six decades, she appeared in many leading venues across the globe. She also made songs such as The Homes of Donegal famous.
She was spotted in the 1950s by Billy Livingstone who was a talent scout for Decca records, and she moved to Belfast, which she made home. She married George Livingstone (no relation) and had two boys, Jim and Peter. One son, Peter, died at the age of 21 in a motor accident in 1976 while Jim was to later tour with her. “She never really got over that (accident),” said Jim, “but she just kept going.”
She held the record for the largest number of people in attendance in the Albert Hall London, a record that was never equalled as it went on to be come an all-seater venue. She toured North America, Europe, Australia and was known as “The Girl from Donegal”. As well as the Albert Hall, she sang in the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall in New York.”She brought glamour to the Irish stage, she dressed like an international star and that was unheard of in Ireland at that time,” said Dec Cluskey of the Bachelors.
Bridie Gallagher had her own radio show on RTÉ and appearaned on television on RTE, BBC, UTV, and coast to coast in the United States. However endless touring took its toll and her marriage eventually broke-up – a fact she hid from the public for many years.
She was honoured by the people of Creeslough in July 2000 with an event to celebrate her career. Members of her family from Creeslough and Donegal attended along with her two sisters and their families who travelled from Glasgow to be there, plus 2,500 fans. A plaque in her honour was unveiled. Although she never officially retired, she gave her last performance in Letterkenny in 2000.
Bridie Gallagher’s death came just a few weeks after UTV broadcast a tribute show, on December 18, 2011. Her granddaughter Teresa Livingstone was involved in making the UTV programme. “The most significant part of the journey for me was meeting with her fans in New York who could recall the details of her performances over 50 years later.
“The stories of Irish immigrants and how important her music had been to so many were quite overwhelming to listen to first-hand,” she said.
Daniel O’Donnell said of her: “I always say Bridie was the first from Donegal to pave the way for all of us that came after.
He added: “And I would say anyone that you would talk to of the Donegal singers would say that, because coming from Creeslough, or coming from where I come from, it’s a world away from where we ended up.”
Bridie Gallagher suffered a fractured hip after a fall before Christmas and died at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, after succumbing to pneumonia, on January 9, 2012, aged 87.

Singer Bernadette Greevy was born in Clontarf, Dublin, on July 3, 1940. She was educated there at the Holy Faith convent. Her vocal studies were in Dublin with Jean Nolan and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London, with Helene Isepp.
Her first operatic appearance was in Dublin, aged 18, as Siebel in Gounod’s Faust; this was followed by her professional debut in 1961 as Maddalena in the Dublin Grand Opera Society’s Rigoletto.
At the 1962 Wexford Festival, she took the role of Beppe in Mascagni’s comedy L’Amico Fritz, thus initiating a happy association with the festival that saw her in such roles as Federica in Verdi’s Luisa Miller (1970), the formidable Hérodiade in Massenet’s opera of that name (1977), Medoro in Handel’s Orlando (1980) – a role she recorded to acclaim – Costanza in Haydn’s L’Isola Disabitata (1982) and the title role of Ariodante (1985).
Some felt she could have worked on her acting. “Her undeveloped thespian skills were to be commented on more than once”, stated her obituary in The Guardian. “Her Anna in Berlioz’s Les Troyens for Scottish Opera (1969), for example, was said to be ‘imposing’ but dramatically unconvincing. This was undoubtedly one of the chief reasons that Greevy’s operatic career failed to blossom abroad. Her Covent Garden debut did not take place until 1982, when she sang Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande, and although other significant roles were to follow in houses around the world – Britten’s Lucretia, Gluck’s Orfeo, Eboli in Don Carlos, Azucena in Il Trovatore among them – her career was defined by concerts and recitals.”
She was to be heard at her finest and most characteristic in works such as Elgar’s Sea Pictures, recorded successfully with Vernon Handley and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1981.
Another well-received recording was that of Mahler songs (Songs of a Wayfaring Lad, Rückert Lieder and Kindertotenlieder) with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and János Fürst for Naxos. Both the power of her instrument and a disarmingly genial quality were demonstrated here by Bernadette Greevy, who deployed a seamless legato line and admirable tonal control to achieve moments of searing intensity. Mahler was something of a speciality for her, and she sang on many occasions Das Lied von der Erde at performances of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet at Covent Garden.
Passionate about fostering young Irish talent, she fought to establish the Anna Livia International Opera Festival in Dublin, of which she became the artistic director, in 2000. Her many honours included the Harriet Cohen international music award for outstanding artistry, the Order of Merit of Malta, honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin, and the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice conferred by the Holy See. She was acclaimed as one of the finest mezzos of her generation, having lifted her range from the original contralto.
In her later years, she gave the benefit of her long experience to a new generation of singers with an annual series of masterclasses conducted at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Bernadette Greevy died on September 26, 2008. She is survived by her son, Hugh. Her husband, Peter Tattan, died in 1983. In line with her wishes, she was given a private burial before any public announement was made.

Playwright Hugh Leonard was born John Joseph Byrne in Dublin on November 9, 1926; his mother immediately giving him up for adoption. Later in life he changed his name to Hugh Leonard, but he was always known as Jack. Though deeply affected after discovering his background, he nevertheless made light of it. Of his mother, he said: “She never said a word to my father about the adoption. A few years later she did the exact same thing with a dog, and didn’t consult my father that time either. The dog’s name was Jack too, which made for some confusion.”
Although he eventually found his mother, he was unable to bring himself to approach her and she died without meeting him.
Leonard was raised as Jack Keyes by his adoptive parents, and educated at the Harold Boys’ School at Glasthule, Co Dublin, winning a scholarship to the local Presentation College.
Fascinated by the cinema and film-making, Hugh Leonard worked as an extra in the Agincourt scenes of Olivier’s Henry V, which were shot in Ireland in 1944. “I can pick myself out, drowning in a French swamp,” he recalled. “We were paid £4 a day; but if you had a horse, it was paid £8.”
After a stint as an office boy at Columbia Pictures’s Dublin office, he got a temporary civil service job. During his 14 years there he wrote a play, Nightingale in the Branches, which was presented by Lancos, the civil service dramatic society.
His first theatre play was The Big Birthday, produced at the Abbey in 1956, which was followed by A Leap in the Dark (1957), and Madigan’s Lock (1958), after which he left the civil service and became a full-time writer. Moving to London, he became a script editor for Granada Television. He adapted several books for BBC Television, including Dickens’s Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. He also wrote the script for the film of Bernard Shaw’s Great Catherine (1968), which starred Peter O’Toole.
Stephen D (1962), a skilful conflation of two James Joyce works, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Stephen Hero, made him a name to reckon with at the Dublin Theatre Festival, alongside his fellow dramatists Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and John B Keane. Bernard Levin said that Stephen D really took us inside Joyce’s mind and “the excitement, passion and colour of so great a mind are fine things to be among.”
More plays and television work were followed by The Patrick Pearse Motel (1971) at the Gaiety in Dublin, opening one month after the IRA killed the first British soldier in Northern Ireland. Set in Dublin’s vodka-and-bitter-lemon belt, the comedy resonated as a Feydeau-esque farce, an attack on the Irish nouveau riche and as a metaphor for the new heritage-conscious tourist industry, with its bedrooms named after patriots and its ageing caretaker, Hoolihan, obliquely flying the flag as a veteran of the Easter Rising.
His most successful play, Da, reached Broadway at the tail end of the 1977-78 season and won Tonys for best play, best director (Melvin Bernhardt), best featured actor (Lester Rawlins) and, perhaps most famously, best actor: It was a career-making performance in the title role for Barnard Hughes, who went on to star in the movie version, with Martin Sheen.

Shortly before the play opened on Broadway, Mr. Leonard said in an interview with The New York Times that it is “pretty nearly totally autobiographical.” The title character was based on his own his own adoptive da, a man named Nicholas Keyes who worked as gardener for a wealthy Dublin family.
Two other plays reached Broadway: The Au Pair Man, a semi-allegorical tale about relations between England and Ireland, and A Life, which fleshed out a minor character from Da, a curmudgeon named Drumm, who reveres grammar and punctuality but does not care for people much.
As a fixture of the Dublin Theatre Festival for many years, and the literary manager of the Abbey for a short time (1976-77),  Hugh Leonard had become one of the city’s most notable artistic figures. He enjoyed flaunting his financial success, but was also keen to live close to his childhood home. He bought a large mansion in Killiney, and drove a Rolls-Royce, which was repeatedly vandalised. The tranquillity of his home was shattered by noise from a disco in a newly-opened neighbouring hotel, prompting a prolonged legal battle.
Moving to a more secure apartment block, and driving an anonymous Toyota, he contented himself with a fine collection of pictures, including some Lowrys.

However, his comfortable middle age was upset when his accountant and trusted friend, Russell Murphy, embezzled and spent more than £2 million of his theatrical clients’ money, including £258,000 belonging to Leonard. Gay Byrne was another of his victims. Particularly galling was the revelation that Murphy’s extravagance had included taking large parties of clients and friends to the theatre, sometimes occupying the more expensive seats at Leonard’s own plays.
He resented what he saw as his exclusion from the Irish arts world. The trouble with Ireland, he said, was that it was “a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent”. His critics were equally forthright about his ego.
Hugh Leonard retorted in kind. He eagerly debunked other famous names, including Brendan Behan, who, he said, owed all his success to Joan Littlewood’s editing. This critique was later extended to others of the Behan tribe. Brian Behan was, he said, similar to Salman Rushdie in that, given the quality of his writing, his life could be in danger if he did not disappear. Behan replied that Leonard had no enemies in Dublin. “It is his friends who hate him”, he said.
His prickly and shy personality prompted him to imagine snubs and slights everywhere, and he was merciless in retribution. In Home Before Night, his memoir which later became Da, he recalled how he developed this art at school. “Being useless at fighting, I cultivated a skill at deadly insult.” On hearing that his long-time sparring partner Ulick O’Connor was in hospital, he remarked: “It must have been something he wrote”.
Hugh Leonard argued that “you can write a serious play through the medium of comedy, but in Ireland comedy seems to be suspect; if it is accessible it is deemed shallow. If your work is liked, something must be wrong; he’s not boring, so he must be slight.”
His other television work included adaptations of Flaubert, Dostoevsky and Emily Brontë, as well as Somerville and Large’s The Irish RM (1985). Films included Herself Surprised (1977), Da (1984), and Widow’s Peak (1994). As well as two volumes of autobiography he wrote a memoir Rover and other Cats (1990) and a novel The Offshore Island (1993). He wrote a regular column for the Sunday Independent.
He married Paule Jacquet in 1955. After her death he married Kathy Hayes, who survives him, along with his daughter Danielle from his first marriage.
Hugh Leonard (John Keyes Byrne) died on February 12, 2009.

Author James Plunkett Kelly was born in Dublin on May 21, 1920, the son of a chauffeur. His middle name, from St Oliver Plunkett, was imposed by an enthusiastic parish priest
He was educated by the Christian Brothers at Synge Street and at Dublin Municipal School of Music, where he studied the violin and viola; he also played Gaelic football to provincial level. His father died early, and young James found himself the family’s breadwinner. He worked intermittently as a musician, but then took a job as a clerk at the Dublin Gas Company. It led him to join the Workers’ Union of Ireland at a time when trades unions were neither popular nor profitable, and in 1946 he became a branch organiser, reporting to Jim Larkin, and working in the next office.

James Plunkett Kelly

Using the nom-de-plume James Plunkett, he was already writing, mainly in The Bell, which had been publishing his short stories – beginning with The Mother – since the early 1940s. A collection published by Hutchinson in 1958 led to the commission for Strumpet City. Within a decade, he was also a prolific contributor to radio dramas and talks for Radio Eireann.
In 1955, he was pilloried by the Church – prompted by the Catholic Standard – after he paid a visit to the Soviet Union; he overcame calls for his dismissal, as did Jim Larkin, but voluntarily resigned later the same year. He then joined Radio Eireann as assistant head of drama; his own play Big Jim which, like Strumpet City, was set during the 1913 strike, provided the basis for The Risen People, which was produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1958.
After some time at the BBC, James Plunkett Kelly joined Telefis Eireann as a producer and director. He made his mark with a drama based on the rebellion of 1798, When Do You Die Friend?, and scripted Bird’s Eye View, a documentary which inspired The Gems She Wore: A Book of Irish Places (1972).
Strumpet City extends to 200,000 words, and the writing of it took James Plunkett Kelly ten years, working in the evenings while a producer at Telefis Eireann; during that period he spent much time doubting that he would ever finish the book. When all seemed lost, his conscience kept him going – he had received a £500 advance from Hutchinson in 1958.
Every Christmas came a card from Hutchinson’s managing director Robert Lusty, with a plaintive note: “How’s the novel coming along?” As the book grew, James Plunkett Kelly hardly dared reply, having become depressed that Hutchinson would turn it down as being too long.
He need not have worried. By the time the hardback came out in May 1969, the book had earned him £100,000 from the sale of foreign and paperback rights, then a record sum. It was later filmed for RTE with Peter O’Toole, Donal McCann and Cyril Cusack.
Despite the success of Strumpet City, he continued with his day job in broadcasting, but associated with writers rather than television personalities. Once, with O’Casey, he went to visit Brian O’Nolan, who wrote under the names Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen. The pair found the writer sitting up in bed with a paperback of his novel  At Swim Two Birds, which he was copying into an exercise book. “I hear the American universities are paying great money for manuscripts,” O’Nolan explained.
He wrote two further novels: Farewell Companions (1977), set in the period following Strumpet City, and The Circus Animals (1990), which examined the Church during the years immediately after the Second World War.
He was one of the first drama directors with RTÉ Television a nd went on to be Executive Producer and Head of Features. He won two Jacob’s Awards, in 1965 and 1969, for his TV productions. He was a member of Aosdana. He remained a fine fiddle player and lived latterly at Kilmacanogue, near Bray, Co Wicklow.
James Plunkett Kelly died on May 28, 2003, aged 83. He had married Valerie Koblitz, who died in 1986. They had three sons, and a daughter who predeceased him.

Joe Dolan (centre) with the Drifters Showband in the 1970s

Singer Joe Dolan was born in Mullingar on October 16, 1939, the youngest of eight children. His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was 15. Educated at St Mary’s CBS, he served his time as a compositor at the printing works of the Westmeath Examiner.
He formed the Drifters Showband With his older brother Ben, playing guitar and singing. They perfected a  classic showband sound and in 1964, Joe cut his first record, a cover of Del Shannon’s The Answer to Everything; it reached No 4 in the Irish charts. Other hits followed, including Pretty Brown Eyes, Tar and Cement, The House with the Whitewashed Gable and the comedy number The Westmeath Bachelor.
In 1968 the Drifters split when most of the members left to form The Times showband. Joe and Ben Dolan recruited new musicians and over the years the line-up included exceptional talent such as champion accordionist Seamus Shannon, guitarist Jimmy Murray and drummer Tony Newman. In later years the band included two of Joe’s nephews.
He admiredthe original Irish showbands. “The shame,” he said, “is that a lot of these bands never recorded. The Clipper Carlton was a classic, classic, classic band . . . it’s a shame that now there is nothing there for you to listen to, to hear the brilliance of the musicianship.”
In 1969 he stormed into the British charts with Make Me an Island, reaching No 3, and subsequent international hits included Teresa, It Makes No Difference and Falling in Love .
In 1973 he teamed up with the Italian songwriter and producer Roberto Danova and established himself on the European pop scene. Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller was the first of many hit records written by Danova and co-writer Peter Yellowstone. The collaboration resulted in further hits, including Lady in Blue, Sister Mary and Hush, Hush Maria .
The Drifters toured extensively. Joe Dolan appeared at venues across Europe and in 1978 toured the Soviet Union, one of the first western acts to do so. In the 1980s the band did several residencies in Las Vegas. He also entertained audiences in South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Canada.
He never forgot his domestic audience though. When the dance halls closed he turned to cabaret. He had many fans among the Irish in Britain and played to full houses at venues such as the Buffalo Rooms, Camden Town, Gresham Ballroom, Holloway Road, and the Galtymore Ballroom in Cricklewood.
Early in his career he attracted a strong following in Belfast and played many Christmas night gigs at the King’s Hall. In Dublin he regularly played to capacity crowds at the Crystal and Ierne ballrooms and the Television Club.
The hits continued to roll out. More and More was followed by It’s You, It’s You, It’s You and Wait ’til the Clouds Roll By (Jenny). In the 1990s he set up his own record label, Gable Records, and built a recording studio in Mullingar. There he recorded the hit single Ciara and the album Can’t Give Enough. In 1997 his album Endless Magic entered the charts and he became the first Irish singer to have had top 10 hits in each decade from the 1960s to the 1990s.
In 1997 he rerecorded Good Looking Woman, which had been a hit in the early 1970s. This time around he was accompanied by Dustin the Turkey and the record topped the charts.
In 1998 the critically acclaimed Joe’s 90s was released. The album featured covers of songs by Blur, Oasis and Pulp, and Blur’s The Universal became a hit single. The album was marketed with some style and wit, the singer represented by a hand-puppet dressed in trademark white suit.
His follow-up album 21st Century Joe, featuring songs by David Bowie, U2, REM and Bruce Springsteen, was equally successful. Towards the end he recorded an album of classics from the swing era. While he lived in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, he loved Mullingar and maintained a flat there.
“Joe had a unique style and a steely determination, and he worked very hard at his craft. He did everything hard actually — he partied hard, worked hard, and was hugely enthusiastic in his affection for his friends,” recallad long time friend Ronan Collins.
“Well, it’s up to me to be as good as I can,” Joe Dolan said in an interview with The Irish Times in 2002. “I never shirk on anything. Even if I’m tired and have had a hard day, that’s got nothing to do with the audience. You just have to perk yourself up and go for it. If I sense that people aren’t enjoying themselves, I don’t blame them; I blame me. Because I reckon that the point of the music is entertainment. They like to sit back, hear something that they’re going to like and have a bloody great time. I feel that if the people are not singing for me, then I’m doing something wrong. They used to call it send ‘em home sweatin’ but I call it send ‘em home happy.”
Joe Dolan died on December 26, 2007, aged 68. He is survived by his brothers Ben, Paddy and Vincent, sisters Dymphna and Imelda, nieces and nephews.

joedolan.com

Stage director Tomas Mac Anna was born in Dundalk, Co Louth, on March 7, 1925. He was educated at the Christian Brothers. After working for two years as a customs officer in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, he went to Dublin to study at the National College of Art. At the same time he was writing for the stage and radio, inspired by reading a volume of Sean O’Casey’s plays in his teens.
He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 as a set designer and moved into directing. His first production, in 1947, was Diarmuid agus Gráinne by Micheál Mac Liammóir.  He continued writing, in both Irish and English, and also acted. In 1951 he ventured into film, writing and directing Jack of All Maids which featured Jack McGowran. He also adjudicated at amateur drama festivals around the country.
In 1964 he directed Mairéad Ní Ghráda’s An Triail which premiered at the Damer Hall. The Sunday Times theatre critic Harold Hobson was highly impressed by the production and paid tribute to Mac Anna for “achieving miracles”, at the same time alerting the majority of Irish people to the richness of the work.
In 1966 he wrote and directed Aiséirí , the Government-sponsored 1916 anniversary pageant staged in Croke Park with a cast of 800.
His production in 1970 of A State of Chassis, a satirical revue based on events in Northern Ireland, which he co-wrote, was disrupted by protests on opening night. Afterwards he invited the protesters to join the cast for a party at his home in Howth. In the same year, his Broadway production of Borstal Boy was awarded a Tony for best play. He directed the premieres of two Brian Friel plays.
Tomas Mac Anna was appointed artistic director of the Abbey Theatre in 1966 and served three terms. Describing his role in 1974, he said he ideally saw himself as the leader, the inspirer and the welder of many and diverse talents – “not just of the actors and directors, but of all the creative people in the building”.
A few years earlier, he said it was time to look to the development of Irish-language drama. “By this we can present a new form of Gaelic drama, using the dramatic capabilities of the old artistic methods of the Irish – style, subject and thoroughly Irish.”
In contrast to the earlier Ernest Blythe, who had controlled the Abbey over several decades, he believed theatre should be a platform for discontent. “The Abbey should be a platform for the national voice and spirit,” he said in 1968. “Its task should be to search for the voice of the present generation.”
A bohemian by inclination, Mac Anna was fictionalised by his son Ferdia in the novel The Last of the High Kings (1991), in which he appears as the presiding but often absent genius of a chaotic household – a parallel to his time at the Abbey and its experimental annexe, the Peacock
His republican sympathies led him in the 1970s to publicly declare his support for IRA prisoners on hunger strike in British jails; in the 1980s he supported the H-Block campaign. And in 1991, he wrote a second Easter Rising pageant, this time sponsored by the Reclaim the Spirit of 1916 group.
He wrote many of the Abbey’s pantomimes, and his plays include Winter Wedding (1956), Dear Edward (1973) and Scéal Scéalaí (1977). Glittering Spears (1983) is a drama documentary on O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie.
He also taught drama at several US universities, and in 2006 received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boston College. A memoir Fallaing Aonghusa was published in 2000.
Tomas Mac Anna died on May 17, 2011. He was survived by his wife Caroline, daughters Darina and Fiona and sons Ferdia, Niall and Naoise.

Cathal O’Shannon was born in Dublin in Marino on August 23, 1928. His father, also Cathal, who hailed from Co Derry, had mobilised for the 1916 Rising, been arrested and went on hunger strike. He was in the IRA during the War of Independence and was briefly a Labour Party TD. He became secretary to the Irish Trade Union Congress and later served on the Labour Court. To distinguish him from his famous father, his son was called Cathal Óg in the early part of his journalistic career.
While still at school in Coláiste Mhuire, Cathal, then only 16, went to Belfast to join the RAF. He went with his friend Fred O’Donovan, later to become chairman of RTÉ. They used forged baptismal certs to conceal their age.
Although the war in Europe was winding down, Cathal O’Shannon was posted to Burma for the remainder of the campaign there against the Japanese. Although he had his heart set on becoming a pilot, he served as ground crew. He would sometimes imply that he was a rear gunner on Lancaster bombers but laughed this off in an interview a year before he died.
While in the RAF, he wrote articles for newspapers with the encouragement of his father. He joined the Irish Times in 1949 as a cub reporter.
The paper sent him to the Congo in the summer of 1960 to report on the Irish troops as part of the UN peace-keeping force soon in combat in the breakaway province of Katanga.
The paper also sent him to its London office on temporary stints and it was there that he met his subsequent wife, Patsy Dyke, who was working for Country Life magazine.
While in Dublin he had been doing some work for the BBC current affairs programme, Tonight. He was eventually offered a job on the prestigious programme alongside reporter-presenters such as Alan Whicker and Magnus Magnusson. He enjoyed the freedom which Tonight gave its staff to write, report and produce programmes.
When Tonight ended in 1965, he returned to Dublin and joined RTÉ where he worked in the features area on programmes like Frank Hall’s Newsbeat. But he also began to make documentaries, twice winning Jacobs Awards. His best-known documentary was about the Irish who fought on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, entitled Even the Olives are Bleeding (1976). He also did a documentary on Emmet Dalton who was with Michael Collins when he was killed at Béal na mBláth.
His most memorable interview was with world champion boxer Muhammad Ali in 1972, excerpts from which are still shown. He later said that it was the boxer’s experience as an interviewee rather than his skills that made it so entertaining.
In 1978, he left RTÉ to become director of public affairs for the Canadian company Alcan which was setting up an aluminium plant at Aughinish in 1978.
He said that he was attracted by the salary, “five times what RTÉ were paying me”. But he also indicated that he had become unhappy with RTÉ and said in an interview that: “The real reason I got out of RTÉ was that they wouldn’t let me do what I wanted.” He had submitted plans for a series on the Civil War and also on the wartime Emergency period.
While he enjoyed the social life with lavish expenses which his public relations duties involved, his friends believed that he missed the varied life and travel of journalism. He retired early from Aughinish in 1992 but returned to making some memorable television documentaries with RTÉ. These included Murder in Ireland about infamous crimes and Ireland’s Hidden Nazis (2007) which showed the ease with which war criminals got refuge in Ireland in the aftermath of the second World War.
In 2010, the Irish Film and Television Academy presented O’Shannon with a lifetime achievement award. It hosted a special “Life in Television” programme at which friends and colleagues paid tribute to him. Kevin Dawson, head of corporate communications at RTÉ, said: “On camera he was an unrivalled raconteur, a mischievous companion, a finder and teller of tales, a historian of gravity, an interviewer non-pareil.”
His last years were marked by ill-health and the loneliness brought about by the death in 2006 of his wife, Patsy, to whom he had been married for over 50 years and on whom he had become increasingly dependent. He was also predeceased by his sisters, Fionnuala and Grania. However in 2008 he took part in an RTE documentary about his life produced by Paul Cusack.
Cathal O’Shannon died on October 22, 2011, at the age of 83.

Adrian Cronin was a former head of light entertainment at RTÉ television who directed the Late, Late Show for many years. He was born in Dublin on September 10, 1936, the son of Patrick and Edwina Cronin and grew up in Terenure. He was educated at St Mary’s College, Rathmines, where he played rugby and took part in school plays.
After finishing school he toured Europe with the Gate Theatre as an assistant stage manager. He joined Brendan Smith Productions for summer seasons at Butlins holiday camp in Mosney, Co Meath, and was associated with the Lantern Theatre.
In 1957, as a semi-professional actor, he appeared in an adaptation of  The Diary of Anne Frank, directed by Jim Fitzgerald at the Gaiety Theatre. In 1958 he was in Micheál Mac Liammóir’s adaptation of Liam O’Flaherty’s  The Informer at the Gate, and in 1959 appeared in Hugh Leonard’s play A Walk on the Water.
He also wrote and broadcast scripts for sponsored radio programmes. He went into business with Gay Byrne after coming up with the idea for recording messages from Irish residents to be sent through the post on flexible, unbreakable discs to relatives abroad. The business was not a success and closed down after eight months.
A jazz aficionado, he presented Jazz Club on Raidió Éireann, ran the Blue Note jazz club in Grafton Street, Dublin, and together with Louis Marcus and Michael Monaghan made a jazz-themed experimental film.
In 1961 he joined Telifís Éireann as a trainee and went on to become a producer and director. In 1967 he took over as director of the Late, Late Show, a job he held for 20 years.
A career highlight was directing the first Eurovision song contest to be broadcast from Ireland, in 1971. In the lead-up to the broadcast there was criticism of RTÉ’s hosting of the event, with critics pointing out that the £35,000 it cost to put it on equalled the reduction in the station’s programme budgets for the following year.
In 1985 he publicised the appearance of two lesbian nuns on the first show of the new season, prompting a deluge of hostile letters and phone calls to RTÉ. Notwithstanding the hostility, the nuns appeared on the show and attracted the highest Tam rating achieved by RTÉ in the history of the station.
Gay  Byrne described Adrian Cronin as the “best and sharpest and most tasteful director of a live show like the Late, Late anywhere in the world”. He said that guests appreciated him and he was hugely popular with crews.
His other work included introducing pop groups and showbands to TV audiences, and he profiled artists and performers ranging from poet Austin Clarke to singer John McNally. He made a documentaries on the poet Patrick Kavanagh and about the making of David Lean’s film Ryan’s Daughter in West Kerry and also initiated live coverage of the Rose of Tralee contest.
He stood down as head of light entertainment in 1979. He directed Kenny Live before retiring in 2001.
Adrian Cronin died on September 7, 2011, aged 74. He was predeceased by his wife Patricia and is survived by his daughters Fiona and Rozelle, son Conor and grandchildren.

Phyllis Ryan, who was one of Ireland’s best-known theatrical producers, presenting more than 100 plays and revues throughout the country, was born in Dublin on July, 28, 1923. She was one of two children of Thomas and May Ryan. She had no memory of her father and, her parents having separated, she and her sister were reared by their mother. The family lived at several addresses in southeast Dublin before finally settling in Palmerston Road, Rathmines.
Educated at Alexandra College, she was at first drawn to music. Later, she developed an interest in theatre and at the age of 13, five years under the age limit, she was accepted into the Abbey Theatre School of Acting. At 14 she was cast in Denis Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River at the Abbey. By 16 the Abbey directors recommended her for membership of the company. In the meantime, she played the leading female role in Paul Vincent Carroll’s Shadow and Substance .
As she grew in confidence, performing with such actors as Cyril Cusack, Denis O’Dea and Shelagh Richards. But the appointment in 1941 of Ernest Blythe as managing director of the Abbey led to her departure from the company. She did not fit in with his plans for an Irish-speaking company, he told her; she could come back when she became fluent in Irish. She replied that she did not want to fit in and became a freelance actor.
In 1943 she married Sean Colleary, stage manager at the Gate Theatre, with whom she had two children. He later moved to England, and while they remained married until his death in 1965, they led separate lives. In the 1960s she formed a relationship with the poet and journalist, Liam Mac Gabhann, which continued until his death in 1978.
Tired of being typecast, she decided to go into theatrical management, launching Orion Productions in 1956 with a Christmas revue Guided Mistletoe. There then followed the first of many plays by Tennessee Williams that Ryan presented, A Streetcar Named Desire , directed by Jim Fitzgerald, played to packed houses.
This set Orion on the road that led to the formation in 1958 of Gemini Productions, based for many years in Dublin’s Eblana Theatre in the Busarus. Donagh MacDonagh’s Lady Spider and John B Keane’s The Highest House on the Mountain were early Dublin Theatre Festival successes for Gemini.
In 1962 she persuaded Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift to revive the Pike Theatre production of The Rose Tattoo that the government had notoriously sought to shut down in 1957.
Gemini’s production of Hugh Leonard’s Stephen D was one of the hits of the 1962 Dublin Theatre Festival. It had an extended run at the Gate, transferring in the spring of 1963 to St Martin’s Theatre, London, where Norman Rodway and TP McKenna were acclaimed by the critics.
John B Keane’s The Field was another Gemini success. Ray McAnally gave a powerful performance as the “Bull” McCabe at the Olympia Theatre in 1965. Four years later, Keane’s Big Maggie , with Marie Kean in the title role, was awarded a tumultuous reception at its Cork premiere. Siobhán McKenna, told Ryan she wanted to understand the “Kerry Amazons” Keane wrote about. “I want to be sure they exist.”
In the 1960s Gemini began touring Ireland and Cork became a second home for the company, which staged three premieres at the Opera House. Gemini was the mainstay of the Limerick Theatre Festival which was held annually from 1970 to 1975.
However, financial pressures mounted. The Eblana was too small for most shows to cover production costs and provincial returns were small. Accordingly, Ryan joined the consortium of managements that with Irish Actors Equity was to bring the Irish Theatre Company, the state-subsidised touring company, into existence. Despite a promising start, it folded, “killed off quite ruthlessly by the Arts Council” in Phyllis Ryan’s opinion.
Leonard’s Da was given its Irish premiere in 1973 and was a huge success, as it was later on Broadway.
In 1981 she was honoured by a gala tribute to mark Gemini’s 21st anniversary at which she was awarded honorary life membership of Irish Actors Equity. Nicknamede Bambi by her friends, she published her memoirs in the Nineties, called The Company I Kept.
Phyllis Ryan died aged 87 on June 6, 2011. She is survived by her son, the Rev Graham (Gregg), and daughter, Jacqui.

Sean Dunphy was born in Dublin in November 1937. Growing up, he had to overcome a speech impediment. After his apprenticeship as a carpenter he joined the Army and worked at night as a singer with a group called The Keymen, who played to audiences in venues like the Theatre Royal.
After leaving the Army he emigrated to England, where he worked as a carpenter and sang at nights in the Hibernia Ballroom in Fulham, London, and other Irish clubs.
His big break came when he joined the Earl Gill Band as a vocalist. A consummate musician and trumpet player, Gill was asked to provide the music for an RTE show in the mid-Sixties called Hoedown – which he did, and then borrowed the name for his new showband.
The band was managed by Oliver Barry, and in 1967 Sean Dunphy was selected to follow in the footsteps of Butch Moore and Dickie Rock as Ireland’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest.
His song,  If I Could Choose, was written by Wesley Burrows, who later went on to write the RTE drama The Riordans. He was beaten into second place in the contest by Sandy Shaw singing the Phil Coulter song Puppet on a String.
Between 1966 and 1973, the golden age of the showband circuit, Sean Dunphy and The Hoedowners had 14 hit singles and filled ballrooms all over the country. They were also the first recording artists on Oliver Barry and Jim Hand’s new label, Dolphin Records.
In 1969 they had a No 1 in the Irish charts with the sentimental Republican ballad The Lonely Woods of Upton, which he followed up with When the Fields Were White with Daisies.
At the time, a survey published by weekly entertainment magazine Spotlight showed that Sean Dunphy was the top recording artist in Ireland — putting him ahead of Joe Dolan, who was then with The Drifters showband in Mullingar, and even ahead of The Beatles, who came in third place.
But behind the scenes Sean Dunphy shunned the limelight, a happily married man living in the north Dublin suburb of Baldoyle with his young family.
He had a strong voice and always came across as well-mannered and well-dressed and, unlike many of his contemporaries who wanted to live the ‘rock star life’, he was content to go home after gigs and play a bit of golf.
As the straightforward showband scene began to wane, new ‘gimmick’ bands like The Indians emerged.
Earl Gill decided to follow this route, putting out a single called The Poor Poor Farmer in which Gill himself dressed up as ‘Tim Pat’. The song went to No 3. They followed it up with the Ho Down Circus, in which the members dressed as various circus performers.
It wasn’t a change that suited Sean Dunphy, who had always been a serious crooner and performed in a suit and tie.
The showband boom fizzled out in the mid-Seventies, but Sean Dunphy continued to work in Canada and the United States alongside stints at home in Ireland.
Although he had a quadruple by-pass after a heart attack in 2007, he was still doing shows right up to the end, performing on the Sunday before his death in Baldoyle.
His son Brian has followed in his footsteps and is a member of the well-known ballad group The High Kings.
Sean Dunphy died on May 17, 2011, and is survived by his wife Lily and sons John, Gerard and Brian and daughter Mary.