Actor David Kelly was born in Clonskeagh, Dublin, on July 11, 1929, and acted from the age of eight at the Gaiety Theatre. He was educated at  Synge Street CBS and the National College of Art.
He trained as an actor at The Abbey School of Acting. In addition, he trained as a draughtsman and calligrapher. A tall and flamboyant figure, he was always attired off stage in hand-stitched shirts, Jermyn Street suits and a trademark bow tie.
He met his future wife, the actor Lauri Morton, while acting at the Pike Theatre Club in Dublin. There they appeared in the late-night satirical revues written and produced by Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift in the 1950s before the small theatre was forced to close by the conservative interests of church and state. It was here also that he met up with Milo O’Shea and the pair worked on and off together over many years, most memorably in the Gate Theatre production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys and in Hugh Leonard’s BBC series Me Mammy. He worked with Jimmy O’Dea in the Telefis Eireann weekly comedy series The Signalman by Flann O’Brien.
He was equally accomplished playing straight or comic roles. He appeared onstage in the original production of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow. he had made his screen debut in a small part in director John Pomeroy’s 1958 film noir Dublin Nightmare. He was the first Irish actor to play Krapp in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in 1959, in a summer season of plays produced by Louis Lentin in Trinity College, Dublin. Thirty years later he gave an even more accomplished performance of that demanding role under the direction of  Pat Laffan in the Gate.
Although he became known to British TV audiences through1970s sitcoms such as Oh, Father! (with Derek Nimmo) – and played a hapless builder, O’Reilly, in an episode of Fawlty Towers – he first endeared himself to Irish viewers in Telefis Eireann’s 1980 memorable series Strumpet City, based on James Plunkett’s novel about the Dublin 1913 lock-out, in which he played the homeless and captivating “Rashers” Tierney. He maintained his Irish popularity in two long-running television soaps, RTE’s Glenroe and the BBC’s Ballykissangel, screened from 1996 to 2001.
He went on to perform in a remarkable variety of guises: from a reading of Yeats with Siobhan McKenna to opening Ursula White-Lennon’s Pocket Theatre in 1966; as Titus Oates in Desmond Forristal’s The True Story of the Horrid Popish Plot, which Hilton Edwards directed in 1972, and as Ferapont in Chekov’s Three Sisters in the late 1980s
David Kelly worked consistently in films from 1969, when he played the vicar in a funeral scene in The Italian Job, starring Michael Caine. He appeared again with Caine in Terence Young’s spy movie The Jigsaw Man (1984). His most notable film appearances in the 1990s were in two delightful Irish movies: Mike Newell’s Into the West (1992), scripted by Jim Sheridan, with Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin, in which he played an old storyteller in a community of travellers; and Kirk Jones’s Waking Ned (1998) in which, with his best friend, played by Ian Bannen, he engineered a small village’s response to an unexpected lottery windfall and set about fooling the claims inspector.
He appeared with Kevin Spacey in the Irish crime caper Ordinary Decent Criminal (1999), and with Helen Mirren and Clive Owen in Greenfingers (2000). His last major movie appearance was in Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust (2007).
In later years he gained international recognition for playing Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton’s movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), a performance that was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Film and Television Academy. Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka, paid a touching tribute on a video link from Hollywood.
He certainly caught filmgoers’ attention in Waking Ned Devine where he provided enormous audience satisfaction for the sheer, yet subtly controlled, exuberance of his performances. Many will remember him as the elderly codger, speeding across the strands of the Isle of Man on a motorbike clad in his birthday suit. It amused him when he was deemed by fans to be a sex symbol at 70. This won him a Golden Satellite Award.
His career spanned over 50 years, and he never considered retirement.
David Kelly died on February 13, 2012. He is survived by his wife, Laurie Morton; his son David and his daughter, the actor Miriam Kelly. His sister Marie, a much-loved stage director, predeceased him.

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.

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.

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, 27, 1920. 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 91 on June 6, 2011. She is survived by her son, the Rev Graham (Gregg), and daughter, Jacqui.

Hollywood actor George Brent was born George Nolan in the midlands of Ireland around the start of the last century. He emigrated to Canada, where he acted in stock companies for two years. He moved to New York where he founding three stock companies of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in securing more than 100 screen credits, most of them in Warner Brothers productions between 1930 and 1953.
There is some confusion as to his actual place and date of birth. The most common version is that he was born George Brendan Nolan on March 15, 1899, in Raharabeg, Co Roscommon, on the opposite bank of the River Shannon from the town of Shannonbridge in County Offaly. This version is popularly accepted in Shannonbridge. An unverified account goes that during the Troubles he was active in the IRA. He fled because he was being sought by the British, although he claimed only to have been a courier for Michael Collins.
However another version* has it that he was born George Nolan on March 15, 1904, in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York, where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre but, suspected by the British authorities of IRA involvement, he fled to Canada. Based on this version, he would have been 16 or 17 when he became the subject of British suspicions.
Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by Warner Bros to carry middle-ranking projects and provide support to A-list stars. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy making a living this way, leading to some reviewers describing his performances as having “all the animation of a penguin”.
His screen trade mark was the black, slicked hair and gentle mustacheod smile. He claimed that when he first appeared in the Broadway play Love, Honour and Obey, Clark Gable had no mustache. “He stole that damn mustache from me,” Brent said in later years. “And he stole a lot of girls, too….”
He provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies, as in his performance opposite Greta Garbo in the 1934 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil.
He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times) and Bette Davis (11 times).
His best performances were in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark Victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan; The Rains Came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The Spiral Staircase (1945), a horror film set in England.
He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The Fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in inferior movies such as The Corpse Came C.O.D. (1947), a comedown for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movies dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire Service (1956-9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California.
Brent’s final film was the 1978 Born Again story of Watergate figure Charles Colson, in which he had a cameo role as a judge.
Known as a womaniser in Hollywood, George Brent reputedly carried on a lengthy relationship with Bette Davis. He was married four times, three times to actresses: Ruth Chatterton (1932–1934), Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–1943). His final marriage to Janet Michaels, a former model and dress designer, lasted 27 years until her death in 1974. They had two children together, a son and a daughter.
George Brent died on May 26, 1979, in Solana Beach, California, at the age of 80 from emphysema.

*Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography. The same date of birth was given by the Los Angeles Times in 1979: Report.

TP McKenna was born on September 7, 1929, in Mullagh, County Cavan, the son of an auctioneer. Thomas Patrick, to give him his full name, was educated at St Patrick’s College, Cavan, where he appeared in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He was also a keen footballer and played at full back in the All-Ireland Colleges GAA Football final in Croke Park in 1948. One of his teachers, Fr Vincent Kennedy, taught him music and how to read a score, but at 15 TP saw a performance by the great Shakespearean actor Anew McMaster and determined one day to go on the stage.  After leaving school he worked in the Ulster Bank in Granard, Co Longford.

Irish actor TP McKenna.

TP’s ambition still was to become an actor and following a transfer to Dublin he quickly became involved in local amateur drama. After falling behind with his bank exams, he was offered a transfer back to Cavan, which cemented his resolve to take up acting full-time. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1954.
He undertook over seventy stage roles as a member of the Abbey Theatre company between 1953 and 1962. In 1968 he was made a life member of the company along with Cyril Cusack and Siobhan McKenna. In addition to his work in Irish theatre, he played with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre Company. His West End debut was as Cranly in ‘Stephen D’ at the St Martin’s Theatre in 1963. He also directed productions of ‘The Playboy of the Western World’, ‘The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roache’ and ‘Shadow of A Gunman’ .
In 1960 he got his first film break as the anarchist Lapidos in The Siege of Sidney Street, starring Donald Sinden. During the 1960s and 1970s he appeared regularly in popular television dramas, including The Avengers (1964, 1965, 1968), Dangerman (1965), The Saint (1966, 1968), Adam Adamant (1967), Jason King (1972), The Sweeney (1975), Blake’s 7 (1978), Minder  (1984) and Doctor Who (1989).

In the early 1970s, with his family he moved house from Sandymount in Co Dublin to London.
He played Richmond in the Thames Television series Callan (1972) and made a dozen appearances in Crown Court (1974-82) mainly as barrister Patrick Canty, while also appearing in the popular ATV anthology drama series Love Story (1965, 1968).
He also featured promimently in other television dramas including The Duchess of Malfi (1972), The Changeling (1974), Napoleon and Love (1974), Holocaust (1978), The Manions of America (1981), To The Lighthouse (1982), Bleak House (1985), Strong Medicine (1986), Jack the Ripper (1988), and the final episode of Inspector Morse (2000).
He had prominent film roles in Ulysses (1967), Sam Peckinpah’s film Straw Dogs (1971), where he appeared alongside Dustin Hoffman, and A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (1977). He is also remembered for his work in the radio series Ballylenon, starring as Phonsie Docherty. He was considered one of Ireland’s finest Joycean actors and narrated the Emmy-winning documentary Is There One Who Understands Me (RTE, 1982).
TP McKenna died aged 81 on February 13, 2011, in London following a long illness. His wife May, nee White, died in 2006. He is survived by his sons Rafe, Killian, Breffní and Stephen and his daughter Sally.

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.

Mick Lally was born in the Tourmakeady Gaeltacht of Co Mayo on November 10, 1945, the eldest of a family of seven children; five sisters and one brother.

He grew up on the family’s hill farm. His grandfather who had emigrated to the United States paid his boarding costs in St Mary’s College, Galway.

Mick Lally. Versatile actor.

Although he took part in a number of plays in primary school, in St Mary’s he was overlooked, as he told the Galway Independent: “They ran lots of plays while I was in St Mary’s but they never asked me to be in any of them! At that time, you wouldn’t have the gumption to ask the priests or tell them that you had a bit of experience and they never asked me, so I missed out. I wouldn’t say I was jealous that I wasn’t involved but I was a bit bored and fed up!”

However he did become involved in acting at university in Galway where he studied Irish and history, became involved in student drama productions and captained the UCG boxing team. In the spring of 1970, he got involved the Irish language theatre An Taibhdhearc and soon claimed a small part in a production of Brendan Behan’s  An Giall. He featured in around eight plays a year with the group, claiming larger parts each time.

Despite being offered a place in the Abbey School of Acting, he turned down the opportunity, as he didn’t have a way of supporting himself in Dublin and preferred to focus on the local theatre scene. He taught history and Irish for six years in Tuam, from 1969-75.

A meeting with Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen changed all that, with Mick taking his first steps into a full-time acting career – and helping to set up the renowned theatre company Druid in 1975. He gave up his teaching job to concentrate on establishing the group, running a number of productions in the Irish language.

He was also involved in the early days of Derry’s Field Day group, acting the part of Manus in Brian Friel’s Translations.

While maintaining his committment to Druid, he went on to work with Gabriel Byrne and Joe Lynch  on television in the RTÉ series Bracken and later his role as Miley Byrne in Glenroe made him a household name, his face etched deep with character and a disarming gentleness. He also featured in the BBC television series, Ballykissangel, and in the award-winning film Ballroom of Romance, based on the William Trevor novel.

Well able to enjoy a gag, he conspired in 1985 with Radio Eireann’s David Hanley on Morning Ireland to announce his exit from Glenroe in an indignant protest at RTE’s decision to feature nude scenes – an elaborate and successful April Fool’s Day joke.

His versatility as an actor extended to the cinema where he appeared in Irish language films. He was a fluent Irish speaker and an advocate of the language. He also featured in Hollywood films including  Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone, and provided the voice in the animated film The Secret of Kells. He suffered from emphysema and died after a short illness in hospital on August 31, 2010, aged 64.  He is survived by his wife Peggy, their children – Saileog, Darach and Maghnus. His passing was marked by a humanist ceremony held in Dublin.

History of Druid Theatre

Terry6 Wogan. 40 years of broadcasting.

Terry Wogan was born in Limerick on August 3, 1938, and was educated at Crescent College and, after the family moved to Dublin when he was 15, Belvedere, where he excelled at rugby, acting. His father was a retail manager.
He showed early promise with the Rathmines & Rathgar Musical Society and, after a brief interlude in banking, he joined RTE. There he acquired a reputation as a consummate professional and an inveterate prankster, but the best indication of what was to come was an internal RTE memo which warned producers, in the starkest terms, “don’t let Wogan ad lib”. Since then, first at RTE and later at BBC, Terry Wogan has made ad-libbing his inimitable speciality.
He conducted interviews and presented documentary features during his first two years at RTE, before moving to light entertainment as a disc jockey and host of TV quiz and variety shows such as the successful Jackpot. When the show was dropped by RTE in 1967, Wogan approached the BBC for extra work. He began working for BBC Radio presenting Midday Spin in the mid-1960s and, on the inauguration of BBC Radio 1, he presented the Tuesday edition of Late Night Extra for two years, commuting weekly from Dublin to London. After covering Jimmy Young’s mid-morning show throughout July 1969, he was offered a regular afternoon slot from 3 to 5 p.m. This was officially on BBC Radio 1, but lack of funding meant that it was also broadcast on BBC Radio 2.
In April 1972, he took over the breakfast show on BBC Radio 2. By this time, Radio 1 and Radio 2 had diverged sufficiently to allow separate programming, and Wogan enjoyed unprecedented popularity, achieving audiences as high as 7.6 million. His seemingly ubiquitous presence across the media meant that he frequently became the butt of jokes by comedians of the time, among them The Goodies and The Barron Knights. Wogan was eminently capable of self-parody too, releasing a vocal version of the song The Floral Dance, to the delight of his listeners who enjoyed hearing him sing over the instrumental hit.
In 1980 Terry Wogan presented the first Children in Need telethon alongside Sue Lawley and Esther Rantzen. He has been the presenter of this annual event ever since and has campaigned extensively for the charity.
In December 1984, he left his breakfast radio show and went full-time into television. From 1980 until 2008, he provided the BBC’s Eurovision Song Contest television commentary every year and became famous for his sardonic and highly cynical comments. He also co-hosted the contest, in 1998 with Ulrika Jonsson, live from Birmingham.
From 1977 until 2008, with a few breaks, he hosted the UK selection heat each year. He earned a reported £150,000 annually for his work with the contest.

His commentating style has caused some minor controversy, for example when he referred to the hosts of the 2001 contest in Denmark, Søren Pilmark and Natasja Crone Back, as “Doctor Death and the Tooth Fairy”. Although many British viewers find his comments amusing, they are far from being universally liked. The Danes were less than appreciative and Wogan now jokes that he is banned from visiting Denmark.
During the2006 Contest he called the Dutch televote presenter an “eejit”. Chris Tarrant later remarked that “Terry Wogan’s commentary is why any sane person would choose to watch the Eurovision,” referring to his now-infamous acerbism.
Describing the Contest as “predictable” and “… no longer a music contest”, he officially stepped down from the role in 2008 after 35 years.
He moved into TV interviewing was with What’s On Wogan? in 1980. Between 1985 and 1992, the show became thrice-weekly on early weekday evenings. Notable moments of the series included interviews with a drunk George Best, a silent Chevy Chase, a nervous Anne Bancroft who was so petrified she gave monosyllabic answers and counted to ten before descending the entrance steps to the studio, Ronnie Barker announcing his retirement on the show, and David Icke claiming to be the “Son of God” to whom Wogan famously stated “They’re laughing at you – they’re not laughing with you.”

In 2006 he presented Wogan Now and Then, a show where he interviewed guests from his old chat show as well as new guests, and for which he reportedly earned £30,000 per episode.

Terry Wogan returned to BBC Radio 2 in 1993 to present the breakfast show, then called Wake Up to Wogan. By 2005 it reportedly attracted an audience of eight million. According to figures leaked to British newspapers in April, 2006, he was the highest paid BBC radio presenter at that time, with an £800,000 a year salary. He confirmed this in a Hello magazine interview in 2006, saying: “The amount they said was true and I don’t give a monkey’s about people knowing it. Nor do I feel guilty. If you do the maths, factoring in my eight million listeners, I cost the BBC about 2p a fortnight. I think I’m cheap at the price”.
On September 7, 2009, Wogan confirmed to his listeners that he would be leaving the breakfast show at the end of the year with Chris Evans taking over. He returned to BBC radio in February, 2010, with a live Sunday morning show with guests and a house band. Some 30,000 people applied for 300 tickets to be in the audience.
As well as his work for Children in Need, he was President of the Lords Taverners and the Saints and Sinners charitable societies and is patron of  Arthritis Care, Action for Epilepsy and of the association for Adventure Playgrounds for Handicapped Children. He works with a number of hospitals including Hammersmith, St. Mary’s Paddington and Wexham Park. For six years he held the Terry Wogan Golf Classic for the benefit of Irish charities and he continues to be involved with the Ireland Fund in Great Britain.

Terry Wogan married Helen Joyce on April 25, 1965, and they have three children: Alan, Mark and Katherine. They live in Taplow, south Buckinghamshire, near Maidenhead. They also have a holiday home in Gascony, south-west France. He received an honorary knighthood in 2005 (still retains his Irish citizenship) and was made a Freeman of the city of Limerick in 2007.
Once said he was – “An optimist – you know, someone who does not realise the seriousness of the situation.”

Terry Wogan has published a number of written works, including:

Banjaxed (October 1979)

Wogan on Wogan (1987)

Terry Wogan’s Bumper Book of TOGs (1995)

Where Was I?!: The World According to Wogan (2009)

He has also written two autobiographical volumes:
Is It Me? (September 2000)
Mustn’t Grumble (September 2006)

He also published a diary:
Wogan’s Twelve (October 2007)