DESCRIPTION:
Broadcaster Cathal O’Shannon, (1928 – 22 October 2011) opens up to us in a candid portrait of an extraordinary and colourful life.

I wanted to be a journalist from the time I was a child and for some reason or other I always accepted that I would be a journalist

Terry Wogan says of him:

He’s one of the great television journalists, possibly Ireland’s greatest television journalist.

His father Cathal O’ Shannon was a prominent republican and socialist who, following the Rising in 1916, was arrested and went on hunger-strike for 17 days in Mountjoy jail. It was a bohemian and liberal household, so perhaps it was no surprise when Cathal Óg, aged 16, armed with a forged baptismal cert tricked his way into the RAF and in no time was off to Burma as a rear-gunner on Lancaster bombers.

This characterises Cathal Ó Shannon’s life and career – a hunger for adventure and a fearlessness. Maeve Binchy, speaking of him when she knew him as a journalist on The Irish Times, says:

Nothing frightened him, no threats of libel actions or outraged politicians. He taught me a very important little truth in life…. always take your work seriously but never yourself seriously.

While working on the London desk of The Irish Times he met Patsy Dyke and thus began a love affair that lasts over half a century. Patsy died 3 years ago, and, in what is perhaps the most moving part of his story, he speaks frankly of his marriage, of his love and of his great loss.

Despite his love of “the smell of printers ink and the clatter of printing machines” it was in the medium of television that Cathal attracted most acclaim and achieved his greatest successes. His documentary on the Irish who fought on both sides in the Spanish Civil War Even the Olives are Bleeding is considered by many as one of his great achievements.

I was fascinated by the Spanish Civil War ever since I was l0 years of age …. Irish men fought on both sides…All men of great conviction on whichever side they were, men who went to sacrifice their lives for their beliefs.

Cathal’s prodigious body of work in television has drawn many plaudits and awards over a long career, Emmet Dalton Remembers, Rebellion, Thou Shalt Not Kill, Ireland’s Nazis, among them.

Speaking of the film, producer, John Kelleher says in some of the pieces to camera he just comes at you out of the screen, which is his huge talent to bring something alive for viewers…..: I think that RTÉ has been incredibly fortunate that in a period of over 40 odd years they’ve had somebody of his calibre to mirror our social and political history. When you look back at the body of work, if that didn’t exist we would be the poorer’.
RTE 2011 no copyright infringements intended.