Memory Man

by Jimmy Magee

  I told him to leave it with me; I was sure I would come up with something. We arranged to meet at ten the following morning to go out together to meet the managing director of Tayto. I kept racking my brains the whole way out there. We met, and I still hadn’t a solid idea. When we sat down at the meeting, Harry said to the managing director, ‘Jimmy has a great idea!’

  Making it up as I went along, I began to describe a very simple idea: a quiz show called the ‘Tayto Family Show’. It ended up being one of our biggest successes. We recorded it in public places—clubs generally. I told them it would have a county theme, going stage by stage through the different counties, and the winners would then represent Ireland in the world championship.

  I paused for effect. Harry was staring at me in bewilderment, wondering where this crazy idea had come from. I carried on explaining. ‘We’ll recruit the teams through the embassies in Dublin.’ They thought it was a wonderful idea and, believe it or not, it took to the air: the Tayto International World Cup of Quiz! Looking back on it now, I think it was so far-fetched it’s unbelievable.

  We had no team from Nigeria, so Harry took it on himself to go down to Trinity College one evening. He saw a few African students walking around and went up to them and asked if they were busy that evening. If the reply was No he would then get them to go to the recording studio. They weren’t from Nigeria at all—one was from Sierra Leone, someone from Liberia—but they ended up representing Nigeria! You wouldn’t get away with such antics today.

  We had a disaster with a short-lived programme sponsored by a watch company. Radio Luxembourg had a show at the time that was interspersed with the slogan ‘And the time by my H. Samuel Ever-Right watch is . . .’ Our programme was for Corona Watches, and for this I wrote the slogan ‘The time now by my ever-correct Corona is . . .’

  Now, the man who ran Corona Watches didn’t care tuppence about what music you played, as long as his product was plugged regularly. But we had a problem, which I quickly discovered during our first week on air. I said, ‘And that was Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes”. And the time now by my ever-correct Corona is . . .’ and I paused for Harry to read the time but was instead met with nothing but dead air. Harry tried in vain to read the watch: ‘Three minutes past a quarter to . . . seven minutes to . . . it’s ten seconds past ten to . . . it’s 2:45 and seven . . . ah, it’s about ten to three.’

  It turned out that Harry couldn’t read the moving second hand!

  We lost that programme because he couldn’t give out the time to the second, as stipulated in the contract. I laugh at this story now, but it certainly wasn’t a laughing matter at the time.

  We then had a programme for Lucozade, visiting hospitals and interviewing patients, and we would play the patients’ choice of music. It may not have been rocket science, but this was another of my ideas. We would do maybe three or four interviews and then play three or four records.

  Harry always seemed to have as many shows as possible recorded—‘for a rainy day,’ as he would put it. But it was a method that got us into hot water.

  ‘How many have we done?’ he’d ask.

  ‘We’ve done up to November.’

  ‘Oh, you better do a few more, with Christmas coming up.’

  Later he would ask again, ‘How many shows have you in the bag now?’

  I would tell him we were up to the 31st of December, but he insisted, ‘We better do some more for a rainy day.’

  It was the proverbial rainy day that landed us in hot water. One day the programme went out as usual—but some of the people interviewed on it were dead! We would say to the people when interviewing them, ‘You’re looking good! Does the doctor think you’ll be out soon?’ And they would answer, ‘Yes,’ or ‘I hope so,’ and you would say, ‘Good luck,’ and ‘See you in the bar some time for a pint.’ The interviews had been done about three months in advance. When this programme went out it was horrible and mortifying to discover that some of the people had passed away in the meantime; but it’s also a little bit amusing looking back on it.

  The boys called the show ‘Come Die with Me’. This was a reference to a show Harry and I did together called ‘Come Fly with Me’, which was sponsored by Jacob’s. He would begin by announcing something along the lines of ‘Today we’re flying from Dublin to Paris,’ and he would go up and down the aisle of the plane interviewing people. It was a good idea, and Jacob’s loved how he was bringing them up in the air.

  One day the recording machine didn’t work properly on the way to Paris, and Harry came back to discover that there was nothing on the tape. On the following trip he was going from Dublin to Rome, but he explained to the few passengers that when he would be talking to them they were to pretend they were en route to Paris! Some passengers didn’t understand him and told the steward that he thought they were going to Paris when in fact they were going to Rome. He had the whole place in turmoil. It was hilarious.

  Another time he was doing a handy run from Dublin to Manchester. He started with, ‘And here I am speaking to three Manchurians,’ but when he got back he was told that it was ‘Mancunians’. That piece was unusable.

  The next time he was going to Glasgow and he said, ‘Here I am speaking to two Glas . . . two people from Glasgow.’

  He was full of that sort of stuff, but he was gloriously funny and full of eternal youth.

  Harry was a gambler both in his career and in his personal life. As a joke he would try to get my wages off me by tossing a coin. I hadn’t got the money to gamble, because—as Harry knew full well—I had a wife and children to support.

  One time he owed me £24, but he suggested tossing for it. I told him I couldn’t afford to, but he persuaded me to. And then he called for double or quits—£48 or nothing . . . and I lost! It went on and on until the early hours of the morning, outside a pub near Holles Street. It was drizzling rain, and here we were tossing a coin.

  ‘How much do I owe you now?’ I asked him.

  ‘£1,980. Will we go for one more toss?’

  I began to tell him that I just wanted to go home; and the next thing is a squad car arrived. The nurses in the nurses’ home beside Holles Street Hospital had obviously phoned the guards, because they thought we were having a serious row over money. The guards asked what we were at, and we explained to them that it was just a bit of fun.

  Though I was flying with radio work, I didn’t get an opportunity to do much television. The first real thing I did on television was the FA cup final in 1967 between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, which Spurs won 2-1. The producer who went to that with me, Justin Nelson, was a lovely fellow and very helpful to me. He ended up being the producer of ‘Superstars’ on television, and with it we travelled to the Bahamas, Israel and the United States. Up to that point I would have done little pieces here and there—five minutes here and ten minutes there—but that was my first real television broadcast.

  In the 1960s I was also involved in a radio programme called ‘Spot the Talent’. It was an inter-county contest. It consisted of four acts: a singing act, a musical act, an instrument and a novelty act. Some talented people got their big break on the show, such as Matt Molloy of the Chieftains.

  There were three judges, and it was always done live in the Francis Xavier Hall on a Monday evening. During the interval the Radio Éireann Light Orchestra would play, allowing the judges to come down onto the stage and appear in front of the audience and do their summing up. It was straightforward enough. One of the judges, Éamonn Ó Gallchobhair, was just like a blunt ‘X Factor’ judge, he was so cutting with the way he would deal with these amateurs—and that’s what they were: only amateurs, who didn’t deserve a tongue-lashing.

  On this particular evening we arrived for the rehearsal, and on the stage were big banks of loudspeakers, which was surprising, because it was normally a bare stage, at most only a small amplifier for a guitar. But this stuff was massive. Then these four guys representing Cork came out onto the stage. Their lead guitar
ist was a long-haired fellow, and I thought to myself, ‘Wait until Ó Gallchobhair gets at him with his honest criticism! What is he going to say?’

  When Ó Gallchobhair came on he said: ‘The young man who played the guitar—I think he was a young man anyway, because his hair was so long I’m surprised he didn’t get it caught in the strings or anything else . . . I’m a long time in music of all kinds, and I’ve seen and heard them all, but I never before heard a young man with such phrasing and exquisite finger work and fret work. This man is a genius.’

  Now this wasn’t Éamonn’s type of music at all. He was a classical musician, and this guy was playing rock. That young lad was Rory Gallagher. This story illustrates how good Rory was, and how much Éamonn knew about music, even if it wasn’t his type of music.

  Rory Gallagher was brilliant. I interviewed him on the show; he was a lovely fellow and a very quiet man. You could hardly hear him talk, he was so shy.

  I met him later on in his career when he played in the National Stadium, and I reminded him of that story; he told me he remembered that night well. I told him how fearful we were for him regarding what Ó Gallchobhair would say about him. ‘But it showed just how great you were,’ I added.

  ‘I’m not great—not great yet, but I’m working on it,’ he replied humbly. Rory was always working on perfection.

  ——

  My career wasn’t all sweetness and light in those days. I was brought down to earth with a loud thump on a few occasions. Once in the late 1970s there was a guy in Dublin called Larry Finn, a West Indian. Larry’s style of music was mainly calypso—not quite Jimi Hendrix, but it was calypso. He thought that if he got a break it would propel him into the big time; so he booked a little theatre in Westland Row and decided to do a Christmas season, and he asked me to MC it. There was one other act, Veronica Blanchfield, who did a ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ kind of act.

  The plan was that it would run for three nights, and we took out advertisements in the Evening Herald. On the opening night you could feel the nervousness in the air. We were looking out through the curtains and Larry would be asking, ‘Is there many in?’

  To keep him calm I told him, ‘Only about ten.’

  ‘We’ll give it another few minutes,’ he replied.

  I went out to open the show, and there were only two people in the audience. I introduced Veronica and—fair play to her—she went out and did a little bit; and then I did a few stories, and then Larry came out. ‘I want to interrupt Jimmy there,’ he said. ‘Do either of you gentlemen play the piano?’

  One of them said he did, so Larry asked him to play with him, because he had no accompanist. The fellow came up to the stage, and the other fellow said, ‘Listen, I’ll see yeh afterwards in Kennedy’s when the show is over.’

  So now we had no audience! We did keep going, but we didn’t do a second half. Larry collected five shillings (25p) for the whole show. He gave half to me and half to himself, and nothing to Veronica; but he bought her a mineral later in Kennedy’s pub!

  Harry and I remained friends until he passed away, but we stopped working together after a blazing row, and that was the end of it as a working partnership. I have never mentioned this before, but I got thick with him, and he was thick to begin with when on this particular morning we were recording in the ACT Studios in Mount Street. I had arrived with my scripts, which weren’t great, because they were rushed. I had been up half the night writing stuff, as he was going away and he wanted to get a few things done. I was exhausted. I would say that some of the stuff was at least sub-standard. Harry had a cursory look through it while I was in the studio with the buttons. He was in the microphone studio with the microphone on when I heard him blast, ‘Jesus! How could you read this shite? How could you read it?’

  I was annoyed, because he damn well knew that I could hear him. I went into the studio and I grabbed the stuff and said, ‘You won’t have to read it for much longer, Harry.’ And I took it and tore it. It was like tearing up a telephone book, it was that thick, but I could have torn the wall off. I tore it and tore it and then I threw it up like confetti and said, ‘That’s it . . . we’re finished. No more scripts. No more nothing.’ And I stormed out.

  ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’ He began calling after me to come back, but I told him that even though we would still be friends our broadcasting relationship was over.

  He did try to cajole me into going back to work with him, but I politely turned him down. ‘I’ll gladly help you in any way I can, but I won’t be writing any more scripts, that’s certain. If I ever write anything again I write it for myself, not for you.’

  I feel Harry was jettisoned too soon by RTE. He should have had a programme long after he was pushed out the door.

  I have fond memories of Harry. He was in his late eighties when he died, in April 2011, but in his heart he was going on twenty-three. I said at his funeral that I genuinely thought he would live for ever.

  Our last conversation of any depth was at a luncheon arranged for reminiscing about the good old days in Henry Street with former colleagues who had worked on music programmes. We thought that maybe three or four would turn up for this trip down memory lane, but twenty-eight people, including Brendan Balfe and Mike Murphy, arrived for the lunch. We had it on the Barge on the Canal in late 2010.

  We reminisced about the time I ripped up the scripts when we had the big falling out. ‘Ah, yeah, you were a bold boy that day,’ he said.

  Harry was seriously ill for only a short time before he died, but he had been ill for a long time before that with other complaints. It was upsetting to see him in such bad condition, because Harry was always on the upbeat—always. If he was a musician he would be a jazz man: he wouldn’t sing sentimental country songs like me.

  He lived in Greystones and was in a nursing-home down there. I can’t really remember our last conversation when I went to see him, as it was quite upsetting, and he was filling up with tears. His wife, Frankie McDermott, a wonderful singer, asked me if I would say a few words at his funeral, which I was delighted to do—if you can call it being ‘delighted’ to speak at somebody’s funeral. I told some of the funny stories about things that happened between us, like the betting anecdote. I had them laughing in the aisles that day. I dearly miss him.

  Chapter 5

  | FREEDOM TO DO WHAT I LIKE

  If I was starting all over again I would try to be less apprehensive about my situation as a freelance contractor with RTE. I was more or less living from year to year and would find myself going back in and nervously asking, ‘So, what about next year?’ And I would be told, ‘Sure don’t you know you’ll be on next year! We couldn’t go on without you.’ I would walk away thinking to myself, ‘Stop being silly. If the show you’re working on is going to be on, you’ll be on. They can’t do without their best people.’ But I had a real fear, even when I had fully established myself as a prominent broadcaster, of being let go.

  I’d often think, ‘Do I want to be on the staff? No, I don’t. I want the freedom to do what I like.’ I don’t regret that. I’m happy enough with what I’ve done now that I am if not past the autumn of my career at least reaching the autumn. I’m by no means finished yet.

  I am my own worst critic too. I know myself whether my work is good or not good. I always listen to stuff I do with a keen ear or eye on it and ask myself, ‘Was that all right?’ I don’t want to boast, but I genuinely believe that I have done some of my best work in recent years.

  It probably wasn’t until the Jacob’s Awards in 1972, when I was given the Sports Commentator of the Year Award in the radio category, that I felt confident that I was in the broadcasting game for the long haul. By that time I had been working steadily at RTE (as it now was) for sixteen years, but deep down I always feared that the work could dry up one day—particularly as I always had to hustle in those early days by coming up with the concept of the shows and then finding sponsors for them. So winning the Jacob’s Award, which back then was one of
the biggest things in the broadcasting business, was a huge deal for me.

  I wasn’t nervous on the night the show was televised live, because I had already been tipped off that I was going to win for my show, which was called ‘Sports Line’. The trophy itself was a lovely solid piece of steel, rimmed with sound waves. It was one of the best and biggest awards I have received during a career that has spanned more than fifty-five years, making me one of the longest-serving sports commentators in the world.

  Another reason that the night stands out in my mind is that the post-awards celebration may have been one of the last times I touched alcohol.

  I gave up drinking for good on Ash Wednesday, 1973. My three daughters asked me to bring them down to the church to get their ashes. I brought them down and let them out of the car. I was sitting there and—though I’m the next-best thing to a heathen—I thought, ‘I might go in and get ashes myself.’

  As the priest placed the ashes on my forehead I told myself, ‘I won’t drink now until Easter Sunday.’ But I began to enjoy not suffering from hangovers so much that I decided to give it up permanently. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

  I don’t want to give the impression that I’m now anti-drink. Far from it; and I don’t mind being around friends when they’re enjoying a few drinks.

  I gave up boozing because, to be completely honest, I was hitting the bottle too hard. I don’t think it appeared to others that I might have a problem, but I knew it was becoming a serious issue because I was wasting too much time, and money, in the pubs. Besides, I didn’t want my young children to see their father as a heavy drinker. We never spoke about it, but I think Marie was pleased with my decision also.

  I never drank at home, but I was spending a lot of time in pubs with colleagues after we’d finished work. It’s very hard in this business to just have the proverbial ‘one’.