Veteran journalist set to tackle TB saga (Part 1)

VB: How did you get into journalism? CO'S: After I left the air force, I wrote to the then editor of The Irish Times, R.M. Smiley. I was asked to go in to see him and he told me I had better learn shorthand and typing, which I went to do at the Sherries college on Stephen's Green.

Then it happened that there was a bloke leaving The Irish Times and I was taken on as a cadet reporter on a three month trial basis. After about six months in the Dublin office I was sent to the London office, which was wonderful. Jack White [later controller of programmes with RTE and now deceased] was the London editor.

VB: What stories did you cover in London for The Irish Times?

CO'S: What we had to do in the London Office of The Irish Times was write the London Letter, which was a single column of five or sometimes six paragraphs. We rarely had to cover moving news stories. We would go to the House of Commons and the House of Lords and listen to the various debates and so on.

By and large, our job was to cover Irish events. We didn't rush around covering stories. I suppose it was in London that I learned to drink because we would go out at 12 o'clock and drink until three and then we would finish the Letter by about half past six or seven and we would drink again, so that you could reckon that the Irish journalist in Fleet Street would be pissed for at least four nights a week on a regular basis.

VB: When did you come back to The Irish Times in Dublin?

CO'S: I came back to The Irish Times, I suppose, in the late fifties and shortly after coming back I was sent to cover the involvement of Irish troops in the UN peace mission to the Congo. In those days Irish newspapers didn't send people abroad to cover stories no matter how big the story was with one exception, the Irish Independent.

The Irish Independent always sent one man abroad each year to cover the Dublin Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes. That [the Congo assignment] made me at that time a very senior sort of reporter, although I would still have been quite reasonably young.

When Telefis Eireann was started in 1960/61 I would have given anything, at that stage to have become involved. I had been watching the old Tonight programme on BBC and this to me was the absolute tops, this was the sort of thing that I wanted to get into, I wanted to get into television.

So, we used to do nixers while I still worked in The Irish Times. We used to do nixers for five guineas a time in the first of the magazine programmes with RTE, it was called Newsbeat. Then, I helped out the Tonight programme on a story they were doing over here and out of that I was offered a job with them. They wanted what they called regional accents and they offered me a job and Magnus Magnusson, he had a Scots accent, although as you know he was an Icelander.

Magnusson and I started on the Tonight programme together. This was heaven as far as I was concerned. This was the absolute tops. I was on it for 18 months and then it was axed. I came back to Ireland and Jack White, at that stage, my old boss in the London office of The Irish Times, had become features editor of RTE and he offered me a job in RTE. I took the job in RTE and I stayed for many years until 1978 when I was head-hunted for Aughinish Alumina.

VB: Going back to The Irish Times, what was Smiley like as editor?

CO'S: Well, Smiley to me, I had known Smiley since I was a child. My father drank in the Palace Bar. In fact all The Irish Times people and all the so-called literati of Dublin drank in the Palace Bar at that particular time. To me he was an avuncular figure.

He drank a great deal. He sailed along like a bloody sailing ship you know, from the Palace Bar and subsequently the Pearl Bar when they had a big row in the Palace Bar, they moved over to the Pearl Bar, which was just across the road from the side door of The Irish Times.

To me he was one of the great editors. His greatness was established during the war in his battles with the censors. So he was one of the great editors of The Irish Times and people who succeeded him never had his personality with one exception, Douglas Gageby. Gageby of course was the one who came and totally changed The Irish Times.

VB: When you joined RTE, you worked with Frank Hall?

CO'S: Yes. I went out and did films, different sort of films, feature films and so on like that. Every now and again I would have to do something in the studio and I didn't like it.

I stayed with RTE doing all sorts of different programmes. We did one on the Spanish Civil War, we did one with Emmet Dalton, the killing of Michael Collins, and so on. They were big features for those days. They won prizes.

Then in 1978 Muiris Mac Conghail, an old friend, was head of RTE 1 or the controller of programmes and he said to me: "I want you to do 13 weeks in studio on a face-to-face thing"; and I said: "No way, this is not my thing."

I said: "I tell you what I want to do Muiris, I want to do two programmes, one about the Irish who joined forces in Britain or Germany or whatever, in the second World War and I want to do one about the Irish Civil War. I want to do those two things." "Yeh," he said, "great, but first of all you're going to do 13 weeks in studio."

I said no, I'm not going to do it. I didn't appear on the screen once over four months but I was paid every week. You're desperate to get back on air and eventually I went back on air. There's an awful feeling when you go back on air after four months off, you think: "can I do this any more?", you get sort of half frightened.

As luck would have it I was being headhunted for two jobs. One was a job in Guinness's and the other one was to be public relations executive for a new Canadian organisation called Alcan who were coming in to set up a bloody great big plant down in West Limerick, at Aughinish.

This was an alumina plant. That eventually was the one which I took and I took it with lots of regret. I was getting paid in those days, 1978, about £6,000 a year. At Aughinish I got £15,000, which the following year was again doubled so I was one of the best off people.

I had an expenses account like you have never seen in your life. Mind you, as times got harder and the plant was being built, they reduced my expenses from the thousands of pounds, the tens of thousands of pounds that it was, to something much less. That tens of thousands of pounds was also to disperse to various local charities and setting up various things and so on. Anything except political parties.

I was hugely well paid. It was really quite incredible. I was getting after one year, four times what I had when I left RTE. For the first five years, during construction and so on and start up, it was great. But after a few years, the process of extracting alumina from bauxite is not very exciting and it's not a very exciting product, Jaysus, it's only a white powder. I was glad to retire and get out.

VB: Did you enjoy working with Frank Hall?

CO'S: Oh yes. Frank was great. I mean, Frank could be dictatorial, there's not the slightest doubt about that. But in those days in RTE, and especially working with Frank and the likes of Peter McNiff who was a director and Dick Hill, who subsequently became the head of television and John Kelleher who also became head of television, you were allowed virtually to do almost whatever you wanted to do. You could film whatever you wanted to, you could be as adventurous as possible and you weren't overworked.