It was a journey that would decide my career, but as I boarded the train in Dublin that morning it just seemed a weird way to be marking St Patrick's Day. The year was 1960 and I was en route to Belfast for a job interview at the BBC, writes Denis Touhy.
I would then have to catch another train back to Dublin and dash to the Olympia for the evening performance of the play I was appearing in.
Why was I giving myself such hassle when, after months of unemployment, I was at last getting somewhere as an actor?
Curiosity was one motive but more important was the lure of a steady income. Months earlier, when my only regular work was to stand in London streets with a clipboard, asking passers-by for their views on margarine or soap, someone told me that the BBC in my native Belfast had advertised for an announcer. When I also learned that the pay was £1,200 - you could buy a house for that in 1960 - I applied for the job but heard nothing for ages. I had got myself a part in the Dublin run of Over the Bridge, Sam Thompson's controversial portrayal of sectarian violence in the Belfast shipyard, when the letter arrived inviting me to an interview on March 17th.
Friends assured me that as a Catholic I shouldn't waste my time. Nowadays, of course, BBC Northern Ireland recruits from all sections of the community but 40-odd years ago it was run on similar lines to other public bodies in the North. Yes, there were one or two Catholic technicians, some canteen workers and cleaners, but no Catholics at all on the production or announcing staff.
There's a story from that era which hits the spot. A young man walks into a pub near the BBC's Ormeau Avenue headquarters.
"A p-p-pint of G-G-Guinness," he says, "and a l-large B-Bushmills while I'm w-waitin'."
He downs the whiskey and nods for another.
The barman is concerned. "Are ye OK, son?"
The young man heaves a sigh. "I've j-just b-been for a j-j-job interview at the B-B-BBC."
"What kind of a job?"
"An an-n-nouncer."
Somehow the barman keeps a straight face. "Well now, it might work out."
The young man shakes his head. "No ch-chance."
"Sure ye never know."
"N-no chance. I'm a f-friggin' C-Catholic!"
But come on, I said to my head-shaking friends, this kind of thing will have to end one day. Maybe my own job interview, on the feast of Ireland's patron saint, will be the beginning of the end. After all, this was the 1960s. In America the Catholic senator John F. Kennedy was running for president of the mightiest country on earth. Britain's prime minister, Harold Macmillan, had warned white South Africans that a wind of change was blowing through that vast continent. Wasn't it time for the BBC hierarchy in Ormeau Avenue to let a papist read the news?
It was a close call, as it turned out. Years later in a London pub I got the story from the executive who had chaired the appointment board that day. Apart from himself there had been one other member from London and two from Belfast. After interviewing all the candidates they had unanimously agreed, so I was told, that I was top of the list. At which point, however, one of the local duo intervened. He said he wished to contact the regional controller and let him know that they were thinking of appointing a Catholic.
The chairman was stunned. Like many visitors to Belfast in those days he was happily ignorant of its more unsavoury traditions. Also, as a non-native he didn't know how to deduce a candidate's religion, assuming he wanted to, from the name of the school on the application form. However, being a shrewd operator in other ways, he opted for the BBC's own rule book - sacred scripture for all corporation executives - as the handiest way out of a tricky situation. He told his colleagues that by agreeing that I was the best candidate the board's duty was done and that, in accordance with proper procedure, the appointment had in fact been made.
So if anyone wished to inform the controller that a Catholic had been appointed, well, that was up to him but was none of the board's business.
The keeper of traditional values backed off and, although I didn't hear for another week, the job was mine.
My eventual arrival at Ormeau Avenue was inevitably high-profile. "At last," ran the headline in a nationalist paper, "an appointment from the outside." But once I crossed the threshold I was given the warmest of welcomes, particularly by fellow workers on the shop floor, and enjoyed my years there as an announcer, newscaster and reporter.
A moment I particularly relished, partly because I knew it would embarrass at least one of my superiors and partly because it recalled the day of my appointment, took place one Twelfth of July. I had been asked to interview two visiting sheikhs from Saudi Arabia during a live TV broadcast of the Orange Order parades. Regally robed, the visitors stood at a window overlooking the march through central Belfast. They paid courteous tribute to the banners, the sashes, the bands.
"Have you ever seen a parade like this?" I asked. "Only once," came the reply, deadly in its innocence. "On St Patrick's Day in New York."