Go mbeannai Dia daoibh

Interview Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin: Tom Humphries listens to the former All-Ireland hurler, footballer, golfer, journalist, actor, playwright, author and Gaeilgeoir now in his 80th year

Seán Óg has telephoned and told you apologetically that the flu has been tugging his sleeve a little this winter. You expect mufflers and chicken soup, but there's no sign of anything holding him back when he opens the door and segues into a little Ali shuffle. He throws out some mock haymakers, grasps your hand and ushers you in.

It's a cold, northside morning and the gas fire is glowing, a glass of water in front of it to keep the air humid. He has almost no need to tell you that he's lived in this tree-lined spot in Raheny for longer than you've been alive. He remembers this place when his back windows offered him a view of the sea instead of a vast housing estate.

Then again, he remembers most things. Longevity is part of the man. Stories flow from him like spring water.

"Sit down, sit down," he says, "and take a look at these."

He proffers a couple of letters sent to him from the people who put together the Guinness Book of Records. Longevity is the topic. He had written to ask them if 50 years presenting the same radio programme mightn't be a world record. The records people had replied that it might be a record were it not for the persistence of one Miguel Agrelato of Puerto Rico, who has been presenting his show since January of 1949.

So, game as a puppy, Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin wrote back and wondered if the fact that he and his Dad had been presenting the same show since 1932 didn't make Miguel something of a busted flush. And again the records people trumped him.

Rambling with Gambling had been presented in New York City by one or other member of the Gambling family from 1925 till September 11th, 2000.

"They stopped in 2000," says Seán Óg with a little smile. Still time to beat them. Being European champion is enough for now.

And anyway, what the records people can't measure or weigh is impact and meaning. It would be glib to say that Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin is part of what we are but wrong to say that he isn't. His voice is part of the landscape, part of the background music to our lives, part of what holds us together as a tribe. As soon as he greets you with that familiar diction you mean to suggest to him that he hire out the voice for other people's answering machines. He'd make a fortune. Seo agaibh a chairde . . .

The voice. It's the product of a northside Dublin upbringing and a couple of years in the Abbey. Earnán de Blaghd spotted him in a schools' production and offered him two years in school there. That was back before the war and they made him speak with a little block of wood placed in the roof of his mouth. The lessons he learned are in the voice still.

Hearing him speak trips certain wires in the Irish head. You are in the car coming from a county ground somewhere on a winter's night and the windscreen wipers are swishing and no matter where you have been you can't be far from home when Seán Óg begins his incantation. Or you are homesick in the miserable backend of London and nothing will suffice but crackling news of the intermediate quarter-final with the scalded hoors from the next parish.

There's a gentle, rapping lyricism to the Sunday night GAA results with Seán Óg. His words form your impression of places long before you ever go there. Does Wexford have a club with a short name, you wonder, as Seán Óg hurdles over Oulart-the-Ballagh and Buffers Alley and Glynn Barntown and Faythe Harriers. Then he settles into his rhythm with the starkly anatomical tags of the midlands to skim over from Spink to Birr and up to Nobber, and then north to the saints and patriots, St Gall's, Kevin Lynch's and Bellaghy Wolfe Tones.

And in between the favourites, the gracenotes, the greatest hits, Man-O-War. The Dreadnoughts. The Slashers. The Swans. Fighting Cocks.

"Any word of The Dreadnoughts, Seán?" people will call after him at grounds around the country. "Will they ever take on the Man-O-War?" And each broadcast is itself a little like Seán Óg's lifetime. Practical yet colourful, informative and poetic. You are left wondering how it all fitted in so elegantly.

The broadcaster is, of course, a former All-Ireland hurler, an intercounty footballer, a decent soccer player, a fine golfer, a cricketer, a good journalist who broke the old tradition of not reporting sendings-off in GAA games, an award-winning actor, a playwright, an author, a Gaeilgeoir, a husband and a father.

Somehow or other he has survived it all. Survived Dublin hurling. Survived the introduction of television. Survived RTÉ itself, a jungle where the egos are so big they have been known to cannibalise each other. He has survived and thrived.

Seán Óg gets letters from every corner of the globe these days. The prevalence of the Internet has merely expanded his constituency so that now he can be heard just about anywhere on the planet. One of the highlights of this year, his 80th, was being given the keys to the City of Chicago by Mayor Richard Daley (The Younger).

Letters and calls. He is so associated with Gaelic games that sometimes he surprises even himself with the catholicity of his taste. One night not to long ago the phone rang and a voice - speaking evidently from a pub, if the background clamour was a clue - asked if this was Seán Óg.

Assured that it was indeed Seán Óg, the voice from the bar went on to pose a trivia question upon which a certain sum of money was riding. It concerned Manchester United and the winning of the European Cup. Seán Óg is a long-time Manchester United fan and was able to give the year and the venue of the win off the top of his head. "You could check it with the papers," said Seán Óg, pleased to have been of service.

At which point another voice came to the phone, evidently the voice of the party whose pocket was about to be lightened by dint of the new information.

"Is this Seán Óg?"

"It is indeed," said Seán, smiling the smile of the chuffed.

"Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin?"

"The one and the same!"

"Off the radio?"

"That's me!"

"Sure what the fuck would you know about soccer."

And the line went dead.

He has a knack for these old yarns where he slips on a banana skin just as he's about to triumph.

Once upon a Sunday, back in the old days, he was headed for Tullamore for a match when his car gave up the ghost just two miles short of Kinnegad. He peered under the bonnet and with even his pristine ignorance of the internal combustion engine was able to spot that the fan belt had broken.

What to do when a fan belt breaks was a mystery to him. He didn't know whether the vehicle could even be started, but as he stood with his arms folded on the roof of the car he noticed a pump in the adjacent field. A bucket hanging from the pump. Must be a sign, he thought. I'll pour cold water in and inch towards Kinnegad.

A minute later he was pumping cold water into the bucket when a voice came from behind him.

"Hey you."

"Ah. Bit of a problem," said Seán Óg. "My fan belt is gone. I thought I might, em, put some cold water in."

"Are you the radio man?" said the woman, her eyes narrowing.

"Yes. Yes indeed I am."

"Hey John," she shouted back towards a hitherto unnoticed caravan. "C'mout here will ya. Come out here a minute."

John arrived. More worse for wear than a man should be on a summer Sunday.

"Say a few words," commanded the woman.

Seán Óg gave his little story again about how come he was standing in this field with his fan belt.

"You're the radio man," said John.

"That's me," said Seán Óg.

"Well, if it is you, you've never said a good word about Westmeath in your life," said the man. Then he hiked off to another caravan and came back with three fan belts.

"Put in the good word about Westmeath next time," he said when he'd fitted one.

And Seán Óg did.

His voice is his calling card. Famously, once he was golfing in Forrest Little with Seán Ó Siocháin, when the club captain approached on the first tee and welcomed Ó Siocháin to the club. Ó Siocháin indicated the broadcaster and said, "Of course you know Seán Óg."

"Yes, of course. It's a pleasure."

Seán Óg nodded politely.

At dinner that evening the captain began his speech by saying what a pleasure it was to have seen Seán Ó Siocháin out on the tee so early with his son, Seán Óg.

His voice is so much a part of him, so much a part of the projection of his persona, that you forget he was ever known for other things. He played in the 1948 All-Ireland hurling final, the high point of a long and distinguished hurling career. He played football for Dublin and, in the days when the ban was still rampant, played soccer and cricket for Ierne without getting caught.

The nearest he came to being apprehended was on a day trip to Carlow when, having played under the name John O'Callaghan, the opposing coach approached him as he was getting on the bus and said softly, "Hope you enjoyed the day, Seán." Nothing came of it.

"I think I had the sort of reputation that nobody would believe it of me," he chuckles.

It was, after all, The Whitehaired Boy he was playing in when de Blaghd spotted him.

His hurling career has an odd thread running through it. He began with Young Irelands and moved to St Vincent's when the club was in its infancy. He was a notable minor player when St Vincent's reached a minor hurling league final against Eoghan Ruadh. The clash was between two true Dublin clubs who would become fierce rivals in the following decade.

Seán Óg had played a starring role all through the campaign, but on the morning of the final Monsignor Fitzpatrick, the leading ecclesiastical light of St Vincent's at the time, introduced a lad called Jackie Cowan, who had just joined from Crokes. He would be playing instead of young Ó Ceallacháin.

Seán Óg's father went off like a cluster bomb. So did two other mentors. Seán Óg was reinstated. St Vincent's won 4-5 to 5-1. Seán Óg scored 2-5 and his brother Mick scored one of the other goals.

"And we were walking home after the match when the oul fella announced to the two of us, 'You're joining Eoghan Ruadh.' And a form came the next week. I was passed by the county board and that was it. My father dictated who we played with. I had no hand, act or part in it."

Since then he's had a lot to forgive St Vincent's for. Just last summer three priests stopped him on Clonliffe Road and one told him that he had been in Croke Park in 1951 on the day Paddy Donnelly of Vincent's hit Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin of Eoghan Ruadh.

"And do you know who won the game?" asked Seán Óg.

The answer was no.

The incident was one of lifelong regret for Paddy Donnelly and no small regret for Seán Óg. The men had played on Dublin teams together and had a good friendship. Ó Ceallacháin's move to Eoghan Ruadh was never really an issue.

Early in the game, a county final, there was a little skirmish between Donnelly and Tadgh Donoghue, who happened to look a little like Seán Óg.

"About 10 minutes afterwards the ball came down my wing and Paddy beat me to it. All I could do was block him, he was hitting on the left side and I got a block in. I walked away, and next thing I woke up in the dressing-room with Dr Stuart bringing me to with the bottle under my nose."

Paddy Donnelly got 10 years of a suspension (later reduced) and a headful of regret for that flash of madness which left Ó Ceallacháin with a broken jaw and a mouthful of wobbly teeth. A contingent from St Vincent's came to the Ó Ceallacháin house that night to apologise. A brother from St Joseph's in Fairview called to explain, a little redundantly, that Paddy had a temper. When Seán Óg went back to work a garda called to asked what action he would be taking. A question was asked in the Dáil about the incident.

Seán Óg shrugged it all off.

"I said to Paddy that it was over and done with, and it was. The funny thing is, I was never a dirty hurler but I had a brother, Jimmy, who lambasted all around him. That Eoghan Ruadh team were hard men. It was funny in a way that it was me that got done."

Sometime later, on a frozen pitch up in Coolock in yet another game with St Vincent's, a lad called Donal Cantwell accidentally removed six of Seán Óg's teeth. Pure accident, he says now. Again, he just got on with things.

Then, when his son Finín was young, he came in and wondered if he couldn't join the great St Vincent's.

"I said of course, of course. So Finín went down and stood at the corner of Griffith Avenue for two weekends for matches and nobody came to pick him up. After the second weekend I said to him to just leave it. It just wasn't going to work out for us and Vincent's!"

So Seán's grandson is seven now. He hurls in the mini-leagues. With Raheny Gaels.

Hurling. He still lives and breathes it. He moves on to discussion of the game like a hungry man getting his main course.

His first senior game for Eoghan Ruadh was a good one. Ahane of Limerick came up to play a Churches Tournament in 1943. The Mackeys. Jackie Power. Mick Ryan. Ahane were the sensation of the time, but Eoghan Ruadh led going into the dying minute.

Mick Mackey caught a ball and set off.

"I'd say we had tough men in Eoghan Ruadh and most of the tough men launched themselves at him. No free. And no sign of him going down. Finally Mackey just belted it to the net. They won by a point. That was a debut to remember."

He loved that time, a good era for hurling in Dublin. He played with the late Jim Byrne, the only native Dubliner to have won an All-Ireland senior hurling medal, and he played against some of the greats.

"I played on them all, but for me the two who stand out were the great stylists. Harry Gray of Rathdowney, who played for Dublin and Laois (and was for many years a porter in the Gresham), and Séamus Cleere of Kilkenny. They were the ones who played the game with the most grace and elegance. Beautiful hurlers."

He is confident, too, that good days will return for the game in Dublin. He believes in Humphrey Kelleher. He believes in Diarmuid Healy.

"We've set a target of an All-Ireland by 2008. I don't care really if it's 2009. I think we'll get there though."

He intends to be there on the day. Intends to give out the result that night. It's impossible to imagine that he won't do both. He is so indelibly tied into our perception of what GAA is all about.

He was, after all, the first presenter of The Sunday Game, the first television commentator for the All-Ireland hurling and football finals when television began broadcasting them in 1962. That was 10 years after he refereed an All-Ireland minor final and a senior football semi-final in the same year.

Which brings us back to that list of things which his CV would carry if he ever needed such a thing. He was a Local Defence Forces volunteer, and his revamped biography is worth buying for the tales from that period of his life alone. And he was instrumental in the campaign which culminated in having the bodies of the 10 executed volunteers known as the Mountjoy Martyrs exhumed from the prison yard and re-interred in Glasnevin. One of the 10 was Bernard Ryan an uncle of Seán Óg's late wife.

"That was a special day for Anne and I. Travelling to Glasnevin, seeing the men standing with their service medals, tears in their eyes. They were the last of the 1916-20 volunteers. It was very moving. One of the things I take pride in."

He's at the front door now. A morning has sped past. He has the cups of tea to rinse and the digestives to clear away and then his work for the day to begin. Leaning out, he shows you where Kevin Heffernan lives. And where Des Ferguson lived, all of which sets him off on a reminiscence about the 1961 final and some Lar Foley stories.

The house in Raheny has the slight emptiness that the death of a loved one always brings, but Seán Óg isn't maudlin. He brings his energy to every new day. Ten o'clock mass in Raheny and then on with it. Not maudlin, but the pain is there.

People said they noticed changes in Anne, but perhaps being so close he never could. She had pains in her back and they both mused on what they might be. Then one day he found her sitting on the floor and soon they both had the worst news. Anne had a lump in her breast.

For Seán Óg the trickof it all is to just keep on keeping on. Fit more in. As he shows you out, he is going to gather his notes for a history book he is launching on the following night. Himself - he has rereleased his fascinating autobiography, Seán Óg, with updated chapters. He had his eighth golfing hole-in-one as recently as September, and this afternoon he must write to the kind people who sent him the personalised bottle of whiskey to mark the occasion. They spelled his name badly wrong on the label.

Generally he's busy with the golf society which is a triumph of ecumenism, being an amalgamation of a group of former Eoghan Ruadh hurlers from the Oxmantown Road area with their soccer-playing friends from the old Aberdeen Street team. For the purposes of golf!

And he's looking forward already to the summer Sundays of next year when Croke Park is full and he gets up from his seat, as always, to leave five minutes before the end so that he can be in RTÉ by five and start hauling in the nets full of results.

He wonders if between the time his eyes stop watching the game and the time his ears join Ó Muircheartaigh's account of the game if he won't have been robbed of another great finish, another great twist. He'll hear the roar of the crowd and curse to himself. He's missed so many of the rip-roaring endings down through the years.

He'll settle down in a cubbyhole in RTÉ and he'll start assembling all the little fragments of a GAA Sunday, pasting them together into a picture which is more than 50 years old, more than 3,000 episodes long, epic and beautiful and still not done.