Episode 1 Terry Wogan's Ireland

# Wake up to Wogan on Radio 2. #

And this is it then.

This is the day I've been dreading,

the inevitable morning when you and I come to the parting of the ways.

'After 40 years of talking to myself and to you, the loyal listener,

'I gave up the day job and now I'm heading off to rediscover the country that made me.

'The Ireland I left behind at the end of the 1960s was an isolated place.'

Not much industry, agriculture was the mainstay and this meant a meagre existence for most.

It wasn't until the mid-'90s that the country's fortunes changed.

Now fully signed up to Europe, Ireland became

one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

The boom was christened the Celtic Tiger and never having

had a boom before, the Irish thought it would go on forever.

When the global financial crisis hit in 2007, the bubble burst.

By November last year, Ireland was forced to seek a bail-out.

In return, the Irish people were asked to accept

some tough austerity measures. That didn't go down well.

You have to remember this island has a history that puts the present crisis firmly in context.

This island has survived famine, 500 years of colonisation and religious discrimination.

I have to say though, that on this journey I found plenty of laughter

and music and a joy for living. They may be down,

but don't ever count Ireland and the Irish out.

'We'd like to draw your attention to the safety instruction card located close to your seat.'

I've lived in Britain longer than I ever lived in Ireland.

So this for me is...

exciting.

I'm going back to see what's changed about the four green fields.

I'll be meeting up with old friends.

-We all used to go in through this door, didn't we?

-Yes.

-And family.

You go first, just in case they set the dog on him, you know.

And of course, I want to show you the country at its best.

This is Ireland, come on, nobody comes here for the weather.

The first part of my journey is going to take me in a semicircle,

down through Cork and Kerry, on to my old home town of Limerick.

This of course is what the granny used to call dear old dirty Dublin.

Ah, there it is, Anna Livia Plurabelle,

the great Liffey River and the Ha'penny Bridge that spans it.

And of course proud O'Connell Street, the great boulevard.

And there's where I lived from '53 until '69, it's over 40 years since I fled the bailiffs and stole away.

I'm going to be escorted around the ol' country by my driver, Dave Sullivan.

Like most Dubliners, he thinks Dublin has terrible traffic.

But then, they've obviously never been on the M6 near Birmingham or the M25 around London.

Now, that's traffic, OK?

This is not traffic. OK, Dave?

Not traffic.

This is a few ol' cars.

Anyway, never mind what's supposed to be traffic.

The old city is still as familiar to me as it ever was.

Oh, it's lovely to come back to Dublin.

It's lovely to come back to Ireland, I don't come back often enough.

But when you come back,

you realise what

you don't realise that you've missed, if you see what I mean.

For many Irish people who've lived in Britain for years

and years, they still think of Ireland

as home. They'll say, "Are you going home for the holidays?"

They mean, are you going to Ireland?

I don't know whether I could live in Ireland again

because I think I've become anglicised.

For me, Ireland is wonderful,

a lovely place to come, but it's not home.

Home is where your family is as far as I'm concerned.

Saying that, Dublin was my home for nearly two decades.

My da was the general manager of a chain of grocery stores called Leverett and Frye.

I was sent to Belvedere College where I played my rugby and felt the stern hand of the Jesuit fathers.

And this is where my working life, if you can call it that, began

as a junior clerk of a long-forgotten branch

of the Royal Bank of Ireland.

'The building is long gone, but the bus stop's there, as is my old workmate, Leo Lacey.'

You and I were used to standing outside this bus stop.

We didn't care how long it took.

'Every week, Leo and I used to carry a bag of used banknotes

'from our branch out in the suburbs to head office.'

-We'll take it anyway, come on.

-The longer it took, the better.

Right, down to Foster Place with the money. After you, Leo.

No armoured security van for us.

Not likely, the number 10 bus, yet between us, we were carrying a small fortune.

What would be the value of that?

Doing a rough rule of thumb

of ten times the bank manager's salary, it was probably about £100,000.

Back in the '50s, most of the bank's customers were cattle jobbers or farmers.

Of course, these were old notes that we were bringing down.

But they were wrecked after being through the bars or the markets up in Phibsborough.

-Phibsborough, yeah.

-The cattle market.

I mean, the smell of them.

And the drippy, wet beer.

They were destroyed and then they gave us new notes which we brought back on another bus.

That's right, yeah. Casual as you like.

Racy days, eh?

And here we're coming up to Foster Place.

Foster Place was where the bank headquarters were, and we breathed

a little sigh of relief when we got to this point.

The question is, is the old place still there?

It's been 50 years since I made my last delivery of rancid banknotes.

-You don't feel that we should be carrying something?

-Yes.

The bags with the money.

Look, and the counter is still the same here. We used to go round here

and in there, which is now an open space,

-was where we used to carry the notes because that was the note department.

-And the major.

And the major was there with his Smith & Wesson.

Grumpy, crusty, old...

I suppose we were very lucky he didn't shoot us.

It probably wouldn't work, it'd blow up in his face!

But it brings back happy memories.

I'm delighted to see it's still here.

Foster Place.

Yeah, working in a bank was a respectable job then.

Here I am desperately trying to look like a man about town on the bonnet of my da's car.

But I thought of myself as an urban Irishman and the problem

with the bank was sooner or later,

they'd send you off to work in a branch out in the sticks.

It could be years before you returned to what you thought of as civilisation.

That wasn't for me, so I was on the lookout for something else.

In those olden times, I indulged the hidden show-off in me in amateur dramatics,

never thinking of a professional career

until I stumbled into broadcasting.

Irish National Radio offered me a traineeship and before I knew it,

I was sitting in front of a microphone talking to the nation, no-one more surprised than me.

That fear I had of being trapped in a small, provincial town

goes back perhaps to my father who spent a very unhappy childhood growing up under the patronage

of an English Protestant landowner in the little country village of Enniskerry.

My father in the great Irish tradition, resented authority

and the kind of authority that he had to endure,

and most people had to endure in Enniskerry in the 1900s,

was the authority of Lord Powerscourt who not only owned all the land,

but actually in the tradition of those English lords,

owned the people as well.

The village of Enniskerry was built to house the servants and workers of the nearby Powerscourt Estate.

Now, I've come back to my father's birthplace to meet a relation of mine,

Una Wogan, a second cousin and she's traced the Wogan clan as far back as they go in this village.

-Just look at one of them.

-God, you've got the pictures of my antecedents.

We have a picture of your grandfather and grandmother.

Look at that.

So that's Michael and he married a Sarah MacRoe, she was from Fermanagh.

Your father was very fond of, his mother,

-I heard.

-He was.

-Yes.

-And my father didn't like his father much.

By all accounts, his father wasn't a very pleasant man.

-Well, my father was a really nice man.

-Yeah.

But he didn't have a moustache like that,

but I can see the resemblance.

'My father left Enniskerry and his home and family'

as soon as he could, at 15.

He couldn't bear having to kowtow and doff his cap to Powerscourt's local dignitaries.

Now it seems Una has discovered a previous generation of Wogans in Enniskerry

'going way back into the 19th century.

'A man that would be my great-grandfather.'

The very first Wogan to come to the village was Michael Wogan.

He came from Dublin City and he married an Eliza Kelly who was from the village.

And then they went on to have 11 children.

They didn't fool around in those days, did they?

-No.

-And what did he do for a living?

He was a bootmaker. A master bootmaker.

Young Una here claims to have tracked down a photograph

of the great Wogan ancestor hanging on a wall in a pub.

'That's a surprise(!)

'This I must see.'

-So this is the old pub.

-This is the old pub.

-Yeah. And what's this?

-This is your great-grandfather, Michael.

-Of course, I'm a Michael.

-You're a Michael?

-Yeah, I'm a Michael Terence and my mother called me Terry because my father was Michael Thomas.

-Right.

To distinguish between us instead of shouting Michael and nobody knowing who's being called,

she called me Terry and that's another Michael.

Look at the herbaceous border. Don't tell me there's more.

-This is him sitting down.

-Where was this taken?

-Powerscourt House so he was 75 in this.

-And is that Lord Powerscourt there?

-That's him, yeah.

He's sitting there in what could only be described as a seigneurial position.

This is it. They were all at attention, really.

And this is Powerscourt today.

Over a century after my great-grandfather toiled over making the boots and shoes of the people

that served and worked here.

It's been transformed from Lord Powerscourt's stately home to one of Ireland's

most popular tourist destinations, but the reminders of the old hierarchies are still here.

These steps look strangely bare, don't they,

after those photographs in the pub. So how does one man get all this?

Well, his ancestor was a very successful soldier,

Wingfield was his name, and so he was rewarded by being Marshal of Ireland.

Given this huge parcel of land, he built this modest little place behind us...

Not him, the unfortunate Irish peasantry built this little place behind

and then these magnificent Italianate gardens.

For 20 years, hundreds of local Irish labourers slaved over the creation

of these fabulous gardens

and inside the house, great teams of butlers and cooks and tweenies

and housemaids and footmen would've been put to service running

and maintaining this vast residence for the comfort and pleasure of its wealthy owners.

You know, the good Lord and Lady Powerscourt,

they didn't get where they are or WERE by not thinking of everything.

This sunken road was specially designed by them so they didn't

have to see the rough peasantry

and their servants making their way to the fields and the house.

And the only reason you can see me is I'm taller

than the average peasant of those times... I like to think.

Powerscourt was built

by the people of Enniskerry.

And indeed, they relied on this place for their living.

They still do.

Enniskerry relies on Powerscourt and its tourism to this day.

At one time, Ireland was full of little fiefdoms like Powerscourt.

English and Scottish settlers seized much of the country's best land.

The native Catholics became tenants in their own country.

During the 1840s, the country experienced a crippling famine.

A million people died of starvation.

Even before the famine, thousands of people eked out an existence growing their crops among the stony hills

and valleys of the Wicklow Mountains.

On family drives over here over the weekends in the 1950s,

we'd marvel at the beauty of Sugarloaf Mountain, but coming from

the poverty-ridden countryside as he did, my da would always remind us, "You can't eat the scenery."

During the Great Famine, over a million people emigrated rather than starve to death

and the austere conditions in Ireland

meant people continued to emigrate in large numbers right up until the 1960s.

They left without knowing what they were going to,

they left because they were desperate, they left because they were starving,

they left because there was no work and their last view

of their native land was Cobh.

And I just thought that you might like to see it.

Adjacent to the city of Cork, the port of Cobh lies on an island

in the middle of the second-largest natural harbour in the world.

This was Ireland's emergency exit.

Poverty, escalating rents, anti-Catholic discrimination were just some of the reasons

Irish people sought a better life elsewhere.

Between the 1850s and the 1950s, 30% of the population,

around 2.5 million people, emigrated to America.

One of them was Philomena O'Shea.

She was just 17 when she decided to leave her family behind and set sail for America in 1952.

Why did you decide to leave?

There wasn't any work,

but it was an adventure I suppose as well, you know?

And we went to the cathedral that afternoon and lit candles and said our prayers.

Of course.

They brought us out and there was about 600 passengers on it

and we were shown our cabin and there were six of us in the cabin, to my memory I think, in bunk beds.

It was dawning in the morning.

We came up on deck, they told us that we were seeing the last sight of Ireland, but I do remember

looking at that and being very lonely and everybody was lonely on the deck.

That's the recollection I have, it was very sad.

Leaving it, I suppose, you know, and seeing my family out there.

-Did you cry?

-I did and I remember my brother was crying.

And how long did it take you to get over that on the boat before you recovered from the sadness of it?

Oh, I think I never got over it, for a year.

-It was a very tough year, that, for us.

-Were you lonely?

-Very lonely.

Very lonely.

But Philomena didn't stay lonely forever.

-You met the love of your life when you were there?

-I did.

-How did you meet him?

-At the Irish Centre.

William O'Shea. He was from Ventry, Dingle.

-That's where you're up from at the moment?

-That's where I'm living now, yeah.

He dragged you back to County Kerry?

He did!

Did you have a family before you left America?

I had brought one daughter with me, she was five months old from the States.

And how many children did you have again?

Six children altogether.

-Six O'Sheas. And so now, your children have married.

-They have.

-You've how many grandchildren?

-I have ten grandchildren.

God, I've only got four.

-Ten grandchildren, the prolific O'Shea family.

-Yeah.

History seems to be repeating itself,

the number of Irish people emigrating to the United States is up by 12%.

For the first time in 15 years, there are more people leaving Ireland than entering it.

Further up the River Lee is Cork City.

There's one thing that's all too readily associated with the Irish, and that's the demon drink.

There's no doubt it has been a problem in the past, there were once

800 licensed premises here in Cork alone.

Holy Catholic Ireland though has always regarded drinking as ungodly.

Back in the 1840s, the great temperance reformer Father Mathew

convinced almost half the adult population

of the country at the time to take the pledge and banish alcohol from their lives forever.

It didn't last forever though.

By 2003, Ireland had the second highest alcohol consumption in the world.

I've come to one of the oldest and most far-famed bars in Cork, to meet the bar owner

Mary O'Donovan and the Hi B proprietor himself, Brian O'Donnell.

I remember serving in the parlour of my aunts in the country

50 years ago or longer

and I saw a man having 24 pints,

but there was yeast in the pints at that stage and it was a kind of nourishment.

I see, this is kind of...

This wouldn't be regarded as a health drink now?

They'd like to call it that, but it wouldn't be any more.

The Hi B is like pubs used to be.

You won't find any plasma screens or Wi-Fi spots here.

The problem is, though, pubs can't be like they were.

The smoking ban has been enforced since 2004 in Ireland.

You can barely sniff a drink here before you're over the limit.

How can pub culture survive?

The pub can be the focus of a community.

Would you say that the pub is a very important part of Irish culture?

-Not any more.

-Have things changed?

Ah, they have. The drink-driving and the smoking.

So in your experience, Mary, are there less people coming into your pub?

Well, it has changed completely.

-The day trade has gone.

-The day trade?

-Yeah.

We don't open now until 4.00.

So, tell us about an average day

when times were good. When would the first customer come in?

-Oh, 10.30.

-Yeah.

Taking a drop of the craythur

during the day was once commonplace in Ireland

and this was because bars like the Hi B were at the centre of the community.

People came seeking company and conversation.

Not any more.

I understand you threw somebody out of this pub for having a mobile phone.

HE LAUGHS

-You're a hard man.

-But, I mean, you see in a kind of way, Terry, it is antisocial in a sort of way.

I mean, we provide people to talk to.

Social drinking and the pub has been at the heart of Irish life for centuries.

In times of hardship people have sought solace in drink and companionship.

But, of course, the other great mainstay of Irish life has been religion.

From Cork, and its neighbouring port of Cobh,

it's a short, but scenic journey to the little village of Ballinspittle.

To get there we head west over the picturesque estuary

of the River Bandon and on past the Old Head Of Kinsale.

'Like 90% of the population of the Republic of Ireland, I was raised in the Catholic tradition.'

Roadside statues of the Virgin Mary are as familiar as bus shelters,

corner shops, yet this one managed to catch the attention of the entire nation.

The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary just outside the little village

moved, at least according to passers-by and devout Catholics.

This was the very statue.

It was first spotted moving in July 1985 by a small group of local people.

Two months later, it had become one of the biggest news stories in Ireland.

# Mother of Christ... #

Since that first sighting in July,

more than 250,000 people have flocked

to see Ballinspittle's moving Madonna.

They come from as far away as Dublin and Belfast in special coaches laid on for the pilgrimage.

Look at her head now.

Her head is moving now.

-Yeah.

-Yeah!

-Definitely now.

Kind of bowing a lot.

I thought we'd better go along and meet a couple of people, sensible people,

all right, devout Catholics,

who believe that they saw the statue move in Ballinspittle.

Pat Bowen and Sean Murray were there the day the alleged miracle happened.

..and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.

-She began to receive the Holy Spirit.

-You're a former policeman.

-That's right.

-So, you know, you're not going to be too easily deceived.

No. Well, I came here on the evening of the 24th July, 1985.

It was the crowd I was watching, not the statue, because as a policeman it's the crowd interested me.

And the only time my gaze switched to the statute was when the crowd

of about 400 people that were here at the time in mid-sentence stopped.

It was like you flick a light switch.

There was this collective gasp of amazement and then I looked at the statue.

It sounds crazy even today, and even mad today, but the statue, to my mind, was free of the grotto.

-It seemed to be floating.

-Floating in the air.

Now, I was so convinced this was a hoax

that the following morning at 7.00 on my way to work in the city

I decided I was going to solve this thing once and for all and I climbed up there at 7.00 in the morning.

I expected to find some form of trick wiring or trick lighting or something

and I was absolutely amazed when I found nothing.

And I actually walked right around the statue, even at the back.

I caught it by the shoulders, I tried to shake it

and it was as solid as the railings there we're looking at here.

So, tell me, did it change your life?

Well, I was always religious, but, yeah, it definitely deepened my faith.

So it's been a place of inspiration and consolation.

-Yes.

-Does it console you still?

Yeah, it certainly does.

I always come here with my troubles.

-And what about you?

-It's been an extraordinary place.

The only way I can describe it to you is that, like,

I can touch Terry Wogan, I know that's you because I can touch you,

but by the same token there are things out there that

we can't either see or touch, but that's where a bit of faith comes in.

The statue continued to attract the crowds for more than four months after the initial sighting,

but you have to remember back in 1985 Ireland was one of the most devout

Catholic nations in the world, so it's not hard to understand

how an alleged miracle like this might gather momentum amongst the faithful.

Back in the village, local journalist Tim Ryan has followed the story from the very beginning.

The amazing thing about the events of '85 was very ordinary people

believed they saw something moving, something happening.

I would say, an estimated guess from my memory,

about three out of five people who came believed they saw something happening.

-What did you think?

-Well, I thought if I gazed at it long enough

I could see a wobble on the statue, but I never put it down to

more than sort of staring at an number of bulbs together for a long enough time,

and I wear glasses anyway.

Why do you think it happened at the time it happened?

It was a very bad time.

The economy was going nowhere.

It was a phenomenally bad summer. People were praying for fine weather.

At that time farmers made hay, and in order to make hay you needed

two or three sunny days together, and it just wasn't happening.

People were desperate for saving their crops and I think

it all came together into a reaching out for help from the supernatural.

..And dwelt amongst us.

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now...

The devotion

to the Catholic Church

I suppose goes back to the times of oppression and, indeed, the times

of starvation because when a people have nothing else,

when they've got very little to eat,

when they've got nothing else to believe in,

when they can't be educated and they can't own land...

..they're going to fall back on the only thing that gives them any succour whatsoever,

and that's a belief in God and, more specifically, a belief in the Catholic Church.

But with church attendance waning, I wonder whether the new generation

of Irish look more to their Celtic heritage, to music and language, to define themselves.

We're hurtling ever westwards and onwards and out towards the Atlantic.

We're heading to a little island off the southwestern corner of the country.

The western fringes of Ireland are known as the Gaeltacht.

This is where the Gaelic or Irish language is spoken.

Clear Island is a favourite place for the young to learn their mother tongue.

The greatest gift you can have in Ireland is to be a good listener

because everybody is talking ALL the time.

And it's partly the fault of Gaelic.

I'll give you an example. If you say something like,

"I'm going out". No, "I went out", past tense.

"I went out". Well, in Gaelic that's expressed as...

HE SPEAKS GAELIC

I'm AFTER going out.

So you'll hear that with Irish people speaking English.

They'll say, "Oh, I'm after doing something terrible here", you know?

There's no such thing as "hello" in Gaelic, it's...

HE SPEAKS GAELIC

..which is God and Mary be with you.

The answer to that is not, "Hello, yourself", it's...

HE SPEAKS GAELIC

..which is "God and Mary and St Patrick be with you".

So, you can see that conversations take just that little bit longer.

So, here we are, Clear Island.

I want to meet some of the young people who come here every summer

to learn the Gaelic among these glorious surroundings.

And the added advantage to the parents of course is that,

unless they're very good swimmers, they can't escape.

I'm on the local bus.

Thank goodness Jim, the driver, is a fellow Dubliner

and happy to speak English.

Obviously, you speak Gaelic, you speak Irish because you live here.

I speak a small amount of Irish.

Although you don't speak it in Dublin and that,

but from schooling we have it and it does come back to you. The office where I work now...

All businesses translate it through Gaelic and it's amazing the way it will come back to you.

How many people are living here at the moment?

130 people live here all year round, and it increases by maybe 300, 400,

500 in the summertime, depending on the weather, really,

but also the colleges bring a lot of people and certainly brings a boost to the economy of the island.

Now, tell me this now, is it dangerous driving here?

Not a bit, as long as you stay between the ditches!

THEY LAUGH

Is this island a tax haven by any chance?

Yes!

Could I save money if I came to live here?

You could, because there's nowhere to spend it,

and that's the only reason why.

When my mother in law came down here, she said, "It's a lovely place, but there's no shops!"

THEY SPEAK GAELIC

'So, I seem to have got away with it, or maybe they're just being polite.'

When I was at school here Irish was compulsory and if you didn't pass Irish you failed all your exams,

which was very, very tough and what it meant was we didn't love Irish,

we were forced to learn it.

Can any of you say why you're doing this course in Irish? Why?

So I can do better in my Junior Cert than everyone, but...

It's for exams, yeah, isn't it?

-And also because certain jobs are only available if you have Gaelic, isn't that true?

-Yes.

Civil service, government jobs, etc.

So, do you have an affection for the language?

-Do you like speaking the language?

-Yeah.

After coming here, I think I like it a lot more.

Yeah. And do you like being here?

-Yeah.

-You're not lonely on the island?

No.

IRISH MUSIC PLAYS

'So, now learning Irish is about doing well, getting ahead in the world.

'Over 1.5 million people speak Gaelic now.

'That's three times the amount there was when I was born.

'Well, this is how you preserve your national identity, and it's working.'

I'd say he's a decent height.

What are you looking at?

Now, before I leave, I head up on the hill to take in the view from the top of Clear Island.

Out there in the distance is Fastnet Rock.

This is the southernmost point of the entire country.

I've never been there before.

Now is my chance.

With a height of over 50 metres above sea level,

Fastnet is the tallest lighthouse off the coast of the British Isles.

Even so, in 1985 a rogue wave as high as the lighthouse itself smacked into the building.

Every one of the 2,047 Cornish granite blocks

stayed firmly in place.

Fastnet is where Ireland ends and the Atlantic begins.

This thought was not lost on the many that have sailed past it over the centuries,

hence its nickname.

This is called Ireland's Teardrop because that was the last little bit of Ireland

that the emigrants saw as the ship sailed off

into the Atlantic and on to the New World.

Now it's time to head northwards.

I'm off to beautiful County Kerry.

This has always been one of my favourite parts of Ireland.

Of course, this is what the tourists come to this country for.

So, we're off to, I suppose, the gem in the diadem of Ireland's scenery.

It was around about the Sixties that some clever people in Bord Failte,

which is the Irish Tourist Board,

thought, "Let's start selling this country as a place where tourists can come."

One of Bord Failte's greatest successes was branding the country The Emerald Isle.

They're not wrong about that.

There's one particular scenic route that's a must-see

for lovers of landscape.

It's called the Ring of Kerry.

Tomorrow Dave and I plan on driving it.

Starting in Killarney, the Ring of Kerry is a 180-kilometre circular

route around the spectacular coast of the county's peninsula.

Tourists usually do the entire trip in a day,

so we'd better start early.

THUNDERCLAP AND HIGH WINDS

Ah ha! This is the view that greets us the next morning.

It's what the Irish call a 'soft day'.

Breathtaking scenery is out there somewhere.

Will we ever see it?

From the look on his face, I don't think Dave is overjoyed at the prospect of a 180-kilometre drive.

Do you know, you do this drive

on a beautiful day and you think,

this is magnificent.

You do this drive on a day like today and you say...

How does anybody live here?

How does anybody want to be in this part of the world, isn't it horrible?

Is it difficult to drive?

I mean, the scenery is a bit distracting, isn't it?

'Or it might be, if we could see it.'

This section of road is quite good, but as we go up the road does get much narrower.

I suppose it's better if you're doing it the right their round, rather than the wrong way round.

'Because of the weight of traffic on this road, Kerry County Council

'advise people to travel the ring in one direction, anti-clockwise.

'Rebel at heart that he is, Dave has chosen to travel the opposite way around.

'I fear we'll all pay the consequences.

'This is the tenth bus that's tried to force us off the road.'

Is this dangerous going the wrong way?

Absolutely! Sure, if it wasn't dangerous it wouldn't be fun. BUS HORN BEEPS

That's all very well taking that attitude, I'd just like to be able to finish this documentary!

'It's comforting to see the visibility going down by the second.'

So, I suppose you're saying now your life is in my hands.

Well, I hope I'm up to the task.

And so do I!

If we go over the edge...

You look after my wife and family.

I will absolutely, yeah. As I'm sure you'll look after mine as we both say goodbye.

Absolutely no chance of that!

DAVE'S LAUGHS ECHO

'The rain seems to be having a strange effect on our Dave.

'Luckily, my mind is still on the job and I persuade him to pull over, let me take a look

'at what the guidebooks tell me is one of the very best views in the whole Ring of Kerry.'

This is what the view is supposed to look like.

This is the view to end them all.

You can hardly see your hand in front of your face!

This is Ireland, come on!

Nobody comes here for the weather!

They come here for the scenery, even if you can see nothing.

I'll leave you now because I want to drink in this wonderful view.

'So much for the views, I need a drink!

'And I think Dave's spirits need topping up a little, too,

'though luckily for us, Tuesday night is Irish music and dance night

'at the Bridge Inn in Portmagee.'

Tell me this, I'm an urban Irishman myself,

do you like singing in pubs?

Do I like singing in pubs?

Do you like when you go into a pub people bursting into song?

That's a good question.

'Somehow, I don't think Dave is going to be joining me.'

IRISH MUSIC PLAYS

This is the craic. When you see advertisements for

Ireland, cead mile failte, 100,000 welcomes, come for the craic.

They don't mean, fall through something in the floor.

They mean craic, which is Gaelic for fun.

And you won't have more fun then you have in an Irish bar with the singing and the music.

Just listen to the hum of the atmosphere.

I mean, these are people having a good time.

IRISH MUSIC PLAYS

There are Irish pubs all over the world, of course.

Wherever you go now - Kiev, Riga, Moscow,

but they're not Irish pubs and you won't find anybody Irish in them.

This is an Irish pub.

Of course, you wouldn't feel like this kind of thing every night.

Particularly when it starts getting a little maudlin, as it always does.

# Come fill up your glasses

# And we'll drink hand in hand

# For tomorrow I'm leaving

# The shores of Lough Bran... #

The thing about most Irish songs is there's not many laughs in them.

It's usually a bit like country music, which is mostly about people's dogs or horses dying.

Irish music is usually about people going,

passing on,

or being shot by the Redcoats.

# And we'll all go together

# To pull wild mountain thyme... #

And before someone shoots me, I'm going to turn in for the night.

# Go, lassie, go... #

The next day, we head for Tralee.

Although it's the capital of County Kerry,

it can hardly be described as the jewel in the crown

of this otherwise beautiful county.

For that reason, Tralee has had to draw hard on the reserves of Irish ingenuity to get itself on the map.

I'm rather proud to say, I've played a part in all of this.

Back in the 1950s, Tralee had come up with the idea

of hosting an annual competition to find the country's loveliest lady.

Like all beauty contests, it wasn't all about beauty.

It was called the Rose of Tralee.

It was to become a national event.

The woman who helped create it and who became its first Lady President,

Irish-American, Margaret Dwyer.

-Well, hello.

-Margaret Dwyer?

Now in her 90s, Margaret recalls how it all started.

We had the bright idea, we were trying to figure out what we could have some kind of festival on.

The only kind of thing they could think of

was the song the Rose of Tralee, that John McCormack made famous over the world.

So it would be to choose a Rose each year.

There was no such thing as bathing suits, or anything like that.

What a shame!

No, no. I'm not that kind,

I was never that kind of a woman!

But how did you manage to spread the word?

Well, we worked at it.

We went out. We sold ourselves.

And it grew. It was successful, and people liked it.

Tralee got on the tourist map for the first time, ever.

So, you decided, OK, we're going to bring Ireland to Tralee,

so we're going to have this festival, the Rose of Tralee.

The Rose of Tralee, and it was not her beauty alone that won me.

# She was lovely and fair

# As the rose of the summer

# Yes, twas not her beauty alone that won me... #

There is a line in there that says, "'Twas not her beauty alone at that won me".

So, it wasn't just beauty, then.

It had to be intelligence, you had to have general knowledge,

and perhaps play the bodhran or indeed the banjo.

The girl had to be an all-rounder.

By the late 60s, the Rose of Tralee had become a major international event.

Any lady who could claim Irish descent,

no matter where she lived in the world, could enter the competition.

With the more ambitious show,

the organisers were on the lookout for a new compere.

Yours truly had started appearing on a television game show for RTE's new TV channel

and somehow, I became a contender.

The committee decided that I would be the man to present it.

At that time, I wasn't going to argue with that.

I was a veteran of Irish beauty contests.

I presented the competition from 1968 until 1970.

So, that's how I ended up playing my part in Tralee's success story.

Nowadays, the competition is one of the most popular events in the country.

This year's final was the most watched programme on Irish television.

The Rose of Tralee transformed the fortunes of the town,

but I wonder what effect it had on the 51 ladies who've won over the years?

I called in on the winner of 1969's Rose.

Cathy Quinn, the green-eyed student nurse, born in County Longford,

proudly wears the Dublin sash.

She says, her selection at Dublin's Gresham Hotel,

the most amazing, surprising and fabulous night of her life.

-Which of course, with immediately topped...

-By winning it!

But there's an even better one, Terry, wait till I show you. This one.

-Look at this.

-Look at that!

-Isn't that wonderful?

-Isn't that frightening?

My boys say, I want sideburns like that.

Well, actually, that was '69.

-Sideburns got even longer.

-They did!

You were, in fact, tripping over your sideburns.

Looked at the faces of the girls behind you.

Raging!

They were not!

Raging. Look at them!

If any of them had a knife,

they'd be stabbing you!

So, there you were, Rose of Tralee, and the next thing, you're back,

-being kicked around as a student nurse.

-That's right.

And look at the headline, here.

You're trying to choke a patient there.

Oh no, you're taking his temperature.

Life's no bed of roses for Cath...

When you went back to the hospital,

did you find the matron bullying you?

Did you find a lot of what can only be described as jealousy from the other nurses?

When I went back, all the nurses came into the refectory,

and sang the Rose of Tralee with a big cake and all the candles, and Matron led them.

She was wonderful.

Oh, that's terrific.

-Now, that's Irish.

-It was Irish!

And now, after more than 700 kilometres on the road,

we're about to arrive in Limerick.

This is where I was born, where I lived until I was 15.

I'm coming home.

Apart from being my birthplace,

Limerick's other claim to fame is that it lies on the mighty Shannon,

the longest river in the British Isles,

running as it does, all the way up to the border with Northern Ireland.

At Sarsfield Bridge, I cycled back and forth over that bridge

every day, travelling from home to school and back again.

And now, as a Freeman of the city, I can drive a herd of sheep over the self-same bridge.

And this was the school, Crescent College, run by the Jesuit Fathers.

The building's still standing.

I hope the same can they said of my old school friends.

-Look, look at the boys. Look!

-I thought you'd be running to us, Terry, with open arms!

-I've just had my knee replaced.

-And be saying, Sebastian, I haven't seen you for years!

'They're Jim Sexton,

'Bobby Mulrooney, and Mick Leehy.'

-Good to see you.

-How are you getting on?

-Oh, carrying on.

'The building is still used as a school, so I hope it hasn't changed too much.

'I haven't been through these doors in 60 years.

'Crescent College was run on a diet of study, rugby, prayer and punishment.

'This old staircase here takes me straight back to the person that dished out the punishment...'

Am I right in thinking that Snitch McLoughlin used to stand up at the very top there?

He was what, Jim, what did we call him?

The prefect of studies.

-He'd stand here.

-His real name was Gerry McLoughlin.

He was a northerner.

And he was a man of severe aspect.

He was. He was very strict.

And as you quite rightly say, we were all in a certain terror of him.

Remember you got a docket.

When you were punished for not knowing something, your teacher wrote out a little docket.

Six of the best.

Had the whole morning or afternoon to think about it.

-And he was the executioner.

-This is where you used to go to get your hands knocked off.

My screams could be heard at all the way down O'Connell Street.

'Just looking at that door brings back painful memories.

'I was larruped, twice a day sometimes.'

CANE WHIPPING

I wasn't brave.

'The Jesuit Fathers, or Jays as we called them, were hard taskmasters, but they were good teachers.

'Every so often, we even had some fun.'

-Do you mind if we go in and see the hall?

-OK, let's go.

Do you remember the dances that we used to have,

where they brought the girls from Laurel Hill in, and we could all dance?

But the priests and the nuns were still walking amongst us to make sure that nothing was going on?

The guys would all be lined up on one wall and the girls would be on the other.

And the gap in between was... I was very shy, I just couldn't manage it.

I found it hugely difficult to walk across the floor.

You see, it was Irish dancing. There wasn't waltzing or foxtrots.

There used to be a waltz or two during the course of it.

Did you know how to waltz?

Anybody know how to waltz?

You're the dancer, you're the dancer. What a boy.

What a boy.

I remember I learned to dance in the Hydro Hotel, Kilkeel.

One-two-three, one-two-three.

Whereas the foxtrot was one-two, one-two.

My gosh, you learned well!

Only up as far as three!

In the end, even though I had a strict religious upbringing,

rather than strengthen my faith, it left me with no great love of religion or the Church.

Limerick station, the gateway to the East, as it was when my mother and I

would escape to Dublin during the school holidays.

And today, the brother is coming the opposite way, to give me a bit of moral support.

Don't panic, no sign of the train.

I'm a bit worried about if the brother's going to turn up or not.

But I'm looking forward to seeing him.

We can reminisce a little bit about Father's store,

and what Limerick was like in those days.

Although he was very young.

He would have been very young when he left Limerick.

Brian's about, oh, six-and-a-half years younger than me.

I left I was 15, so he would only have been about eight.

So, his memory is probably fresher than mine, since he's a great deal younger.

You'll find him a small, red-headed person, with a wooden leg.

Hiya, Brian.

Welcome. You're looking very brown.

-And yourself. Good to see you.

-Good boy.

-That wasn't bad.

-No, no. Good journey?

-You should try the train sometimes.

-Good journey?

-57 years later after the last one.

You're looking brown. Is the sun shining on you?

It crossed my mind, you know, how would they recognise me when I got off the train at Limerick.

But then of course, I realised,

you're just going to stand out in the crowd with that handsome figure walking down.

And the six-pack stomach.

-I hope I didn't show you up in a bad way.

-No, not at all.

Well, I'm a bit like yourself.

My body is a temple.

Our first stop is to see the site of the Da's old grocery shop.

-Do you remember the Dad was more of a Fortnum & Mason than a Marks & Spencers.

-It was, yeah.

He used to keep all the stuff that the remittance men and the relics of "oul dacency"

-who lived in Tipperary came for...

-Oh, they all came round.

-The horse people. They used to come for exotic stuff, dried fish from India.

-That's right.

They even had, I think, caviar.

Yeah, and he had foie gras.

And he also had what he used to call "lichies".

The "lichies"!

Were coming down on to O'Connell Street now.

You see that thing on the corner?

-That's the father's old shop.

-That's the Da's old grocery store there.

-It is, yes.

It's now a clothing store, but if you look very carefully

at this rare old photograph, you'll see Leverett & Fry on the far right.

So, this is where it was.

-Do you remember, the Da used to carve the ham around about here?

-That's right.

Which when you think about it, he was handling all this exotic foodstuffs,

and he was actually an expert in meat and the cooking of meats and hams, and stuff like that.

My dear mother, God rest her soul, with the great destroyer of meat.

-She was.

-She did the incineration technique of cooking.

Auntie May used to say,

Rose couldn't boil water.

-That's right!

-That's my mother, Rose.

If he'd been any good he would have left the shop to us.

I think it was more a case, we certainly didn't want to be working for my Dad!

A hard taskmaster.

Yeah. It was really hard work.

He'd never have cut corners. We'd never have been able to get away with the new techniques.

Because you and I were intrinsically lazy people.

-Absolutely.

-Absolutely.

-Absolutely.

'At least we haven't any delusions about ourselves.

'Now, the moment I've been waiting for - Elm Park is were Brian and I were born,

'where we spent our childhood, and for the first time,

'since we left Limerick over half a century ago, we're going home.'

-18 Elm Park, Limerick.

-That's it.

-It's got a new name.

-St Judes!

-It was never called that.

-No.

I'm going to tear that down.

Number 18, this is.

Can we go in?

Yes, why not.

You go first.

OK, OK. I'll knock.

Just in case they set the dog on him, you know.

-Hello.

-Oh, my God.

How do you do?

-How are you?

-May we come in? This is my brother, Brian.

-Nice to meet you. How are you?

-Who have I got here?

-Tim.

-Tim.

-Thank you, very much.

-Come in.

Thank you very much indeed.

I remember that staircase.

And look, the good room.

It's a television room now.

-Excellent.

-That's wonderful.

This is grand, this is a huge, big room.

-Great room.

-Isn't that great?

Like what they've done with this, huh?

My mother was never a great cook.

But, she would have been impressed with the kitchen, wouldn't she?

Do you mind if we go upstairs?

-Do you mind?

-Work away.

-Look at this.

-The old narrow staircase.

Now do you remember were the bathroom was?

Oh, the bathroom was much classier.

In this very bathroom, Michael Wogan used to sing every evening as he shaved.

He used to sing songs like Dead For Bread and Valentines Goodbye to Faust,

and he used to deafen everybody within a radius of 100 metres.

But he always shaved the night before.

Meticulous man.

I learned the Floral Dance because in this very bathroom, he used to sing it here.

-That's right.

-Michael Wogan.

-You can hear it echoing.

Baritone extraordinaire.

MUSIC: "Floral Dance" by Terry Wogan

# All together in the floral dance... #

'The more cultured members of the audience might remember I recorded

'a version of the Floral Dance myself back in 1978.

'It got to number 21 in the charts, but many believe it went much higher than that!'

# Hurrah for the Cornish Floral Dance. #

'That's where it all began.

'Limerick marks the halfway point on my journey.

'My home town has certainly changed.

'It's more prosperous, bigger, more confident.

'Though much of what I've seen has been changed by the passage of time,

'many of the people I met have reminded me how Irish I still am.

'To paraphrase the old expression, once an Irishman, always an Irishman.

'Next, I'm headed to a land I'm less familiar with -

'the North.'

Now you see how idyllic this place is.

'I have some old friends here to catch up with.'

The people were innocent.

Everybody just went, thank you!

'And there'll be lots of things, I'm sure, that will surprise me about Northern Ireland.'

Three, two, one... Go!

'By the time I get back to Dublin and catch up with the gossip...'

People walked out in disgust.

'..I hope I'll be able to make sense of what has become of this great island in my absence.'

There are more of us in England than there are in Ireland.

'After all, you have to remember, I spent quite a lot of the last 40 years cooped up in a darkened room.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]