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04 Aug 12
11:30
Joined:
Date Joined:
05 Jan 10
Passed away this morning aged 86.
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Thanks for letting us know A.D. I meet the great man on a few occasions ..i think you could refer to CON as a modest genius. We will miss him greatly. R.I.P.
had a drink with him in the 80s in the international bar ....a lovely lovely man ....when i told him that one of his many sayings had touched me , it was , when i was a child in kerry and shoes were a status symbol , he gently put his hand over his mouth , as was his wont ,and simply said thank you , a true literary giant ...r.i.p.
had a drink with him in the 80s in the international bar ....a lovely lovely man ....when i told him that one of his many sayings had touched me , it was , when i was a child in kerry and shoes were a status symbol , he gently put his hand over his mouth , as was his wont ,and simply said thank you , a true literary giant ...r.i.p.
Shoes were a status symbol....brilliant.
His description of Paddy Cullen running back to his goal when Mikey Sheehy chipped the free into the empty net was evocative and brilliant.
His description of Paddy Cullen running back to his goal when Mikey Sheehy chipped the free into the empty net was evocative and brilliant.
'Evocative and brilliant' is a nice way of putting it.
His writing sort of stayed with you. I can still remember a piece he wrote 20+ years ago praising the range of skills on display in a cricket match, which was not exactly an orthodox choice of subject for an Irish sports writer at the time.
May he rest in peace.
His writing sort of stayed with you. I can still remember a piece he wrote 20+ years ago praising the range of skills on display in a cricket match, which was not exactly an orthodox choice of subject for an Irish sports writer at the time.
May he rest in peace.
The making of a newspaper man
By Con Houlihan December 17 2008
http://www.herald.ie
In my life there were three places where I was reasonably happy. When I was cutting turf with comrades, I felt most alive -- and by comrades I meant men who were skillful and intelligent and who cared. When I was fishing where The Gleannsharoon River meets The River Maine, I felt that the rest of the world didn't matter -- even on bad days.
When I was working or perhaps not working in the newsroom of The Evening Press, I felt that it was my home from home.
Cutting turf is now past tense. Seemingly the European Union has decreed that it must cease on account of global warming. My two favourite rivers are still there but I fear that fishing too will come under a ban. The newsroom in The Evening Press is no more. When I came there, I wasn't a novice in journalism but it was a new experience for me because it had no counterpart in The Kerryman.
The Kerryman wasn't really a newspaper at all. Much of its copy was supplied by correspondents all over the county who sent in bits and pieces about their towns or their parishes or their townlands or whatever. These were the items most eagerly awaited in New York and Boston and Chicago, not to mention London and Birmingham and Coventry. The rest of the paper was made up mostly of reports about meetings of the county council and the various town councils and court cases.
The Kerryman's strong selling point for men was the section on Gaelic Football. Its main selling point for women was the section that carried advertisements about buying and selling hens and ducks and geese and turkeys.
You would hardly ever hear about news breaking in The Kerryman. An earthquake might kill thousands of people in Pakistan but it wouldn't be reported unless there were Irish people among the dead. Nevertheless, it was a great paper. I was proud to have worked for it and I was very happy there.
The newsroom in Burgh Quay was a place I loved. It had such a sense of life. Even when I worked there about four in the morning on my way back from football games on the European mainland, I didn't feel a bit lonely. Even though I was on my own, I felt the atmosphere that had carried over from the day before. About nine o'clock the place began to come to full life: typewriters and telephones and voices made a cacophony that I enjoyed.
There are different kinds of noises: some are a help rather than a hindrance. Working in the middle of creative noise was enjoyable. In that room you felt that you were in the middle of things: if, for instance, there was a murder somewhere in Ireland, the local correspondent would know the background to it. And even though you couldn't publish that information for the time being, it gave the reporters on the story a head start.
Of course there was often some crazy story to brighten the day. Once when a Hungarian team came to play The Republic, a young photographer who shall be nameless, was sent to the visiting team's hotel to get a picture of their famous coach, he brought back a picture of a CIE tour bus.
On another occasion when Ireland were playing China at table tennis, the list of the scores said "Irish names first".
During an economy drive when the printing blocks were being recycled, a picture of a well-known Catholic bishop was captioned: "Paddy Prendergast who saddles Ross Sea at Tramore today."
Mulligan's pub is often associated with The Irish Press but when I came to Dublin first, it was hardly a journalists' pub at all. The most popular meeting place for newspaper people was the Silver Swan. You didn't need an NUJ card to get in there but sometimes it seemed that way. It had many virtues: not least was the fact that any work you did wouldn't go unnoticed. It would be praised or faulted. The worst thing for any writer was to be ignored.
whispering
The Silver Swan had another virtue: it had two telephone cubicles -- they came in handy when you wished to borrow money. You could do so without going through the indignity of the washroom whispering. They were hard times and many a fiver went from hand to hand and eventually came back to its owner.
My early days in The Evening Press weren't without trouble: some people resented me and made my life hard. Some of them eventually became my best friends. In that troubled period I had two friends who told me about those who would stab me in the back and those who would stab me in the front. The latter were harmless. My invaluable advisers were fine journalists who left this world prematurely and tragically -- Michael O'Toole and Kevin Marron.
I had other friends who meant well when they told me that my style was too literary. All I could say: "Why should we allow the Irish Times to have a monopoly of colons and semi-colons?"
Of course, like all writers on sport, I had to endure the snobbery of those who regarded sport as a triviality. All I could say is that sport is more real than drama: when Julius Caesar went down under a hundred stabs, he got up and bowed to the audience. When a man misses a penalty in The World Cup final, he doesn't get a second chance. I do not mind people who take no interest in sport but I am amused when they boast about it.
With the arrival of new technology we do not see so many misprints. They were common in the old days and some of them were gloriously funny. My own special favourite came from The Cork Examiner, as it was then. A piece about turmoil in Cambodia ended as follows: "The rioting was quelled by The National Guard led by Alderman Pa McGrath, the Lord Mayor of Cork."
The sub-editors will be always with us. In The Protestant Gazette the obituary of a clergyman ended: "For forty years he was a watcher at Zion's Hill." A sub-editor made it: "For forty years he was a watcher at Sion Mills." The chief sub-editor wrote: "For forty years he was a watchman at Sion Mills, Co Tyrone
By Con Houlihan December 17 2008
http://www.herald.ie
In my life there were three places where I was reasonably happy. When I was cutting turf with comrades, I felt most alive -- and by comrades I meant men who were skillful and intelligent and who cared. When I was fishing where The Gleannsharoon River meets The River Maine, I felt that the rest of the world didn't matter -- even on bad days.
When I was working or perhaps not working in the newsroom of The Evening Press, I felt that it was my home from home.
Cutting turf is now past tense. Seemingly the European Union has decreed that it must cease on account of global warming. My two favourite rivers are still there but I fear that fishing too will come under a ban. The newsroom in The Evening Press is no more. When I came there, I wasn't a novice in journalism but it was a new experience for me because it had no counterpart in The Kerryman.
The Kerryman wasn't really a newspaper at all. Much of its copy was supplied by correspondents all over the county who sent in bits and pieces about their towns or their parishes or their townlands or whatever. These were the items most eagerly awaited in New York and Boston and Chicago, not to mention London and Birmingham and Coventry. The rest of the paper was made up mostly of reports about meetings of the county council and the various town councils and court cases.
The Kerryman's strong selling point for men was the section on Gaelic Football. Its main selling point for women was the section that carried advertisements about buying and selling hens and ducks and geese and turkeys.
You would hardly ever hear about news breaking in The Kerryman. An earthquake might kill thousands of people in Pakistan but it wouldn't be reported unless there were Irish people among the dead. Nevertheless, it was a great paper. I was proud to have worked for it and I was very happy there.
The newsroom in Burgh Quay was a place I loved. It had such a sense of life. Even when I worked there about four in the morning on my way back from football games on the European mainland, I didn't feel a bit lonely. Even though I was on my own, I felt the atmosphere that had carried over from the day before. About nine o'clock the place began to come to full life: typewriters and telephones and voices made a cacophony that I enjoyed.
There are different kinds of noises: some are a help rather than a hindrance. Working in the middle of creative noise was enjoyable. In that room you felt that you were in the middle of things: if, for instance, there was a murder somewhere in Ireland, the local correspondent would know the background to it. And even though you couldn't publish that information for the time being, it gave the reporters on the story a head start.
Of course there was often some crazy story to brighten the day. Once when a Hungarian team came to play The Republic, a young photographer who shall be nameless, was sent to the visiting team's hotel to get a picture of their famous coach, he brought back a picture of a CIE tour bus.
On another occasion when Ireland were playing China at table tennis, the list of the scores said "Irish names first".
During an economy drive when the printing blocks were being recycled, a picture of a well-known Catholic bishop was captioned: "Paddy Prendergast who saddles Ross Sea at Tramore today."
Mulligan's pub is often associated with The Irish Press but when I came to Dublin first, it was hardly a journalists' pub at all. The most popular meeting place for newspaper people was the Silver Swan. You didn't need an NUJ card to get in there but sometimes it seemed that way. It had many virtues: not least was the fact that any work you did wouldn't go unnoticed. It would be praised or faulted. The worst thing for any writer was to be ignored.
whispering
The Silver Swan had another virtue: it had two telephone cubicles -- they came in handy when you wished to borrow money. You could do so without going through the indignity of the washroom whispering. They were hard times and many a fiver went from hand to hand and eventually came back to its owner.
My early days in The Evening Press weren't without trouble: some people resented me and made my life hard. Some of them eventually became my best friends. In that troubled period I had two friends who told me about those who would stab me in the back and those who would stab me in the front. The latter were harmless. My invaluable advisers were fine journalists who left this world prematurely and tragically -- Michael O'Toole and Kevin Marron.
I had other friends who meant well when they told me that my style was too literary. All I could say: "Why should we allow the Irish Times to have a monopoly of colons and semi-colons?"
Of course, like all writers on sport, I had to endure the snobbery of those who regarded sport as a triviality. All I could say is that sport is more real than drama: when Julius Caesar went down under a hundred stabs, he got up and bowed to the audience. When a man misses a penalty in The World Cup final, he doesn't get a second chance. I do not mind people who take no interest in sport but I am amused when they boast about it.
With the arrival of new technology we do not see so many misprints. They were common in the old days and some of them were gloriously funny. My own special favourite came from The Cork Examiner, as it was then. A piece about turmoil in Cambodia ended as follows: "The rioting was quelled by The National Guard led by Alderman Pa McGrath, the Lord Mayor of Cork."
The sub-editors will be always with us. In The Protestant Gazette the obituary of a clergyman ended: "For forty years he was a watcher at Zion's Hill." A sub-editor made it: "For forty years he was a watcher at Sion Mills." The chief sub-editor wrote: "For forty years he was a watchman at Sion Mills, Co Tyrone
a gentleman.i often chatted him on the old canal end terrace in croke park when offaly were going well in the early eighties...and manys the time in the shakespere at the top of oconnell st..i used to look forward to his column every mon eve in the evening press where he would impart his views on everything and anything!!..one of the heros..
A good sort. I'd say half the country had a drink with him at one time or another.
Really enjoyed reading his articles on the back page of the Evening Press in the 80s. For many he was often the only reason to buy the paper. I wonder what he would make of the Sean Quinn Show ? The World was his parish.
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