Charlie Bird is useless — huge unhappy information concerning the man who made huge information. A legend and a warrior, Charlie was an amazing journalist. But in the beginning he was an amazing human being. In well being and much more so in sickness, he gave it his all.
Many journalists insist they’ll by no means become involved with their topics, just like the American reporter in Vietnam who witnessed a person self-immolate. As a human he needed to intervene, however as a reporter, he felt he couldn’t.
That was not Charlie’s approach. Watching an old man making an attempt to dig a grave for his daughter in a warfare zone, he felt it was proper to intervene: “I took up a shovel and shouted at other reporters and camera crews to help him.”
As an adolescent, Charlie’s curiosity in historical past and politics was stirred by the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising and if he had handed his Leaving Cert maths, he’d undoubtedly have been a kind of pupil radicals who got here to prominence within the late 60s and 70s.
The lack of a college diploma made him much more decided to achieve journalism and introduced him to heights he may not in any other case have reached, not least the conferring of an honorary doctorate by UCD for his work with George Lee, RTÉ’s economics correspondent, in exposing monetary scandals.
His love of debating at college compensated for tutorial failure within the political sphere. He readily mounted Young Socialist platforms on the GPO and addressed the Labour Party annual convention on points like housing, apartheid and the Vietnam War.
He at all times took an curiosity within the underdog, and as many individuals have identified, there was a particular place in Charlie’s coronary heart for the Stardust victims and their households. That horrific Valentine’s evening was one among his first huge tales and was seared into his reminiscence. In retirement, he was capable of marketing campaign for the inquest so lengthy denied them, and took part briefly within the proceedings.
Yes, he had a social conscience, however it could be fallacious to see him as a campaigning journalist. Above all, he was a reporter. What mattered was the story and getting it proper. He left his political activism behind him after becoming a member of RTÉ and lived by the necessities of the Broadcasting Acts to be “objective, impartial and fair to all interests”.
It’s over 40 years since our paths first crossed in the RTÉ newsroom. I was fresh in from the ; he had transferred from researching TV programmes a year or two earlier. Ireland was at a standstill in the Big Snow of January 1982 and, in trendy green wellingtons, he was heading off with the Air Corps to cover the story from the sky.
As with so many people, he got me at ‘Hello’ with a smile and a handshake. Then, and always, Charlie had the knack of being in the right place. He always delivered, primarily because he worked hard, was well-organised, had great stamina, and never gave up. But he had something else too — an ability to connect with people, to win their confidence and to get them talking.
With those honest eyes looking at you earnestly, it would be hard to think you could fool Charlie Bird, but you could be sure of fair treatment. Yes, he broke sensational stories, but he was meticulous about allowing people a fair opportunity to give their version. That’s why he was trusted by all sides.
When there wasn’t time or means to build relationships, Charlie would improvise, and his doggedness and instinct were employed to good effect at home and abroad. One example was when Michael Smurfit was under pressure as chair of Telecom Éireann amid a controversy over the sale of an old bakery site.
In the short walk from his car to the door of Telecom HQ, Smurfit wasn’t minded to address the media — until a seemingly bizarre question was heard from an unmistakable voice: “Mr Smurfit, have you a message for the Irish people?”
It stopped Smurfit in his tracks and Charlie bought his quote, to the impact the Irish folks ought to sustain their hopes in tough financial instances.
We have been in South Africa for the primary democratic elections in 1994 and Charlie was current, together with an enormous world media throng as Nelson Mandela went to solid his first post-apartheid vote. It wasn’t clear he would communicate to the media, however what occurred because of Charlie made it into Mandela’s autobiography, .
Walking in the direction of the polling station, the long run president of South Africa heard one voice above all others, as Charlie shouted: “Mr Mandela, who will you vote for today?”
Only Charlie Bird may have give you that one. It caught Mandela’s consideration and he came visiting and mentioned laughingly: “You know, I’ve been agonising over the choice all morning,” earlier than answering a second query about how a lot the event meant.
On the face of it, these inquiries to Smurfit and Mandela betokened a kind of innocence or gaucherie, which some folks mocked. But as our colleague Sean Duignan was wont to level out, they bought folks speaking to him once they hadn’t deliberate to say something, and that was a part of Charlie’s genius.
He succeeded too the place others had didn’t get a quote from Gay Byrne amid hypothesis Gay would possibly go away RTÉ for industrial radio. The story led the .
Charlie was really in his ingredient on the plinth at Leinster House. During the tumultuous early Nineteen Eighties, with three common elections in 18 months, and ugly heaves in Fianna Fáil, Charlie was within the thick of it, capturing drama just like the assault on Jim Gibbons and the abuse of Charlie McCreevy. Colleagues watched in awe as he cajoled Ray Burke into saying Charlie Haughey shouldn’t lead Fianna Fáil into the subsequent election.
As a presenter of the radio present , Charlie’s desk and mine have been only some ft aside. I at all times discovered it reassuring to see him coming to work, as I typically felt his presence added 10% or extra to the standard of the present. Invariably, he would counsel a contemporary angle on a narrative or see an apparent line no person else had noticed. Charlie missed nothing.
Probably the engagement with him that gave me most satisfaction was our collaboration late one Saturday evening on a report for in the course of the first Gulf War in 1990. Charlie was reporting on the therapy of Kurdish individuals who had rebelled in opposition to the dictator Saddam Hussein. They have been fleeing for security throughout mountains in dreadful climate after American pledges of help didn’t materialise.
Charlie had linked up with Fr Jack Finucane of Concern as the help company sought to offer aid. The phrases, photos, and uncooked actuality they despatched again gave as vivid a bit of radio journalism as I’ve had the privilege to edit for the airwaves.
It was round this time, within the early to mid-90s, that Charlie was assigned by RTÉ to determine and keep contact with the republican motion because the IRA and Sinn Féin launched into the lengthy and winding highway to solely peaceable strategies in pursuit of their political targets. It was a demanding and at instances nerve-wracking expertise and, as ever, required him to build a trusting relationship together with his sources.
Probably his greatest day on the job was August 31, 1994, when the primary IRA ceasefire was declared. Charlie was the one who broke the story at midday that day and the mini cassette recording of an IRA spokesperson making the announcement is now an necessary museum piece of Irish historical past.
With George Lee, he broke a number of high-profile tales about malpractices in monetary providers, most notoriously an funding scheme promoted by the National Irish Bank. RTÉ was sued for libel by Fianna Fáil TD Beverly Flynn.
It was a torrid time for Charlie and his colleagues because the lengthy trial unfolded and we steadily had espresso within the canteen earlier than he headed for the Four Courts. He by no means wavered in his perception that the motion was price defending.
After it ended, we have been walking from the courtroom throughout the Liffey on Grattan Street Bridge when information broke on the radio headlines that RTÉ had gained and Charlie was greeted by honking horns and drivers giving him the thumbs up.
Without doubt, Charlie’s most unsatisfactory time was his stint as RTÉ’s Washington correspondent. I took a notion to attend the primary Obama inauguration in 2009 and slept on a sofa in Charlie’s house, lazily declining his invitation to go together with him to collect vox pops at daybreak on the large day. He threw himself into the job however he by no means settled.
Sitting collectively at a dinner hosted by EU ambassador John Bruton, Charlie confided he missed his household and it wasn’t understanding. I advised him he was there only some weeks, to offer it an opportunity and to inform no person. A couple of minutes later, I heard him telling the identical story to John Bruton and reckoned he’d be home quickly sufficient.
Perhaps there was a clue to his loneliness in an image in his house of an RTÉ colleague again in Dublin. He would marry Claire Mould a number of years later, placing the seal on a unprecedented love story that has performed out so publicly and heroically in the previous couple of years.
Charlie’s profession in broadcasting was greater than sufficient to safe him a place in Irish media historical past, however in methods it fades compared to the uncooked braveness and generosity that impressed numerous 1000’s of individuals as he turned a terminal sickness analysis into a chance to boost €3.6m for charity.
His chorus about “extending the hand of friendship” was apt as a result of it was one thing he did himself all through his life. He made no secret of his concern of getting to make use of a wheelchair, however with the help of Claire and daughters Neasa and Orla, he in some way discovered the energy to adapt to the ravages of the illness.
On events, a bunch of ex-RTÉ colleagues would meet in Galway to walk from Salthill to town centre for a meal. The journey took longer every time as increasingly more folks approached Charlie to want him effectively, take selfies, and thank him for his fundraising for the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association and Pieta House.
Just just like the late-night crowds who chanted his identify exterior Leinster House throughout a heave, these folks on the Salthill promenade may recognise a real man of the folks once they noticed him. Charlie Bird was on their aspect, at all times telling it prefer it was.
Thanks, pal.
- Sean O’Rourke is presenter of the RTÉ Insights podcast
