I’m ready next for the chapter
With interests including snooker, music and golf to pursue, Aonghus McAnally can’t wait to call an end to his 40 years at RTÉ
AONGHUS McAnally, it would seem, is that rare breed — an RTÉ stalwart ready to move on now that he’s about to reach the obligatory retirement age of 65. Indeed, he says it ‘didn’t dawn’ on him to try and stay on at the State broadcaster and certainly the excitement in his voice about what lies ahead sounds genuine.
‘It’s an amazing mix of emotions,’ he says of his June 19 finish date, almost 40 years after he first started working in RTÉ. ‘I have so much other stuff going on in my life in the creative world and I can’t wait to have the gift of time to do it all.
‘I’m really excited. I’ve worked very hard since I was 17, when I started off in the music business and I’m thrilled to have had a career with RTÉ, both as a freelancer for the best part of 20 years and then becoming staff 20 years ago.
‘I’ll miss good friends and colleagues, but I really am ready for the next chapter.’
To those of a certain generation, Aonghus will always be best remembered as a children’s television presenter. The Saturday morning show, Anything Goes, ran for six years from 1980 and the towering Aonghus was a prominent feature with his lush bouffant and trademark mis-matched shoes, one bright red, the other bright yellow.
There followed another couple of shows aimed at teenagers, Borderline and then Evening Extra, alongside Shay Healy and Bibi Baskin. Through the 1990s he was one of the original hosts on The Lyrics Board, the surprise hit show format that was sold on to 25 other countries across the world.
He spent time working on the Gay Byrne radio show, before finally in 2001 he was staffed up to take on a senior managerial role in RTÉ’s Cork radio operation. There have been a myriad of other jobs during his time at Montrose, but for the last seven years he has been a senior producer on Joe Duffy’s Liveline, a challenging gig by anyone’s standards.
‘It’s absolutely relentless,’ he agrees. ‘It’s brilliantly enriching and brilliantly draining in equal measure. What I love is that it’s become the go-to place for people who want to say something, they trust Joe implicitly.
‘The people who ring you are at their wits’ end and it’s very distressing at times. I’ve found myself saying, “I’m not qualified to talk to this person” — the responsibility of what I say to them might literally impact on something they may or may not do.’
Sifting through all those tales of woe and outrage takes time and often a lot patience.
‘We’re at our desks at 8am and we don’t get a chance to break for lunch, you grab a cup of tea to bring to your desk, it’s non-stop,’ he says. ‘But it’s in the quest for perfection and Joe is such a brilliant presenter with a voracious appetite for news.
‘There have been some truly harrowing stories, stuff that ran for a week, the Tuam babies, maternity hospitals and now Covid-19. The adoption stories have been extraordinary, where people had to give up children or children were taken off them.
‘There’s a level of shame you’d have about Ireland on occasions, when you realise this was going on within your own life span, it’s hard to believe. And the cervical cancer stories, just horrific and so moving, the bravery of those women to share their stories. But there have been happy stories too, reuniting families and quirky things. The needle in the haystack that you actually find, the funny stuff.’
Is he ever shocked at what direction a show takes, for instance the recent hoo-ha about the TV series Normal People, where outraged listeners rang in to claim it was nothing short of pornography?
‘Not at all, I fully respect the rights of everyone to have an opinion on anything,’ he says. ‘My role, most of the time, is not to let my own feelings out. But I have found myself on occasion biting my lip... ‘What is amazing is the amount of people who ring in to say that something on RTÉ is appalling or that we never offer balanced debate. But when we ask them to come on to the show, offer them the right to reply and give their opinion, it’s “oh no, I don’t want to go on, no, no, no.” ‘But that’s only a very small minority. What I love hearing is when people say they’ve never rung into a radio programme before but they were so moved by what they’ve heard. ‘It’s that feeling of you’re not alone, not the first person to experience these emotions, it’s wonderful. I think good radio is the equivalent, on occasions, of a really good therapy session.’
He also has a warning for listeners who get busy with their thumbs during the show.
‘Some of the texts that come in are quite extraordinary — vile, appalling things I wouldn’t repeat anywhere, I’ve sent a number of them on to security. People don’t seem to understand, when they text in, you can see their number.’
The son of two actors, the late great Ray McAnally and his equally talented wife, Ronnie Masterson, Aonghus says he is also first and foremost a performer, mostly as a guitar player.
Over the last couple of months he’s been entertaining social media followers with snatches of his favourite guitar tunes, including the theme from the BBC snooker coverage, which racked up almost 112,000 hits.
‘I was working from home along with everyone else,’ the father-oftwo explains. ‘I’m only back into the office this week. It’s been tough. My big son, Aonghus Óg, lives 600 yards down the road from us here in Portmarnock, he comes up and stands in the garden and we talk to him through the door.
‘And we’ve been Facetiming my other son Andrew and his family. But I can’t wait to give them all a hug, I can be a gibbering emotional idiot at times.
‘There has been loss for so many families, I watch the piece RTÉ does before the 6pm news and I cry every night at the people who have been lost.’
It’s part of the reason he started posting bits of his guitar playing on social media.
‘The reaction has been extraordinary so I’m starting to do them regularly, a bit of Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy,’ he says. ‘I’ve found
‘Liveline is enriching and draining in equal measure’
‘I was privileged to talk to dad on the day he died’ ‘I’ve so much more I need and want to do’
myself having up and down days. I’m a very amiable guy, I don’t get too down, but I certainly have been challenged mentally on several occasions. So if my videos help one person to smile, then that’s a good thing.’
The other bits and bobs he’s posted up, the stuff he hopes will help raise spirits, include a video of him making his first ever century break.
‘When my sons left home we got [TV architect] Dermot Bannon in, who did a wonderful job on revamping the house and built on an extension,’ explains Aonghus. ‘I fulfilled a lifelong ambition to get a professional full-size billiard table. I’ve been knocking on the door of getting a century for the last 25 years.’
He finally realised his dream of a century break, where a player scores 100 points or more within one turn on the table, just a few weeks ago. ‘That night I’d had a great chat with [golfer] Padraig Harrington and he’d given me a great mental tip about getting it over the line. I was on 97 and felt really good so I got my wife Billie to start videoing me and I went on to make 137. I went bonkers.’
The video has been seen by more than 50,000 people and many of them were surprised to see Aonghus’s skills. But he’s played both billiards and snooker to a high level since he was a small boy.
‘I’ve been doing snooker commentary for 25 years with the Irish Masters in Goffs,’ he says. ‘So I know all the players. My century got great reaction from loads of them, including Jason Ferguson, who runs World Snooker.’
Aonghus is a refreshingly open sort, ask him a question and he’s off, taking a mile a minute, sharing plenty of anecdotes about his life and career, for instance why he ended up wearing different coloured shoes on TV — which was down to a frantic last-minute gig with Johnny Logan’s band and being distracted while getting dressed.
He’s spoken before at length about his hair transplant, which he had done in 2015 when, after his mother died he was left a small windfall and which has worked a treat, as you can see for yourself on his Twitter feed.
He also loves to talk about his dad, one of Ireland’s most celebrated stage and screen actors. In 2012, he made a very moving documentary with director Brian Reddin for Tg4, M’athair, charting his at times difficult relationship with Ray.
‘It was fascinating to go back and trace dad’s life and career,’ he says. ‘And to get a sense of how I related to him and how I understand him better now. He was an amazing man, a brilliant genius who was occasionally difficult.
‘And it was wonderful to meet Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson [who starred with Ray in The Mission] — to talk to De Niro and realise the impact my dad had had on him. ‘David Puttnum said he’d learned more about the craft of film acting from my dad than any other person he’d ever met, I’ll take that one, that’ll do.’
Ray died of a heart attack in June 1989, when he was 63 years old.
‘He was doing a TV series in England and had a couple of days off, so he came home to vote in the general election. He was working on the garden in his house in Wicklow, had a massive heart attack and died.’ While there had been rocky patches, Aonghus, the second eldest of four children, had enjoyed a good relationship with Ray in his final years.
‘When he split up with my mam, which was difficult for all of us, I was on my mam’s side,’ explains Aonghus. ‘It’s an awful thing to say, but I just felt for her and was by her side, it was a tough call.
‘But it’s too strong to say we were estranged. He had been difficult — occasionally if your opinion differed on what his take of something was, he would argue till the ends of time to convince you otherwise.
‘We shared a common passion, billiards and snooker, literally my last conversation with him was about snooker. I’d rung him, asking; “Are you around?” He said; “I am, give me a shout tomorrow and we’ll have a game of snooker.”
‘I was so privileged to speak to him on the day he died and I was so privileged and proud to be his son.’
His father’s love of acting has passed through him to his own son, Aonghus Óg, a successful stage actor who has appeared in Abbey productions of The Plough and the Stars and Romeo and Juliet. His granddaughter Cadhla, Aonghus Óg’s daughter, is also interested in drama.
‘Aonghus Óg is an amazing actor,’ says Aonghus. ‘And his daughter did a podcast for the Fringe Festival. She’s a little dynamo, it’s wonderful to see.
‘When Aonghus Óg did The Plough and the Stars I gave him a programme from when my dad did the same show for the Abbey in 1951. And during another show he was doing in the same theatre, when the costume came out to him and he looked in the pocket, it had Ray McAnally written on the inside, it’s so very special.’
His own father was always hugely supportive of his decision to go into entertainment.
‘I went to him at 15 and I told him I was going to become a professional musician,’ says McAnally, who took up the guitar in his early teens. ‘And he said to me; “I don’t care what you want to do with your career as long as you do it to the very best of your ability. No half measures, don’t coast at anything.
‘You owe it to yourself and the gift that you’ve been given, if you have a talent, to make it the very best it can be.”
‘So I did my Leaving Cert in St Joseph’s of Fairview in 1972 and in January 1973 I joined Mushroom, a traditional rock group. I was on the road, we did an album, had hit singles and did tours, and basically I’ve been at it since.’
The day after we talk, McAnally was due to headline at the Bord
Gáis Energy Theatre, with his show about the life of music of his late friend, the Kerry folk singer Christie Hennessy. Obviously it was called off, but he hopes to tour with it again.
Indeed he’s itching to get on the road again and tour with his music, so much so that he says it ‘didn’t dawn’ on him to ask to stay on at RTÉ after he turns 65 on June 20.
‘I’ll miss people in RTÉ but I’ll also have the time to see my kids and grandkids more, and to travel with snooker and billiards and to play golf,’ he explains. ‘And with Covid-19, it has really taught myself and my wife the importance of life and time.
‘I’ve so much more that I need and want to do and I’m very lucky that my health is good. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, that helps, and I mind my diet. I can’t wait to get at it.’
But as he waits for things to settle into our new normality, there is a certain big birthday to look forward too.
‘Whenever the madness ends, the ten of us will have a get-together,’ he says. ‘Myself and Billie, the two boys, their wives and all their kids. I think society will change, big gettogethers will be inappropriate for a while. But we’ll definitely do something, I want to celebrate the joy of being alive with people who love me.’