Charlie Bird’s great skill, even in dealing with terminal illness, was finding humanity in the epic, and the epic in humanity
The newsman brought us the world... and so much more
IT WAS the update no one wanted to see. On February18, Charlie Bird posted on Twitter, and the message was not a hopeful one. ‘Last year, I asked, when I pass, would you keep supporting Claire and Tiger with extending the hand of friendship to people in dark places.
‘I got a great response. Where I am now in my journey, I want to repeat the call. I love you all.’
On Leap Day, he was back on the social media platform again, writing: ‘I want to extend the hand of friendship to all carers across the country. I now have first-hand experience of the valuable work they do. I am still hanging in. And on April 1 will be leading a walk in Wicklow for all Samaritan volunteers. Details to follow.’
Sadly, that was not to be, and news of his death was announced yesterday. It marked the end of a road first travelled in October 2021, when the legendary RTÉ news broadcaster announced that he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
Soon afterwards, he spoke to me about how he first suspected he had a problem. ‘I noticed a change in my voice around St Patrick’s Day,’ he said. ‘Years ago, I lost my voice encouraging fans to cheer after Ireland beat Malta in football, but this was different – I knew there was something wrong.
‘The doctor sent me to a neurologist, and by May or June, I knew it was something serious. I had my fears it was something that wasn’t manageable, or couldn’t be sorted out.’
Even then, he was philosophical, a trait that was impressively consistent even as the symptoms worsened and he lost his voice entirely, becoming reliant on a tablet computer programme that simulated his own speech based on previous recordings.
‘There is no point in me sugarcoating this,’ he told me. ‘As I’ve said before, and this is the one message I want to put across, every day, people are getting knocks. I’m no different than anyone else, in that sense. People get horrible news.’
In a stellar career, he became chief news correspondent and, later, RTÉ’s Washington correspondent (a move he subsequently described as ‘madness’, because he had no contacts there). He reported on the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington DC and on the St Stephen’s Day tsunami in Asia in 2004. He found disgraced former Anglo-Irish Bank boss David Drumm’s bolthole in the United States. Earlier in his career, he was a trusted confidante of the IRA during the Troubles, adding authority to the stories he delivered, not least the first news of the 1994 ceasefire.
Charlie Bird was born in Sandymount in Dublin in 1949, and he told in his autobiography, This Is Charlie Bird, written with Kevin Rafter, of what appeared to be a lonely childhood. His father was remote, his mother was aloof and never commented on his rise to fame, and he was not close to his much older brothers. In RTÉ, he felt his lack of a college education initially held him back, too.
In a 2022 interview in the Irish Independent, he again spoke of his feelings about his sterile upbringing. ‘It is my one regret, I didn’t have a great relationship with my mother,’ he said. ‘I was making my name in RTÉ. She never said a word of well done, she died after she was hit by a car outside Dunnes Stores in 1983. She never put her arms round me and said “well done”. I’d have loved if it had happened.’
As for his father, he said: ‘I never went for a drink with him, a football match or anything. We were two different ships, in a way, passing. The one thing he gave me was my name, Bird.’
There are some in that situation who would grow up equally lacking in empathy, but Charlie Bird took the opposite tack. In his work, he sought out individual stories, telling of defining world events through the prism of the personal, and the audience loved him for it.
His great skill was to find the humanity in the epic, and the epic in humanity, placing human achievement and resilience, and loss and pain, to the fore. This everyman skill was so potent that many believed a story wasn’t worth investing in unless he was covering it. Indeed, on the night of the final heave against Charles Haughey in 1992, the crowd in Merrion Street started chanting ‘Charlie! Charlie!’, not at the departing taoiseach but at the inimitable Mr Bird.
As a young man, he was involved in left-wing politics, a member of Official Sinn Féin, later known as the Workers’ Party, and he was its director of elections in Dublin
South-Central at the 1973 general election. The party at the time (known as the Stickies because it was the first to sell adhesive badges... Easter lily badges) was perceived to have much influence within RTÉ and, when he was 25, Charlie was recruited to Montrose by party member Eoghan Harris.
His first marriage, to the late Mary O’Connor, saw the birth of daughters Orla and Neasa, but it ended in divorce. Last year, he spoke of the amicability of their relationship. ‘I’m better mates with the mother of my two children,’ he said. ‘We are parents of a modern age. Our children are important to us and so we all meet as a family. We meet on family occasions, birthdays, we meet and we celebrate, and on Christmas Day for drinks.’
He found love again with Claire Mould, 20 years his junior. They were together for over a decade, and her support for him in his illness was selfless and unwavering. ‘We are absolutely so happy,’ he said. ‘In the ten years we have been together, we have never had a raised word.’
Claire was by his side when he appeared on The Late Late Show to talk about his condition in late 2021. It sowed the seed of an idea, and the Walk With Charlie fundraising event inspired thousands to take to the roads and mountains across the country, and even abroad. The main event was a climb of Croagh Patrick, and keen walker Charlie – often seen in better times near his Ashford, Co. Wicklow home walking Tiger, his faithful cockapoo – managed to reach the summit, an amazing achievement for anyone with his condition.
There in support were Claire, his daughters, and five grandchildren, as well as singer Daniel O’Donnell (who gifted Charlie his own set of Rosary beads), Matt Molloy of The Chieftains, boxer Barry McGuigan, and former Late Late host Ryan Tubridy.
As a result of this phenomenal effort, the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association and the suicide prevention charity Pieta shared a cheque for an astonishing €3,376,000.
As well as his journalism work, he also made a series of docu
‘In ten years together, we’ve never had a raised word’
mentaries called Charlie Bird Explores for RTÉ, following in explorer Tom Crean’s footsteps to the South Pole, travelling the entire length of the Amazon, trekking to the North Pole, and following India’s sacred river, the Ganges, from the estuary in the Bay of Bengal to the source in the Himalayas.
His career was not without legal jeopardy. In 1998, Charlie reported that while TD Beverley Cooper Flynn (she has reverted to Beverley Flynn since her 2009 divorce) was working as a financial adviser with National Irish Bank, she assisted clients in funnelling undeclared income to investment schemes in the Isle of Man. Flynn sued RTÉ, Bird himself, and a farmer who contributed to the story. The jury found that while RTÉ had not proved its case in the specific case highlighted (it transpired another staff member handled the farmer’s account), the allegations were substantially true. Technically, Flynn won the case, but the jury refused to award damages, and also awarded costs against her. After losing a Supreme Court appeal, she eventually settled a legal bill of €2.4million by paying just over half that, which led to criticism of RTÉ for capitulating.
Bird later told RTÉ documentary programme Scannal about the stress it caused. ‘The libel trial in the High Court was the worst time of my life, but I also accept it was probably the worst time for Beverley Flynn as well,’ he said.
‘The day the Supreme Court ruled in RTÉ’s favour, and in my favour, was a really important day for me because if it hadn’t, my career as a journalist was over. There was no doubt about that, and I think the careers of many people in RTÉ would have fallen along with it.’
He also revealed he was followed, and his phone bugged, during his digging into NIB’s practices. ‘We lived on our wits’ end doing this story,’ he revealed. ‘I got a phone call from a senior officer who warned me our mobiles were being bugged. It certainly spooked me at the time because you just didn’t know. I used to look under my car for a few days afterwards.’
He retired from RTÉ in 2012, his last broadcast filling in on The Marian Finucane Show, and made a brief return to television guest-presenting Tonight With Vincent Browne on TV3 in 2016.
Also in 2016, he published A Day In May, a book featuring personal testimonies of 50 people who benefited from the change in the law that followed the marriage equality referendum the previous year, and it was subsequently turned into a play by Colin Murphy.
Other than that, his retirement was quiet until he got the bombshell diagnosis of MND. Even he was surprised at the warmth of the affection that came his way, with over 23,000 messages on Twitter alone. ‘I don’t really do Twitter,’ he told me at the time, ‘but those who do, tell me that there wasn’t even one s **** y message among them. Not one.’
His determination to live as long as he could was inspirational. ‘When you’re on your own, in the middle of the night at home, it’s not that easy for anyone, and I’m not the only one suffering a terminal illness,’ he said during our conversation. ‘I just have to hope that I can stay mobile for… I don’t even want to put a time on it.
‘All this summer, I was walking mad every day, to prove to myself I actually could walk. Ten to 15 miles a day, every day. I’m determined to keep going for as long as I can. I want to keep doing the one thing I enjoy, having a pint of Guinness in my local pub, sitting in the corner doing the Irish Times Simplex crossword – I can’t do the other one [Crosaire]! The people in the pub are so lovely.’
As the condition progressed, these activities became more difficult, and Charlie told of how he would randomly burst into tears. In January 2023, he wrote on Twitter: ‘I can’t hide any more, wherever I am in my journey, I am crying non-stop. I am not going to give in, I am going to keep fighting to extend the hand of friendship to people in dark places. But crying non-stop is so awful. A big hug for all the support.’
And support there was, every step of the way, not just from his family, friends and former RTÉ colleagues, but from people who never met him but who felt they knew him. Charlie Bird was in our living rooms for the best part of 40 years, a constant presence whether bringing news of Irish success abroad, or faraway tragedies that nevertheless had a massive impact here too. His was a colourful beat, and he knew it.
The last words go to him, words he told Ryan Tubridy in an interview at his kitchen table in October 2022, that offer a measure of the man and his ability to always see the light in any situation.
‘When I was growing up, my father would say, man’s allotted span was three score years and ten,’ he said. ‘I remember that in later life. So, if you reach 70, you were lucky. Well, we all know now that everyone is living much longer, maybe into your 80s.
‘Here I am at 73 and hopefully will live for another year or so, fingers crossed, but I don’t feel cheated. I have been very fortunate in my career in broadcasting. I have travelled to many parts of the world in my amazing life, I have travelled to the top and the bottom of the Earth – yes, the North and the South Pole.
‘When, I joined the national broadcaster, in my head, I felt I had won the Lotto. So, I have had a brilliant life!’
‘I felt I had won the Lotto... I’ve had a brilliant life’