Orla Tinsley – a warrior’s fight for life
ORLA TINSLEY: WARRIOR RTE ONÉ, TONIGHT, 9.35 COURAGE comes in many different forms. Whether it’s the serious matter of a fireman running into a burning building while everyone else flees in the opposite direction, or the less crucial but still impressive sight of a footballer taking a game by the scruff of the neck, we recognise bravery when we see it.
But when it comes to sheer, stubborn guts, few people compare to Orla Tinsley.
The activist and author was told that her Cystic Fibrosis would kill her before her 30th birthday. After having her hopes for a life-saving double lung transplant dashed six times (it must have seemed like the universe was deliberately toying with her) she finally underwent a successful operation in New York.
(RTÉ One, 9.35pm), filmed over 14 fraught months, follows her as she prepares for the double transplant, and how she copes afterwards. As she says herself in the programme: “I was thinking of my donor and their sacrifice, generosity and forward thinking. It is the greatest legacy anyone could ever give to someone else. I just hope that people will consider being organ donors.”
Few of us have the strength that Tinsley has displayed down the years, and we all certainly hope that we never have to endure what she has been through. But her message about organ donation is something which will resonate in the mind of the viewer...
There’s little doubt that Aslan frontman Christy Dignam is a living Dublin legend.
As singer with the Finglas band for 30 years, he has been through the usual rock and roll clichès, from success and drug addiction to total penury and drug addiction.
He is also, as his fans are painfully aware, currently battling cancer. In tonight’s
Living With Lucy (Virgin Media 1, 9pm) the affable presenter goes on the road with Dignam and the lads to a gig in Limerick and talks to the charismatic singer about his remarkably eventful life...
We hear a lot about the dumbing down of modern TV.
Yes, we may be living in a golden age of TV drama, but reality stars still infest the schedule like bed bugs. One of the most common career paths for reality alumni is to buddy up and go on some sort of road trip and tonight sees Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide To Britain
(BBC2, 8pm).
The difference here is that the two presenters, Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull, were rival team captains on University Challenge.
Is this a case of TV dumbing-up?