Last tributes to TV quizmaster Bunny
The quiz-show host, TV ideas man and communications guru gave the nation a new catchphrase, writes Liam Collins
“HE was an ordinary man who lived an extraordinary life,” Alan Carr said at the end of the funeral Mass for his father Bunny in Sutton, Co Dublin yesterday. “But most of all, his story was a love story of Bunny and our mother Joan, who are together now,” he added.
The coffin of the man who is best known for his quiz show Quicksilver and as founder of Carr Communications was taken from the church to the strains of Red Sails in the Sunset, played by his friend Jim Doherty.
Though best known for Quicksilver, Bunny Carr also presented Going Strong, Teen Talk and The Politicians.
He was born in Dublin in 1927 and grew up in Clontarf.
He was pre-deceased by his wife Joan in 2005 and died last Wednesday in Howth, Dublin, aged 91. At his funeral yesterday, the President Michael D Higgins was represented by Comdt Dorothy Donnelly and the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar by Comdt Caroline Burke.
“He was more than a person who appeared on Quicksilver, he was a husband and dad first of all,” said celebrant Fr Liam Lacey.
Among the mourners were his former business partner Terry Prone and her son Anton Savage, Fr Dermod McCarthy and Jim Sherwin, former RTE presenters, Des Peelo, Chris Cawley and many friends and neighbours. Presidential hopeful Gavin Duffy, who worked with Bunny Carr for 10 years, said: “I couldn’t think of a nicer man.”
Mr Carr is survived by his son Alan, and two daughters, Carolyn and Philo.
IN the early days of RTE, Bunny Carr became one of its best-known faces and his self-devised Quicksilver — which gave us the national catchphrase “Stop the lights” — became the station’s longest-running quiz show.
Although he hosted The Politicians, an interview series with political figures and won a Jacob’s Award for his 1964 series Teen Talk, he was most associated in the public mind with Quicksilver, which started in 1965 and ran until 1981.
Carr, who has died at 91, spent his early years in broadcasting doing voice-overs for adverts at the end of sponsored programmes.
According to his later business partner Terry Prone, he submitted 73 programme proposals to commissioning editors — including Jackpot, which he believed was “nicked” by a producer and given to Terry Wogan — before getting a show of his own.
He told Alan Corr in a 2012 interview: “I got the word in the lavatories of RTE they were looking for a quiz that wouldn’t cost any money so me, as an ex-bank man, came up with Quicksilver.”
He was paired with Norman Metcalfe, a Trinity College divinity graduate who played the organ, giving obscure musical clues to struggling contestants. Against a backdrop of flashing numbers and a clock that counted down the seconds, they had to answer questions for cash prizes that went from a couple of pence to £5 in old money, depending on how fast they answered.
The show’s two main attributes were that contestants were picked from the audience and that it toured Ireland, broadcasting from large towns at a time when television was in its infancy.
Carr was also founder of Carr Communications, which became best known for coaching leading political figures on how to use the new medium of television and radio to their best advantage.
At one time during their ferocious tussles in the early 1980s, both Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey were in separate training rooms at its offices, preparing for the televised debates which were a feature of those close-fought elections.
Bernard “Bunny” Carr was born in Clontarf, Dublin, on July 31, 1927 and educated at the Holy Faith Convent. It was there he got his nickname — when a nun pinched his ear and said: “We have a little bunny rabbit here.”
When he left school, O’Connell’s in central Dublin after his secondary education, he got a job in the Bank of Ireland, in Ballinasloe, Co Galway before being transferred to O’Connell Street. Dublin. Although married to wife Joan and with a young family, he decided his job in a bank was not for him and went for a career change.
He said: “I heard there might be a job in Teilifis Eireann so I went along and the place was in such a chaotic state that nobody knew what was happening.
“I was handed a script and told I was on duty at 5.30pm — and it was 5.26pm at the time!” he said.
In 1970 and by then a household name, Carr — who enjoyed ideas rather than fronting television — joined the Catholic Communications Office near Montrose on a part-time basis. When his fellow worker Fr Tom Savage was no longer wanted, Carr established Carr Communications in 1973 as a media training and publicrelations company, with Savage and his wife Terry Prone as executives.
Carr had married Joan McInally, whom he met when she was a physiotherapy student, while he was still working for the bank. They had met at Sutton Tennis Club, Dublin, where Carr was an accomplished player and the men’s singles champion.
Tragedy struck the family in 1960 after Joan, by then a mother of two, rescued their son from an old cesspit at the bottom of their garden. Two months pregnant at the time, Joan contracted polio and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She gave birth to their youngest daughter Philomena when paralysed from the neck down.
Carr told Alan Corr: “I sat down and thought to myself how many guys over 50 are there in RTE still doing well? There was Gaybo, who’s a great old pal of mine, but that was it. I thought I’d better do something because when I die, I don’t want Joan to be evicted. So I started Carr Communications.”
He left RTE completely in 1984 when his communications company was picking up lucrative government contracts, particularly when Fianna Fail was in power.
In an exchange in the Dail some years ago, Deputy Michael Ring said that when members of Fianna Fail were appointed to positions of Minister of State, “the first thing they do is go to Bunny Carr’s organisation to learn how not to answer questions”.
Although a keen tennis player and swimmer, he suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with cancer during his treatment in 1988.
He retired from Carr Communications in 2004 and Joan, his wife of 51 years, died the following year. “Joan only did one mean thing in her life — she went to heaven without me,” he told Alan Corr.
Carr, who died last Wednesday, is survived by his children Carolyn, Alan and Philomena.