Niall beat hurdles to bring generations joy
ONE of Niall Tóibín’s most memorable performances was not on stage or screen but on a golf course. Last week a friend recalled how Niall had tried to channel his masterly technique as a stage performer to play perfect golf. But after duffing yet another shot he threw clubs, bag and buggy into a pond – to the horror of his pals in the four-ball. Later, he showed his gift for comedic improvisation with a dancing routine in the pond to redeem his golfing gear – his club membership and reputation. It was, I’m told, a forerunner to John Cleese beating his Austin 1100 with a stick in Fawlty Towers.
There was always something about Niall Tóibín beyond his astonishing skills as an actor and a performer. I suspect deep frustration lurked below that huge talent and trade professionalism.
He had watched other Irish actors – some who would not have had such consummate skill or experience in their craft as he did – go off to the West End stage and Hollywood to achieve international fame and great wealth.
HE HAD the reputation for being ‘difficult’ in the earlier years of his 60-something year career. But whatever inconveniences were suffered by a few impresarios were more than compensated for by the joy he gave generations of Irish audiences.
When he stopped drinking and rearranged his attitude to work, colleagues say he was a joy to work with – and he had a clever quip for every occasion: ‘Oh no, it [drink] wasn’t giving me problems, it was giving everybody else problems.’
He died aged 89 which meant he was a struggling actor from 1953 when there was little work, starvation wages and more suspicion than appreciation for actors and performers.
A proud Corkman when he lived in Dublin, he watched Richard Harris’s international career blossom – and saw him get the part of the Bull McCabe in the film of The Field that Tóibín had made his own on the Abbey stage in 1987. He won a Tony award for his portrayal of Brendan Behan in Borstal Boy on Broadway and no other actor captured the spirit of
Behan like Tóibín. After he appeared in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter and Ron Howard’s Far And Away, both filmed in Dingle, he was always in line for a part in any film or television series made in Ireland. He also featured in Channel 4’s The Irish RM and BBC’s Ballykissangel.
In the early 1980s he appeared for three seasons at the National Theatre in London. He was in the Veronica Guerin film and in many RTÉ series as well as sell-out productions on the Irish stage. He later said the highlights of his career were all on stage at the Gaiety Theatre.
He also had the pitch-perfect ear of a great musician and could hear – and repeat – the subtle differences in accents that he would twin with the stereotypes of character of each Irish county.
He summed up his career as an actor: ‘We trade in delusions, sleight of mind, fantasies, makebelieve. The primary delusion is convincing ourselves that what we are up to matters a damn.’
Niall Tóibín mattered… and so did what he did.
HATS off to BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme and reporter Jim Fitzpatrick for their scoop on the suffering of Kevin Lunney and earlier investigations into Seán Quinn’s companies. Darragh McIntyre’s earlier confrontation with Cyril ‘Dublin Jimmy’ McGuinness on Spotlight showed why the border counties were bandit country for nearly two generations.
NOW in his 60th year, Bono apparently appreciated the anonymity of being just another middle-aged man arriving in Australia’s Gold Coast last week. U2 were greeted like returning heroes in the stadium where they performed later but the press gang gathered at Brisbane airport ignored them as they arrived earlier.
Paparazzo were scrutinising arriving passengers for contestants in the I’m A Celebrity… reality television show which is made in a jungle near Brisbane – and where bushfires were raging last week. And U2 slipped away to their limousines under the noses of the waiting press.