Unprecedented TV coverage for C’Island

CASTLEISLAND is to be the focus of an unprecedented level of television exposure over the next few weeks.

And it started on Sunday morning, February 11th with Fr. Dan O’Riordan as he celebrated Mass live on RTÉ One Television and Radio One at 11am along with Castleisland Parish Choir.

Rehearsals had been ongoing since the invitation arrived early last November for this trip and great honour.

The choir also highlighted its considerable presence in the sell-out home concert with the Three Tenors at the Church of Saints Stephen and John just before Christmas.

Then, in just under two weeks time, the town will again go nation wide courtesy of the Nationwide team which visited on Tuesday and Wednesday and shot and spoke to people all around them.

The team visited at the invitation of Charlie Daly from Currow and a member of the Castle of the Island Society which is currently in the post production process of the groundbreaking film being made by his nephew Rob McGuire.

A reception for the Nationwide team was attended by many of the locals being featured in the course of the shoot over the team’s stay in town.

The event had all the hallmarks of the style with which Divanes Castleisland is synonymous and after a cúpla focal from Charlie Daly it was down to serious business of filming and talking for the following 24 hours or so.

There was a, perhaps hidden, certainly coincidental celebration at the team’s parting glass at Tom McCarthy’s Central Bar on Wednesday afternoon. The woman of the house, Mary McCarthy celebrated a significant birthday on the day and the team recorded musician, Proinnsías O’Sullivan and singer, Eileen McSweeney as they honoured the occasion and their native town with their version of Castleisland.

It was Charlie Daly’s idea floated to the Nationwide team which brought them down and he said that they were delighted at how everyone rowed in and helped out.

“The Nationwide team was very impressed with the town’s ability to raise the funds needed to put its range of facilities in place. They were particularly taken by the appearance and the very presence of An Ríocht Health and Leisure facility in a town of its size,” said Mr. Daly.

The programme featuring the Castleisland shoot is likely to be shown later this month with Wednesday, February 21 pencilled in as the date for airing.

Then, you’ll have to adjust your TV set and rise and shine as the Murder, Mystery and My Family series will be screened on BBC 1 at 9:15am each morning from February 26th and into the early weeks of March.

There will be more specific details later but the John Twiss special will be screened as part of this series.

Chalkboard TV Production Company spent a few days filming in the Cordal and Castleisland areas as well as parts of Cork City and county for this programme.

It had the working title then of: My Grand-dad Was Innocent and now it’s all in the can and ready for screening under the title: Murder, Mystery and My Family.

There is considerable interest locally in the findings of the John Twiss programme as the makers put the evidence against the unfortunate Cordal native, John Twiss under a forensic scope. After a trial that was hopelessly tilted against him, he was eventually hanged in Cork County Jail on February 9 in 1895.

Photo byJohn Reidy Pictured during the Nationwide reception at Divanes Castleisland were: Phil Skeahan, Brendan O’Sullivan and Paul Langston, sales Divanes; Mary Kennedy, Nationwide Presenter and Denis Divane, MD, Divanes Castleisland.