Remembering Marian Our late colleague was a fearless trailblazer who changed the broadcasting landscape in this country. Andrea Byrne revisits a recent meeting with her, while her peers pay tribute to a unique voice in Irish radio
It’s an extraordinary thing, but Marian was supposed to be on the cover of this issue. I rst mooted an interview with her back in early autumn with the intention of running it in early December, but life, and magazine covers, never do run in straight lines. Marian and her beloved husband John were travelling to a wedding in India in December and she was going to be o air until early January, so it made more sense to do the interview on her return and run the story this week. She had just one request when we nally nailed down a date of November 20th last to do the photos in the Cli at Lyons in Co Kildare, not far from her home – she wanted the same team that she’d met on her previous photo-shoot with us up in Farmleigh in the Phoenix Park in 2016, if possible. Famously uncomfortable being ‘the story’, she hated doing ‘snaps’, almost never did interviews and so said she’d be more comfortable with a group she’d already worked with. Nonetheless, she was in great form, generous with her time and happy to be dragged all over the Lyons estate to get the best shots. For all her life in media, she was a shy woman and we were very grateful to have had the time with her.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis.
Catherine Lee, Managing Editor
It’s October 2016 and Marian Finucane is standing among the falling leaves in Dublin’s Farmleigh Estate, doing a very good job at pretending she’s enjoying herself. It’s cold and windy. Her eyes are streaming, causing her mascara to run, but she continues to smile for the camera. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she was used to being a photographer’s subject. In fact, this was the rst photo-shoot (and interview) she had done in a very long time.
In the shots, she’s wearing a so draped grey jumper (see inset pic). ere’s no need for heels. Marian is tall, slim and always elegant. She’s elegant in manner too, thanking each of the creative team individually for their work, before we head inside to talk and warm up.
We met on the day that the latest JNLR [radio listenership] gures have been released. e Marian Finucane Show, for the rst time in many years, had dipped slightly in its share of the audience. Admitting to being competitive in nature, Marian wasn’t happy about it and dreaded the new numbers for weeks before: “I regard it as doing your Leaving Cert in public, every three months,” she says with a throaty laugh, “And then the print media feckin’ love those arrows going up and down.” However, she remained sanguine. “Onwards and upwards and let’s have a look at what we did, how we’re doing it, what we can improve it, how we change it, how we can pace it, how we can tweak it. All of those things. We will have our targets, quietly.”
Quietly is how Marian lived almost all aspects of her life. Despite being one of the country’s bestknown names and most respected broadcasters, she lived a private life, rarely revealing any personal details about herself. Quite the achievement in an era when it is expected that media personalities
Andrea Byrne recalls the last time she met the late journalist and broadcaster
will invite the world into their lives. Not even inaccurate stories would prompt Marian to communicate with the press, as I found out inadvertently later in our interview. “You have to work at it,” she says, revealing that it was a decision she made very early on in her career. “I took the view that I chose a job that was in the public eye, but my family didn’t, so it’s a question of what you can in ict on your family, and I was absolutely determined that there was no question of kids being paraded around the place. Out of the question,” she says matter-of-factly.
Marian had two children: Jack who is now in his early 30s and due to become a father in the coming weeks; and Sinéad, who died in 1990 from leukaemia, at the age of eight. Pain was etched on Marian’s face at the mention of her daughter. “It’s always there,” she says, her eyes welling up. “Can we leave it at that?”
In 2015, it was widely reported that Marian and her partner of over 30 years, John Clarke, nally got married. ey were photographed outside a registry o ce, with many column inches devoted to the fact that the bride wore purple (she brought the dress along to the photo-shoot). Can I talk to you about the wedding? I asked hesitantly. “Slightly,” she allowed, with a wry smile. Did you have a nice day? “Lovely. We had a very nice lunch with family and then we had another lunch the following day. And that was it.” What made you get married a er all this time? “It was a renewal of vows. We were married, a long time ago.” at’s not known by many people? “Well I never talk about family,” she said simply. “Was your son Jack involved?” “Best man.”
Sensing that that’s all I’m getting, we move on to the topic of a recent trip she and John had returned from. In what was a second honeymoon of sorts, the couple travelled to Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. “We were saying, how would you describe it as a holiday? It wasn’t all R&R. I grew up with the Vietnam war going on in the news all of the time. Seeing all the movies, aware of the politics. Anyway, we saw this thing about a trip down the Mekong, and I thought ‘Jesus that sounds exotic’, and then we started buying the books, so I nearly know the colour of Ho Chi Minh’s underwear now, I did so much reading! So it was like going on a really comfortable study trip. It was fantastic.” Having travelled to India for a friend’s wedding in the weeks before she died, it’s clear Marian’s love of travel never le her.
At the time of our meeting in October 2016, Marian was approaching a signi cant 40year work anniversary with
RTÉ. “No?!” she protests as we work out the tale of years.
“Really?” she laughs, “I don’t like the sound of it, but the reality of it has been lovely.”
A native of Glasnevin in north Dublin, Marian rst trained as an architect and practiced for a couple of years ( Grand Designs was one of her favourite TV shows), before she joined RTÉ as a continuity announcer in 1976. Her rise was rapid and four years later, she became the rst ever presenter of Liveline, building its audience strongly and quickly, as she did with most programmes she worked on. She became a regular on TV too ( Consumer Choice, Crime Line), but radio was always where the magic happened for her. When Gay Byrne retired in 1999, she took over his early morning radio show, with Joe Du y assuming the Liveline hot seat. Six years later, she moved to weekend mornings, and her new show’s success surprised an industry that had never considered the weekend audience as signi cant. “Anne Farrell, who worked on the show from the beginning up until 2015, used to say that there was a joke around the Radio Centre that the weekend was called ‘gone shing’ because nobody took it seriously. Management didn’t look at it as a space to develop at all,” she said.
She made a success of a new show, building it without the foundation of an inherited listenership. “It is very rewarding,” she said, keen to credit her team with the show’s success.
While Marian was never one to boast and seemed almost uneasy talking about her success as a broadcaster (“I just got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time, with the right people”), the gures spoke for themselves. Her talent and appeal as a broadcaster was that she listened. It wasn’t about her, she never felt the need to show us how smart she was. It was about the guests and the listeners. She was the facilitator, and thus oversaw some of the nest radio interviews of the last decade. We all have a favourite Marian interview – her moving conversation with her friend, the late Nuala O’Faolain is a popular choice, but what was hers? “I really can’t give you a satisfactory answer to that, because there’s such a range that has been made available through the programme from people of all classes, colours, creeds, places in society, and some of them are heroes in their own way; others are of course pains in the neck in their own way, but that’s all part of life. I sometimes refer to an interview I did a very long time ago with a woman whose daughter had been murdered in Spain by her husband in front of their two children, and she had been diagnosed with cancer and she didn’t want to start the treatment ’cause she couldn’t get the body home. She was afraid she would miss her daughter’s funeral, but her instincts in terms of looking a er those kids would just blow you away. She was a fabulous woman. I o en wonder what happened a erwards.”
Given Marian’s determination to avoid the media glare, you may wonder why she agreed to be our cover star back in 2016. In short, she wanted to promote her two professional loves – her radio show, and her charity, Friends in Ireland, which
I just got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time, with the right people
I took the view that I chose a job that was in the public eye, but my family didn’t, so it’s a question of what you can inflict on your family
and husband John set up in 2002, following a visit to South Africa, where they witnessed first-hand the impact of HIV and Aids. While she did the interview for promotional reasons, I remember her being nothing but kind, warm, honest and approachable, making sure I had her mobile number in case I needed to clarify anything in the days after. When the magazine came out, she also sent a message of thanks.
Through her amazing work with Friends in Ireland, Marian admitted to having had some tough times dealing with the corruption that is all too common in South African society, but also revealing that her involvement in charity work had changed her as a person; “I hear things differently, and when you talk about the mess in our own health services and the mess – regrettably far too often – of incompetence and waste going on here, and talking about it being a third world country, you just have this thing running at the back of your head about what a third world country is really like. Little fellas coming out in T-shirts in the snow in the Drakensberg Mountains, because they don’t have any other clothes. But they would also really lift you up because they manage such a degree of happiness. Singing and laughter in the midst of what we would call absolute misery.”
As the many tributes have outlined, Marian possessed a unique mixture of fearlessness and compassion. I asked whether she ever considered a career in politics? “I did once,” she confessed. “Think about it, that is. But no, I would hate it now.” What about the Presidency? “I thought about it. It’s nice to be asked, but no.” You were asked? “Yes.”
As we’re packing up to leave, a man approaches Marian. He shakes her hand, tells us a very sad family story, and how an item on her show a few years back gave them solace in a time of immense grief. The conversation leaves all three of us upset. As we walk to her car, Marian, who is still visibly affected by the kind stranger’s words, turns to me and simply says, “The power of radio.”
More like the power of Marian.
Cover shoot credits Photography: Kip Carroll; make-up: Michelle Montgomery ; stylist: Roxanne Parker; location: Cliff at Lyons, cliffatlyons.ie