Sean Og O Ceallachain
The world’s longest serving broadcaster truly deserved his entry in the Guinness Book of Records, writes John O’brien
AFEW years back, during an interview with Weeshie Fogarty, Sean Og O Ceallachain told a story to illustrate his deep fondness for Kerry. As a boy he had spent a summer in the Gaeltacht in a little place just a stone’s throw from Ballyferriter. The master of the house, he remembered, was a man called Liam Budhlaeir. Liam had a son, a little older than Sean Og, called Muiris.
Some 50 years later, O Ceallachain was on holiday in the area with his wife and decided to swing by Ballyferriter to see what, if anything, remained of the old place. To his amazement, it was as if time had stood still. “The same house,” he said. “The sacred heart picture on the wall with a red lamp under it. The old grandfather clock the same as it was 50 years previous and Muiris too, there he was now, Maistir an Scoile.”
The same sense of permanence, of immovable rock in a world spinning ever faster, was what distinguished O Ceallachain as a broadcaster and made his iconic Sunday night GAA results’ programme a veritable institution for its entire lifespan, from its inception under his father, Sean, in 1931 to the very last “Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis” delivered in Sean Og’s typically honeyed and soothing tones in May 2011.
He’d joined his father as a broadcaster in 1948, the same year he played for Dublin in an All-Ireland hurling final. Four years later he refereed the minor football final between Galway and Cavan. But for all his love, the GAA didn’t fully define him. He loved all sports, playing snooker and cricket. At his local tennis club, he was seduced by a soccer team and played a number of games. Under an assumed name, naturally.
Without being overtly political, he had a profoundly liberal outlook. Famously, he stood defiant against GAA authorities when they tried to block him naming dismissed players on his programme. He was proud of the GAA and its values, but always keen to see it move forward and display all its grandeur to the world. He saw the Ban go in 1971, Rule 21 expire 30 years later and lived to see Croke Park opened up in 2005. These momentous changes would have delighted him.
His own immense contribution was understated, hidden in the lovely warm stories and little kindnesses that were mostly not for public consumption, like the Roscommon lady who wrote to explain it was while listening to Sean Og’s programme that she had plucked up the courage to leave the city and return home to her roots to live out her days. Those broadcasts meant more to people than even O Ceallachain could ever imagine.
The entry he merited in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s longest-serving broadcaster was entirely fitting, because it was a show with true global appeal. In times when flights were beyond affordable and mobile phones didn’t exist, O Ceallachain’s broadcasts were a vital link with home for generations of emigrants, hoping for a flicker of good news on Sunday evening or, if disappointed, then happy to know anyway.
In his books and occasional newspaper columns, O Ceallachain was a relentless and important chronicler of Irish life, but his global outlook should arguably stand as his true legacy. In later years, when the show incorporated interviews into its repertoire, he often turned to emigrants for subjects, fascinated to see how little pockets of the game were sprouting up in the most surprising destinations across the globe.
In the end, perhaps, it was that very globalisation, the sense of a world rapidly contracting, that overtook him and made his programme an anachronism. But that doesn’t dim his legacy or undermine the critical role he played in the evolution of an organisation now able to present such a brave and enlightened face to the world.
God bless Sean Og.