Charlie is fit, well and full of common sense — just don’t mention cocooning
CHARLIE Bird is making breakfast in bed for his wife Claire the morning after their fourth wedding anniversary. He asks if he can delay his scheduled call with the
Sunday Independent because, well, priorities.
At 70, he has made an unexpected comeback as the voice of ‘common sense’. An old-fashioned concept much needed in a country left terrified by the pandemic. As stories circulate of people too scared to talk to neighbours from a social distance, others washing groceries before putting them in the car and many elderly not venturing out for fresh air, RTE’s former chief correspondent has breaking news: life is all about taking reasonable risk.
His lessons on last Wednesday’s edition of
The Tonight Show about the scourge of casual ageism, the importance of questioning authority and, what he sees as the madness of telling older people to ‘cocoon’, must have struck a chord. The show was the most viewed episode outside of election specials since it began broadcasting.
He says today: “I hate the word cocooning, it drives me mad. I don’t think a generation should be to told to cocoon.” He believes everyone should follow social distancing and the travel limit. And “people with underlying illness should be looked after”. But he stresses: “At every turn, there needs to be common sense.”
He tells the story of a woman in her eighties living on the Aran Islands: “I rang her the other day to see how she was doing. And she said ‘Oh my God, Charlie, I heard Leo on last Friday night [the night he told the country to lock down] and I was so frightened I went to sleep that night and I didn’t leave my house for five days. And after that I felt so sick I went to the doctor and when he took my blood pressure it was through the roof. He said ‘what is going on?’ And I told him I hadn’t been out. He said ‘will you get out and get some fresh air!’
“She had the whole island to herself,” Charlie says, “yet she was mentally locked in her head. She had become a prisoner to herself. There was no logic in that.”
He tells another anecdote, about gardening in lockdown: “I was cutting my hedge with the electric trimmer and I cut into my leg. I was blessed it didn’t go far in but for about half an hour, while Claire was out of the house, I was sitting on my own in the garden looking at my trousers and the blood and I was scared sh*tless.” Even at home, he says, “every day in life you take risks”.
He refuses to be corralled by the Government, who he says “picked an arbitrary number and said ‘OK so you’re 70! You must be locked away’.” And he rejects any free pass because of his age. While shopping he spends two hours queuing and won’t go to the line that allows the elderly to skip. “I will stand like everybody else because I don’t believe I need that treatment.”
He had been clocking 16 miles a day on his Fitbit before the crisis hit. “I got a message from [the device] telling me I had walked the length of the Great Barrier Reef — 1,600 miles,” he says.
He’s coy about how much he stretches his legs lately. “I want to be careful with what I am saying because I don’t want sh*t to be poured down on me but one day this week I walked 20 miles.” He keeps it within the rules. “I went round and round and round my 5km, I’ll put it that way.”
He certainly doesn’t look like a cocooner. While on The Tonight Show, several social media commentators were quick to point out his resemblance to Hollywood actor Al Pacino: “Charlie Bird Pacino” one post said beside a quote from the Godfather star; “Sorry Charlie Bird is 70?!! Coolest looking septuagenarian I’ve seen in while!” said another. Then a young woman:
“Look at you Charlie Bird! He could[nt] afford to stay in lockdown looking that well!’ and a male viewer: “I genuinely hope I age like Charlie Bird.”
He laughs at the comparisons: “I had to ask Claire who Al Pacino was, I had no idea.” Ah come on Charlie, I say, and list off some of the great man’s movies. The Godfather? Scarface? The Irishman?
At last comes a hint of recognition: “Ah right!”
“I’m lucky it’s in my genes – most people think I’m around 60. I don’t feel 70 and that’s why I don’t want myself or anyone else to be bracketed.”
He received even more praise for his reminder that it was crucial to hold decision-makers to account. He tackles the phenomenon of pulling on the green jersey, the idea that first came to prominence during Ireland’s banking crisis.
“The green jersey [means] if we are under attack that we all must roll together — and that’s reasonable,” says Charlie. But he is aware of its negative connotations — using the national interest as an excuse for not questioning authority — and warns: “We must temper it. We were all so corralled into asking nothing because [it was felt] it wouldn’t be right to ask to ask a hard question because it would be ‘disloyal’. But I don’t think it is disloyal to ask a question, it’s the way you phrase it.”
He points to the use of language to keep people in check, and the way the word complacency is thrown around. Every time a news story questions what the Government is doing, a minister pops up saying, ‘We mustn’t become complacent’. He says: “I don’t think we have to be browbeaten any more, we have to be spoken to as adults.”
Perhaps his no-nonsense view of life and risk can be traced to his time in journalism. Even though he describes today’s death toll from Covid-19 as “horrifying”, his experiences on the frontline have given him perspective.
“The number of people who have now died around the world is 300,000. Do you know how many people died in Haiti? — 200,000 in one day. And I covered that.”
His 30-year career taught him that “there is a beginning, a middle and an end to every story” and this will be no different. “We have to have hope”.
These days he is enjoying life with his wife and is more humble than the man often accused of making himself the centre of the story (although in America they would merely see it as Gonzo journalism).
When asked what he thinks of the RTE Washington correspondents who followed him, he admits: “To be honest, they were all better than me.”
Of his former colleague Sean O’Rourke, who turns 65 on Friday, not being kept on by RTE while the biggest news event in generations rages on, he says: “I didn’t like it. I’m being blunt.”
Before he goes, I ask what he and Claire did for their anniversary. “Nothing much. I had a few beers and she had a glass of wine.”
“Makes sense, since you’re cocooning,” I tell him.
Talk about setting him off again: “I am not cocooning! I am not cocooning!! I AM NOT COCOONING!!!”
Charlie Bird is not cocooning. Understood?
‘I was looking at the blood... every day in life you take risks’