'He's been up and down, we're coping as best we can' – Kathleen Watkins talks grief, forgiveness and minding Gay Byrne

Carol Ann Duffy, whose poem Text Kathleen Watkins uses in her new anthology, was “too busy” to go on the Late Late. This almost seems like the Irish equivalent of refusing a knighthood but the poem made it into the book, The Ordinary Woman and Other Poems I Love, anyway, and it is a touchingly familiar vignette of modern life:

I tend the mobile now, like an injured bird

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We text text text

Our significant words

I reread your first, your second, your third

Looking for your small xx

Feeling absurd

It’s easy to imagine Gay and Kathleen firing texts back and forth like this. When I interviewed him a few years ago he said the secret to life was understanding that she is the boss. And now his health has meant she has had to be, for Kathleen is tending to her own injured bird. Earlier this year Gay was unable to pick up a lifetime achievement award because of a broken wrist and a chest infection. In the meantime, he has also been receiving treatment for cancer.

“He’s been up and down, we’re coping as best we can,” Kathleen tells me. “It’s an ongoing situation, treatment is ongoing. We have incredible support from our family and friends and we’re lucky because a lot of people our age have family all around the world; we have our two daughters here, one in Clare and one in Howth, and they are like scaffolding around us.”

Gay still keeps active. They will meet for lunch at the InterContinental hotel after our interview there. Kathleen is a well-known face in her own right – she has a storied broadcasting career, going back to the earliest days of Irish television – but she is used to people’s freakouts when they encounter the pope of Irish broadcasting.

“Once, one rather large lady actually bosomed me out of the way to get to him. I don’t think she even noticed that I was there or that it was happening!”

Despite this she never begrudged Gay his adoring public. “Maureen Potter used to do a skit of the woman saying ‘wipe that child’s nose, it’s Gay!’ I saw a famous rugby player recently being greeted by people and he looked so uncomfortable. He wanted to be anywhere else. Gay was never like this. His attitude was: so you want to be on television? Well, these are the people looking in.”

Sadly, Kathleen doesn’t expect Gay to do any more television. “I don’t think so, I can’t see that happening at this time. It was some career he had, we have all that memorabilia, a pile of stuff. But life goes on and other people take over. I think it’s very difficult to broadcast in this era, because I don’t think people are watching television in the same way.”

Kathleen grew up in Saggart, Co Dublin. Her early life was marred by tragedy: in her childhood three of her siblings died – two toddlers and a 12-year-old.

“In the book, funnily enough, I picked a Francis Ledwidge poem and there’s a line in it which says ‘for there is that in her that always mourns’,” she says. “And I read that line and I thought to myself ‘that’s my mother’. There was something in her that always mourned. Nobody had ever voiced it but I became aware of it. I remember the 12-year-old but I don’t know what happened to the other two children. I’m not sure, they were never talked about.”

Kathleen was a continuity announcer on RTE when it went on the air in 1961. A renowned harpist, she had her harp specially tuned so that she could go on air and play if there were any technical difficulties during that first night’s programming.

During those early years she had an encounter with the poet Padraic Colum, which highlights the gentle tact that is one of her characteristics.

“He came into our announcers’ studio, and just when he was about to go on the air there was a horn of hair sticking up on his head. There was a lot of elbowing of each other and people saying ‘no you tell him, you tell him’ and I said ‘hold on here, I’ll tell him myself’. And I’m happy to say I smoothed down the hair of the great poet.” She beams with pride at the memory.

After a somewhat on-off courtship, she and Gay were married in 1964. Over a thousand well-wishers crowded into the Saggart church to catch a glimpse of the wedding, where Eamonn Andrews was one of the guests. After the ceremony, gardai escorted the couple to their car.

In married life Kathleen revelled in the atmosphere of change in the country at the time. The Late Late was a sort of town hall of social progress, and Kathleen with her harp playing was a comforting symbol of continuity with the past.

“Ireland was really emerging as never before when we were in our twenties. We were invited to meet people from all aspects of Irish life. It was a privilege to feel part of it all.”

Despite Gay’s fame she says they led a fairly normal existence.

“Our house was very private; The Late, Late Show and The Gay Byrne Show were something outside, it was the office. People used to say ‘oh he must be away a lot’ and I’d say ‘away where? He comes home at 7.15pm every night for his dinner, always did’.”

The couple had two girls, Suzie and Crona, who loved “the buzz and excitement” of their father’s workplace. Kathleen preferred to watch him at home, by herself.

“The only way to watch a television show is to watch it on your own. The Friday night was my night by myself to do various jobs and to sit down and relax with the Late Late. I find if you watch television with someone else, people begin talking and you miss a comment or something important on the screen. I had a friend who had her curlers in and her prayers said… her husband was a man for the pub, but nothing got in the way of the Late Late.”

The show and Gay’s position as the most important man in Irish broadcasting ought to have set the couple up financially for life. But in 1986, Gay discovered to his horror that his friend and accountant, Russell Murphy, had swindled him out of more than €200,000. I wonder how that affected Kathleen.

“It was certainly extremely upsetting at the time,” she recalls, “but I would also say that that’s all in the past and we have to be mindful that he has relatives out there who are very nice people. All I can say is: Lord rest the man himself. At the time it was horrific, but it’s amazing how you bounce back. The important things in life are family and friends and real people.”

In the last few years, Kathleen wrote a series of children’s books called Pigin of Howth – featuring a badger supposedly based on developer Johnny Ronan – which were a huge success. They began life as a story she would tell her grandchildren about a little piglet that followed her around. She says one of her granddaughters, Sadbh, has now inherited her famous harp. “But they have lots of hobbies, soccer, tennis, sailing. They all love GAA. My grandson is a referee. I learned that boys can be referees at 14, girls can be referees at 16, and I’d like to know why. Referees get a lot of abuse and don’t react, and I think that’s a wonderful discipline to have in life.”

Kathleen is 85 now and says she balances the declining body against the unwavering spirit. “I’m up and down like everyone else, I have ailments,” she explains. “But I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she had gone to meet so many former work colleagues who were feeble or unwell, and we were saying how lucky we were that we can still get out and drive a car.

“As I sit here with you now I really feel terrific. The Lord has given me tremendous energy that I can look after Gay and so there is a lot to be grateful for, we count our blessings.”

The Ordinary Woman and Other Poems I Love, compiled by Kathleen Watkins, will be published by Gill Books on Friday, October 11, priced at €14.99. Kathleen will be in conversation with Dermot Bolger at the Civic Theatre on Friday, October 11 at 3pm, for Red Line Book Festival. Tickets are available at www.redlinebookfestival.ie

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