An intellectual heavyweight ko’d by people politics

Though I was only in my late teens when David Thornley announced that he was joining the Labour Party, I can still remember the excitement.

Although he was one of a number of well-known intellectuals who joined the party in the late 1960s, he was the most attractive.

He had been the star of an equally well-known group of people — the presenters of Seven Days. It’s hard to imagine now that programme’s importance. Broadcast in black and white (RTÉ didn’t introduce colour until the early 1970s), it was RTÉ’s first foray into hard-hitting current affairs. The presenters became household names — Ted Nealon, Brian Farrell, Bill O’Herlihy, John O’Donoghue, and others.