Keys To My Life review: Blend of joy and sadness in Luke O'Neill's life
Luke O'Neill and Brendan Courtney on Keys To My Life.
Joy leaps out of the screen all through the final episode of RTÉ’s .
We’re journeying with Luke O’Neill — whom presenter Brendan Courtney calls the “smiliest scientist” — through the homes of his past.
It’s not that there isn’t sadness. There is, but it’s set against the backdrop of a positive, resilient life.
In the end-of-terrace house in Bray, Luke’s home until he was 21, he recalls the endless sing-songs, typical of a childhood he calls “joyous”. He doesn’t spare us the serious side — his father, conscripted into the British Army in 1940, drove a truck in the desert during WW2 and was “quite traumatised” by it. Looking back, Luke recognises his dad had PTSD.
In his childhood bedroom, Courtney hands him a replica of the chemistry set he played with at 11, a gift from his mother. He laughs mischievously as he recalls putting “every chemical” into a test tube one day, how it exploded and left a black stain on the ceiling for years.
And then we’re told the tragedy he experienced at 12: his mother got breast cancer, dying five years later during his first year as a Trinity College student.
While Bray formed him, the tower block in East London where he moved in 1985 was the “jump off” for the rest of his life. Here he recalls the great sense of freedom — and busking on the underground to make money for a night’s drinking.
Sharing the house with his sister, he learned about life from her, about politics, Marxism — about how serious things can get, as he witnessed her supporting women, over from Ireland for abortions. “I’d go back to Ireland and tell people… I was so proud of my sister.”
And then to Dublin’s Sandycove, home of his early married life and the birth of his boys. The world-renowned immunologist has had a stellar career — what he’s most proud of is his two sons “by a country mile”.
Yet, he’s frank about his rocky transition to fatherhood. The pressure of building a career in the lab and a new baby plunged him into depression. He visited his GP and “the cloud lifted” after some months. “Never hesitate to look for help,” he says.
And here is the level-headed voice that reassured us through the scary Covid threat — that beamed into our homes when we couldn’t venture much beyond our own front doors.
The episode finishes with Luke playing at Electric Picnic with his band, The Metabollix. His absolute open joy at belting out Bob Dylan alongside his younger son is a complete pleasure to see. And he closes the show in true Luke O’Neill style, telling us: “The only way is up.”
