TV review: Main take-away from Extraordinary Life: The Ben Dunne Story is that people are complicated
Extraordinary Life: The Ben Dunne Story cuts to the chase. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan/Collins
(RTÉ One and RTÉ Player) cuts to the chase. It’s 1992. Ben Dunne has a sex worker in his Florida hotel room, he’s high on cocaine and he threatening to jump to his death.
U2 were in the same hotel at the time — when Bono told their band-manager about the commotion, he thought it involved one of the notorious Dunne crime family from Dublin.
That nugget reminds the viewer how shocking it was that an Irish establishment figure ended up hog-tied by the cops in a Florida hotel. His downfall was part of a piece, as scandal after scandal chipped away the status quo that had prevailed in Ireland for 70 years.
This documentary does a brilliant job at stitching together not just Ben Dunne’s event-packed life, but putting it in the context of a modernising Ireland.
So, while he might have attracted sympathy when he was kidnapped by Republican paramilitaries in 1981, he took a lot of flak when Dunnes’ workers went on strike rather than handle oranges from the apartheid state of South Africa.
Dunne was eventually kicked out of the family business after the episode in Florida.
I’m not sure what to think of him. He inherited the peculiar Cork charm known as grámhar, which would remind you of your mischievous uncle. But journalists Justine McCarthy, Michael Clifford and Sam Smyth are on hand here to remind us of questionable payments to politicians like Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry. Like most of the things that happened in public in 1980s Ireland, it all ended up in a tribunal.
I’d forgotten about “Thank you, big fella.” But here’s a young David McCullagh reporting from outside the Moriarty Tribunal, telling us that’s what Charlie Haughey said to Dunne when Ben gave him a few hefty bank drafts.
Joe Duffy probably owes him some thanks as well. Ben was never shy about coming on an explosive episode of to defend himself against accusations of corruption. There are clips here from appearances on and with Gerry Ryan, where he proved well able to laugh at his shortcomings . He was flawed, but he was out there and made for great copy, so the media lapped him up.
We’re supposed to hate ruthless businessmen who make payments to politicians. But Joe Duffy obviously liked him, warts and all, which is probably a good recommendation in life. Justine McCarthy, who wouldn’t be a natural admire r , concedes that people who knew Ben Dunne were fond of him. The main take-away from this hugely watchable documentary is that people are complicated, for better and for worse.
