Dixies darling takes his final bow

IN THE heyday of the Dixies, Brendan O’Brien was used to stopping traffic.

Prodigiously talented and ridiculously good-looking, the showband’s lead singer and rhythm guitarist wowed his fans from Cork to Las Vegas during the 1960s and early 1970s.

He did it again yesterday during and after his funeral mass at St Patrick’s Church on the Lower Glanmire Road where hundreds of fans, friends and well-wishers joined his family to pay their respects to one of the greats of the showband era.