Media work saved my life, says retiring George Hook

As straight-talking rugby pundit George Hook begins to wind down his illustrious career, the broadcaster has taken to the airwaves to credit his media work with saving his life.

Tue, 24 Mar, 2015 - 00:00

Kelly O'Brien

“Of course it saved my life,” he told RTÉ radio yesterday.

“The day Niall Cogley rang me up to do a match, best part of 20 years ago… the other phone calls I was receiving were from the Irish Permanent — ‘We need you in the High Court, we want to evict you’; my wife saying ‘Howya, I really don’t want you back any more’; and about 11 banks on a near-daily basis saying ‘What about the money you owe us?’”

Hook says he never expected to have financial security. “I never thought I’d have a pension. I thought paying for the groceries was the maximum of my achievement.”

The curmudgeonly pundit also revealed a desire to be liked by the public, citing his stint as Grand Marshal of Cork City’s St Patrick’s Day parade last week.

Being Grand Marshall at the Cork St. Patrick's Day Festival was one of the great moments of my life.
— George Hook (@ghook) March 17, 2015

“I tried to shake every hand, they’re all Cork people,” he said. “And there was an outpouring of amnesty and liking for me. Now I don’t care who you are, nobody can say they don’t like to be liked.

“And to walk for, I dunno, is it two or three miles up the Mall, across Grand Parade, down Patrick’s St, and to do that with people six deep, and they’re all saying, in essence, ‘We like you’.”

Meeting the crowds at the Cork #StPatricksDay Festival pic.twitter.com/kyhdhPuT7a
— George Hook (@ghook) March 17, 2015

Referencing Sally Field’s gushing acceptance of an Oscar in 1985, Hook said: “There was an Oscar’s speech you might remember, by a woman, and I can’t remember her name just for the moment, and she said ‘You love me, I know you love me’, and we all thought that was terrible.

“I thought of her on Patrick’s Day. I know what she means. Because you don’t know that people like you. Certainly, doing the job I do, when you get abused on Twitter and d on Facebook and then you think, well maybe people don’t like me.”

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On Saturday, Hook retired from RTÉ’s rugby panel after Ireland’s dramatic Six Nations victory, going out with very little fanfare. It is the start of a huge scale-back for Hook, who is also due to finish presenting his Newstalk show, having presented the show since 2002.