Feel special, have a dream, stay with it, David Puttnam tells Cork schoolkids

David Puttnam was greeted by a familiar soundtrack as he arrived yesterday at the place of learning of one of his own heroes, Michael Collins.

Lord Puttnam, as he is known in Westminster and beyond, is a long-time resident of Skibbereen and the man who, in his career as a filmmaker, commissioned the original script for the cinema depiction of Collins’s life. Yet as he arrived at Lisavaird National school near Clonakilty yesterday to unveil a tapestry in honour of the man, it was to the strains of Gabriel’s Oboe, from the soundtrack to another Puttnam film, The Mission, that welcomed him.

Flautist Rebecca Santry, a past pupil of Lisavaird National School, carried the melody on the wind as everyone stood in a West Cork breeze and listened. Just moments earlier in the hubbub school principal Oonagh O’Sullivan had asked the children forming the guard of honour to “put in your shirts, please”. By the time the song was finished playing, everyone looked immaculate.