Fr Cleary, the obnoxious hypocrite, wasn’t half the man his son is

THE television programme on RTÉ on Monday night At Home with the Clearys was a reminder of the megalomania of the late Fr Michael Cleary, a man who was always happy to be in the limelight as long as he was telling other people what to do.

When confronted with his personal issues and domestic situation, however, he was a hypocritical coward. At one stage, as the net was closing, Phyllis Hamilton, the young woman he impregnated and turned into a troubled, self-harming and scared alcoholic, stabbed Cleary in the leg with a knife he was trying to take from her. He fled to his sister’s house for refuge — but was never honest with his family about his “housekeeper” Phyllis, who died in 2001, eight years after Cleary’s death.

It was an absorbing documentary, not just because of its exposure of the misogyny, bullying and manipulation that formed the spine of Cleary’s career but because it also revealed that his son Ross, who he refused to acknowledge, has battled with his own demons and emerged as a mature, insightful and emotionally intelligent young man who has dealt with the death of his monstrous father and traumatised mother with grace and dignity.