Terry Prone: David Hanly was 'Mr Morning Ireland', ready to take on anyone
The death of David Hanly, aged 82, was announced on Friday with tributes flooding in for a man who had a distinguished career as a broadcaster and writer. File photo: Colin Keegan
The interviewee arrived early at the RTÉ Morning Ireland studios, which allowed the producer to note that they were all-body shaking.
The producer asked why. Terror, the interviewee confided. Absolute terror of the man who was going to interview him.
“David?” the producer said. “David Hanly?”
The guest nodded. He was frightened to death, he admitted. David Hanly was so aggressive.
The producer laughed and swore to the guest that they were basing their view of Hanly on the presenter’s growl.
“Nothing behind the growl other than curiosity,” he said.
"David’s one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in a radio studio. Good listener. You’re the expert on your subject — he’ll give you all the space you need. Trust me.”
And that’s how it played out.
The death of David Hanly, aged 82, was announced on Friday with tributes flooding in for a man who had a distinguished career as a broadcaster and writer.
The producer had never told Hanly how he had scared a guest witless, because Hanly would have been hurt, rather than flattered by the information.
Hanly was Ireland’s Robin Day, the big name in BBC current affairs in the 1970s and 1980s. Equally clever, but much less performative, much more sensitive.
When he had been a print journalist, he was sent on one occasion to the home of the mother of a man believed to have murdered several people.
The journalist had been instructed by his editor to get a recent photograph of the man and an interview with the mother. David Hanly duly pitched up at the house, knocked on the door — and received no answer.
He repeated the performance twice more, his heart filling with hope that the woman was away and might not return by his deadline, so he wouldn’t have to put her through the misery of being asked questions about her son, or worse, through the request to produce a picture of him.
He pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket and printed a message to her, identifying himself and his purpose and expressing his belief that she probably, on her return, would not want to talk to him, and that was fine, too.
He indicated (this being before mobile phones) that he was headed for the local pub and in the unlikely event of her wanting to talk to him, she could reach him there within the next hour and a half.
Then he slid the folded-over note under the door and headed for the pub. Sixty minutes later, the pub phone rang and was handed to him.
It was the mother, warm and welcoming, inviting him to return to the house, where she gave him several pictures of her accused murderer son at different ages, and gestured to him to ask whatever questions he wanted to ask.
Hanly left with a scoop he knew he didn’t deserve and frequently, thereafter, told the story against himself, reminding his listeners that arguably the most fundamental human need is to be listened to, to be heard, even if the listener is a card-carrying NUJ member.
The murderer’s mother actually needed to talk, needed a listening ear.
Hanly was multi-talented. His 1979 novel, , was so impelling and assured that book lovers assumed it would be followed by many others, although it wasn’t.
He now and again performed publicly with his singer-songwriter brother Mick.
He did a TV series.
But for a generation, he was Mr Morning Ireland, ready to take on anyone, the greeting growl out of him serving as the starter gun for the day.
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