Bunny Carr dies aged 91 - A gentleman

It is hard to imagine that Bunny Carr, who died aged 91 on Wednesday, would be as successful today as he was when he worked with RTÉ and with his communications company Carr Communications.

That is not a criticism of the man who changed Ireland’s understanding of how to communicate professionally but rather a back-handed compliment.

He simply seemed too well mannered, too rounded, too settled in himself to engage with today’s hyperactive version of the media world he thrived in. He might manage a contrived smile once or twice but he had an integrity about him that rejected insincerity.

Though out of the public eye for some time his legacy endures and is seen nearly everytime a public figure engages with an audience through television or radio.

He and his organisation turned more than one rough diamond — or worse — into plausible office holders.

He even led the Catholic Communications Centre in the 1970s teaching a generation of clerics how to best use the media to serve their ends.

He was, in the best sense of the phrase, an old-fashioned gentleman.