Obituary: Tommie Gorman, former RTÉ Northern editor who became a trusted figure in Irish life
Tommie Gorman was an affable, determined and “solutions-driven” journalist who became a household name with his reporting from Northern Ireland, Brussels and, famously, for his interview with the mercurial Roy Keane during the Saipan World Cup crisis in 2002.
He started his career as a journeyman reporter in provincial newspapers, but through hard work, ambition, and superb contacts, became one of RTÉ’s best-known correspondents and although he never became the story, he inserted himself into many of them.
Tommie Gorman’s autobiography was aptly titled Never Better, his sunny reply when asked how he was. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer but he never let it become the focus of his life, although it did become the subject of a documentary.
He died last Tuesday aged 68 after an operation connected to this illness.
The journalist Mary Finnegan once said that if you knew Mike Burns, Tommie Gorman and Garech Browne you could get a phone number for almost anybody in the world with an interest in Ireland, as they were all so well connected in different spheres of influence.
Although he had no academic qualifications Gorman absorbed and learned from everybody he met and had an uncanny ability to make connections. When I met him for the first time he recalled immediately that my uncle Tommy Farrell from Mullingar had once given him a lift when he was “thumbing” home to Sligo as a student.
From his mentor John Healy, author of The Death of an Irish Town, to RTÉ producer John Blackman “who taught me images and sounds are the spine of a television story” to his own philosophy of “telling myself I was about to have a brief chat with my neighbours and it was vital to talk in terms they understood”, Gorman became a trusted figure in Irish life, interviewing a myriad of politicians and others from poet Seamus Heaney to businessman Seán Quinn.
Along the way he brought his own style to memorable occasions. “Keen to not look tired or ill, I always sought to dress sharply, in a formal rather than casual way,” he said in his autobiography.
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern recalled in the Irish Independent Gorman’s role in Irish journalism. “The best example of Tommie being a solutions-driven reporter that I can give was Saipan. He tried to be a mediator between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy and he put me, as taoiseach, on standby. I remember he was working in overdrive for days.”
Tommie Gorman, the son of cattle dealer Joe Gorman and his wife Maureen, was born in Cairns Road, Sligo on April 3, 1956. He attended Scoil Fatima and St John’s national school before going to Summerhill College in September 1969.
He was an avid and lifelong Sligo Rovers fan and among his many memorable trips was one to Glasgow to play in a tournament organised by Celtic assistant-manager Sean Fallon, who was from Sligo.
He got a place in the journalism course at Rathmines College, but left following a failed romance with another Sligo student, Mary Kerrigan, and an offer to join John Healy and Jim Maguire as the Sligo correspondent of the fledgling Western Journal.
When Sligo Rovers qualified to play Red Star Belgrade in the European Cup, Gorman missed an opportunity to sit his postponed final exams to travel instead to Yugoslavia to report on the match. At the age of 23 he was appointed editor of the Western Journal based in Ballina, Co Mayo.
In 1980 Mike Burns gave him the job of north-west correspondent of RTÉ. His brief included covering events in Derry. “I was utterly unprepared for the full-on, vivid tableau of mayhem I encountered a two-hour journey up the road,” he wrote of his first riot. But it whetted his appetite for the place and its people.
In 1989 Gorman moved to Brussels as Europe editor, where he covered the EEC as it then was and Ireland’s new Commissioner and Sligo man, Ray MacSharry, as well as various summits and stories like the fall of the Berlin Wall.
His producers in RTÉ included Kevin Bakhurst, who became a close friend and among his colleagues in the Brussels press pack was a 24-year-old Boris Johnson. “The glint in his eye and his half smile gave Boris a likeability factor,” Gorman wrote. “He rarely gave the impression of being 100pc serious. But, as a communicator, he had a special gift for crafting headline stories that were almost true.”
In 1993, at the age of 37 and based in Belgium, he was hospitalised with an appendix problem. There he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, small tumours that grow slowly and had spread to his liver. “I wasn’t frightened by the idea of having cancer or ashamed of it,” he wrote.
“I didn’t feel that I was terminally ill. The low moment came when Ceara [his wife] swept into the ward with our nine-month-old daughter Moya, keen to hear how the appendix problem had been tackled. That exchange, sharing unexpected news, was the only time that I struggled to keep things together.”
His illness and lengthy treatment in Sweden became the subject of the RTÉ documentary Ireland, Cancer and Me, which he said later “drew me into a public spat with some of [Ireland’s] most accomplished consultants”.
In 2002 Gorman secured the first interview with Roy Keane in Manchester after the bust-up in Saipan through a long-time contact, Michael Kennedy, Keane’s adviser. The tournament was still in progress but his efforts to woo Keane back to the Irish squad were unsuccessful.
His family relocated to Sligo in 1997, with him commuting to Brussels until 2001, when he took over as Northern editor at RTÉ.
“The main work-related attraction of switching from Brussels to Belfast was that it offered a ringside seat to observe and report on the peace process.” It was one that he relished, becoming a familiar figure to political leaders of all persuasions.
Gorman retired in April 2021 and returned to live in Lisheen, close to the sea and under the shadow of Knocknarea mountain where he wrote his memoirs.
At a reception to launch his memoir in the Irish embassy in London, Ambassador Martin Fraser said: “Like all good people, you don’t have to agree with everything Tommie says, and Tommie doesn’t have to agree with everything we think or say or do but we all trust Tommie and we all respect Tommie and we all love Tommie.”
He was honoured to be asked to give the 2023 oration at Béal na Bláth in Cork, commemorating the ambush where Michael Collins was killed.
“In my working life I’ve seen the ballot box replace the Armalite, the resilience of democracy, the power of generosity and the liberating force of forgiveness,” he wrote in the last paragraph of his book. “With the sense that these are bonus years the first thought I have on waking, most mornings, is ‘Never Better’.”
Tommie Gorman, who died on June 25 in St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin, was buried in Sligo yesterday. He is survived by his wife Ceara Roche and their children Moya and Joe and a wide circle of friends and relations.
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