MAGILL's first friend was Noel Pearson. He was one of the founders of the magazine and its first financier. He also was largely responsible for giving the magazine its title - an itinerant family outside Dundalk was also called Magill.
Last April RTE advertised the job of Head of Sport (Programming) internally. Fred Cogley, the man in possession, was to move sideways! upwards. by Eamon Dunphy
WHO?" ASKED THE PROTEST ANT SCHOOLchildren blankly as we asked directions to Bishop Cathal Daly's house on Somerton Road in Bellfast. "Oh, you mean the priest." The Catholic crozier still doesn't rate much in North Belfast. In Derry the stones in the street could have directed us to where Bishop Ned Daly, or Fr Daly as he's still known since his curate days, lives overlooking the Bogside and the Foyle. By Olivia O'Leary
YOu're going to Kerry, they say. Be God, and aren't you the lucky one, they say. Fell on your feet there, they say. Lakes of Killarney. The Ring. The mountains. The clear air. The fish. Dick Spring. Sure, you're landed, they say, you're landed.
1977. Elvis Presley died and King Lear was on the LEaving Cert. Mark Twain on the Inter and Thin Lizzy played in Dalymount Park. Dublin won the All-Ireland and the Clash played in TCD. Punk music was just beginnning to take off with a bang. We had a general election as well and the Soldiers of Destiny got back with Jack.
ON 6 JULY 1979, WHILE HE WAS WORKING on the play Translations, Brian Friel wrote in his "sporadic diary": "One of the mistakes of the direction which the play is presently pulling is the almost wholly 'public' concern of the theme: how does the eradication of the Irish language and the subbstitution of English affect this particular society? How long can a society live without its tongue? Public questions; issues for politicians; and that's what is wrong with the play now.
WHEN JACK O'SHEA WON HIS FIRST ALL-Ireland as a minor in 1975, and afterwards cheered the Kerry seniors to victory over . Dublin, he could scarcely have foreseen, even in his daydreaming, how these two teams were going to dominate a decade of Gaelic football. One or other of them has contested every final since that day and the most memorable finals of the decade were those fought out between them.
SINCE 9.15 HE HAS HELD THE NATION IN thrall: reading bits from the papers, playing the Mystery Sound, putting on records, talking to housewives on the telephone, using funny voices. BY Colm Toibin
THE 100 ISSUES OF MAGILL HAVE SPANNED the period from October 1977 to date. It has been a dismal period in Irish life. We have gone through the most serious economic crisis of the last fifty years, an economic crisis created largely by a combination of domestic political recklessness and vacillation. By Vincent Browne
WHY didn't the Pope appoint a radical feminist as Archbishop of Dublin? Has he no regard for the views and sensitivities of the trendy element? Doesn't he understand that things have changed in this country and that the ultra-liberal faction - heavily represennted among Dublin journalists - now expects to have its interests and deeclared preferences taken seriously into account in such appointments?