Voices
In 2021, Dion Fanning sat down with Tommie Gorman.
Dion was overseeing the expansion of our weekend coverage into new and interesting areas. And from the moment Tommie retired from RTÉ, Dion believed Tommie was a natural fit.
We were not the only ones chasing his signature. His body of work spoke for itself. He was one of the outstanding journalists of his generation, a man who understood power, politics, and, most of all, people. He could have opted to take a column with practically any publication or title. And most made offers.
But he chose The Currency. He wanted the freedom to explore different topics and different areas of interest, and the lack of constraint was something we could offer him. If he wanted to write above his word count, so be it. After a career of structure, he wanted to experiment with different ways of telling stories.
It would be too far to suggest he had carte blanche. But he was certainly not constricted.
Plus, there was a wonderful element of mischief with Tommie.
Despite becoming a national institution at a national institution, there was a whiff of anti-establishment about him.
No one expected Gorman, a man who had covered politics in Brussels and war and peace in Belfast, to pitch up at an online start-up that focused on business and economics.
But that contradiction, that incongruity, appealed to him.
He also knew it was the way the world was going.
We all knew his voice of course, and we knew the spoken lyricism of his storytelling.
But he was, I believe, a writer at heart. He had been writing long-form articles for the RTÉ website long before it became fashionable; for Tommie, it was a fresh medium to talk to and engage with the public.
Ahead of his first column, Dion interviewed him about his career, politics, cancer, and the nature of life.
He spoke eloquently about the things he was looking forward to doing in his life after RTÉ, including advocating for patients with his own condition and watching more of Sligo Rovers (he was working on developing more facilities for his beloved club).
Primarily, he wanted to spend time at home in Sligo with his wife Ceara.
“I left here in 1989. We were in Brussels until 2001. And we were in Belfast until a month ago. I’m here now with my wife and I hope to make up for a lot of the time that I didn’t have with her in the past,” he said in that interview.
This week, Tommie Gorman passed away. He was much too young, and he had so much more left to give – to his family, to his community, and to anyone who ever asked for his guidance and help (and countless people did).
But even if he lived for another 30 years, Tommie would have still died too young. It was just the way he was.
No contacts, just friends
I have never met someone with more friends than Tommie Gorman. I count myself lucky to have been one, even though I only knew him for a short number of years. He seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed to know him.
Sitting down with him for a coffee was a public event. People came up to chat to him as if drawn by a gravitational force. Even people who did not know him felt that they did, and they felt at ease approaching him. And Tommie, would, in turn, chat back effortlessly, drawing them further and further into his orbit.
That was the way he was. He was as comfortable talking with premiers and presidents as he was with strangers. (As Tánaiste Micheál Martin, another friend, said in recent days, Tommie did not have sources, but friends.)
He accumulated friends because he understood people. And he understood people because he cared about them.
He remembered what people told him. He remembered because he truly listened to what they told him. “If you don’t listen,” he once told me, “you will only hear what you want to hear.”
In the immediate aftermath of his sad passing, people have rightly looked at his legacy and his life’s work. They have explored his journalism and his unique way of telling stories, from his time in Brussels to his seminal work during the peace process in Belfast.
But this was only possible because of how he related to people. They trusted him with their information, with their viewpoints, with their words. Tommie never betrayed that trust. It is why he was respected across the political divide.
There is a clamour for black and white, for winners and losers. Tommie understood the grey.
He worked with the Irish national broadcaster, but he understood the fears and the concerns of unionism and loyalism all the same.
And in Tommie, those unionists and loyalists recognised someone of integrity and a man who understood the nuances and intricacies of history, and their sense of self.
In journalism, as in life, there is a clamour for black and white, for winners and losers. Tommie understood the grey. And he was able to articulate it in a way that people could associate with.
It was why his role in securing peace on the island went far beyond just telling stories. His impartiality, his inherent authenticity allowed him to act as a back channel between the parties. He was a trusted intermediary. And he took that role with the utmost seriousness.
It was also why Roy Keane felt comfortable talking to him following his exit from Saipan. It is why he developed a rapport with Denis O’Brien, even though the businessman has a strained relationship with the media and his employer at RTÉ.
Tommie Gorman told the truth to power because the truth was his currency. It was his guiding star. And that resonated with people.
It meant he could tell hard truths to people without offending them. He could be critical but was never nasty.
And this translated into his interactions with people also.
Tommie would pull people aside and tell them if they were going wrong. He did it with me on occasion, and I respected him all the more for it. Because it came from a place of respect, of compassion, of empathy.
But most importantly, because it came from a place of truth.
Reviewing Tommie’s memoir, Never Better, the broadcaster Sean O’Rourke, summed it up best, highlighting his friend’s “extraordinary capacity to connect with individuals on a human level, irrespective of age, status, background or political disposition”.
Seeing and saying the truth
Tommie had a unique and rare ability. He could look you in the eye and see you for who you were. He could see your truth, warts and all. He could see your flaws, your fears, your hopes, your potential. And he could talk to you about those things in a way that helped you. He did this with countless people all over the country.
He could chat and schmooze for Ireland.
But, when he needed to, he could cut to the bone with surgical precision.
Perhaps this came from his previous brush with death, perhaps it was his upbringing. I don’t know. Others who knew him better will have a better view. But Tommie had a way of truly reaching people, and he often did it at the exact moment they needed it most.
I once told him he should run for president. He made a joke about it and listed off a reel of other candidates. But I was not joking. The nuance that he brought to his career, and his dealings with so many people, would have benefitted the office. He understood politics better than most, and he was highly political. But he also managed to stay above politics.
His death was incomprehensible. Until it happened.
He carried himself with the air of a man comfortable in his skin, comfortable with his sense of place.
He spoke openly about his previous battle with cancer, and, in recent times, he spoke to his friends and colleagues about his latest battle with illness.
I never imagined for a moment it was a battle he would lose. Nor did he. As he set out for hospital last week, he was talking about upcoming projects and the imminent Westminster elections.
In a twist, his last column was on a topic close to his heart. He had not been scheduled to write last week, but on Wednesday, a column on RTÉ’s future funding dropped in our system.
Over the last number of years, I spoke to him regularly about the national broadcaster, an organisation of which I served on the board between October 2018 and 2023. He was passionate about its future, about its place in Irish public life.
This came across in the piece, but true to form, and true to Tommie’s anti-establishment sensibilities, he still argued that the local radio coverage of the recent elections has surpassed that of RTÉ. It was classic Tommie, fearless and fair.
Tommie enjoyed the medium of a column. A column allowed him to think. And thinking is what Tommie did best.
He never rushed to publish, just as he never rushed to judgment about anything or anyone. He let ideas percolate. He let his words breathe.
And he was precious with those words. He picked them carefully and was protective of them.
That came across. Perhaps it was the fact that his voice was so familiar to me, and to all of us, but each time I read his words, it seemed as if Tommie was narrating them in my head.
I never imagined that he had filed his last column for The Currency, or that we would not speak again.
His death was incomprehensible. Until it happened.
Tommie leaves behind a huge professional and personal legacy. But for his family, whom he spoke passionately and frequently about, it leaves behind a huge loss.
Our thoughts are with his beloved wife Ceara Roche and their two children Moya and Joe.
Further reading
“Keep believing”: Tommie Gorman’s infectious sense of the possible
