As I stood up to leave studio 10 last Saturday morning, the sixth of the sixth, 2020, I remembered. On 6 June 1966, the Jimmy Magee All-Stars played their first fundraising match in Ballyjamesduff. It’s a date that has always stuck in my mind, for my father often recalls it.

Can you imagine it? The country’s top music and GAA stars descending on a small town to play football

Legendary commentator Jimmy Magee had an idea. He would gather his friends from the world of music and sport and they would travel the country playing Gaelic football matches against local selections for charity. Ballyjamesduff man and showband manager Connie Lynch was Jimmy’s friend and collaborator.

Can you imagine it? The country’s top music and GAA stars descending on a small town to play football. The place was jammed. My dad was involved – Connie had asked him to collect Ireland’s (arguably) top music star, Brendan Bowyer, in Dublin and bring him to the match.

It would be like me driving Niall Horan around today. Connie and Dad became great friends living close to each other in Castleknock, and I travelled all over the country with them growing up supporting Cavan.

Going to those matches gave me a great love of sport

Connie continued to manage Bowyer on his trips home from Las Vegas to tour Ireland in the 1970s and 80s.

Going to those matches gave me a great love of sport. I kept match programmes, statistics and newspaper cuttings – which, I suppose, was a sort of gateway to journalism. And Jimmy Magee was a hero.

So, one day, when I was around 15 years old, Brendan Bowyer was back in Ireland and Jimmy Magee invited him on to his Saturday radio show, which was a mix of music and sport. Connie was driving Brendan to RTÉ and asked if I’d like to go along for the spin. Would I what?

And there he was. Jimmy Magee broadcasting live

In my own geeky way, this was like being invited onto a film set or into a premier league dug out on match day. My first visit to RTÉ. I clearly remember going into the radio centre and downstairs to this cockpit-like studio, where I was allowed sit close to the producer, looking through the glass into the studio.

And there he was. Jimmy Magee broadcasting live. I was smitten as I watched the production team busily working to keep Jimmy on the air. So this is how it operates!

Think Charlie Bucket watching the chocolate factory at work. I was still in school, but it sowed a seed in my mind that maybe this was for me. I could exude my love and knowledge of sport through the medium of radio. It is often the last refuge of sports fanatics born bereft of athletic talent.

Connie and Jimmy were best friends, and it was through Connie I first met Jimmy. Both have since passed on to their respective eternal rewards. They were great influences on my career, when I think about it, and I miss the larger-than-life bonhomie of them both, despite our generational age differences. I thought of them both, again, when the third actor in that maiden voyage to RTÉ, Brendan Bowyer, joined his two old friends in the showband in the sky just two weeks ago.

Last Saturday morning (the sixth of the sixth), as I stood up to leave the studio having finished presenting my own programme, it also marked the 22nd anniversary of me joining RTÉ Radio in June 1998.

Now I was sitting where he did that day. Isn’t that what they call serendipity?

And that studio we broadcast from last Saturday morning was studio 10, the very same studio where I peered through the glass at Jimmy Magee over three decades ago. Now I was sitting where he did that day. Isn’t that what they call serendipity?

Eating greens

Remember when we were young and our parents would tell us to eat our greens? Well it seems now they are eating themselves!