CHARLES MITCHEL, the former television news reader and for long possibly the best known voice on RTE, has died aged 76. He is survived by his wife Betty, son Nicholas, daughter Susan and five grandchildren.
Charles Mitchel was Telefis Eireann's first news reader. He read the station's first news bulletin on January 1st, 1961. He remained with Telefis Eireann, later RTE, until his retirement in 1984.
He was the first RTE personality to win a Jacob's Award. He was also a dog show judge and breeder and exhibitor of basset hounds. For almost 20 years, before joining RTE, he was an actor with the Gate Theatre.
Charles Mitchel was born in Dublin, the third child of Albert Mitchel and his wife, Netta Fitzgerald, of Montpelier Manor, Monkstown.
He was educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare, and entered Trinity College to study forestry in the early 1940s. However, it was the Trinity Players who took up more and more of his time, and he left without a degree.
In 1947 he joined the Gate Theatre and remained with it until it disbanded in 1958. He was a founder member of Irish Actors Equity and a former president of the Catholic Stage Guild.
He applied for the position of news reader with Telefis Eireann and was chosen out of 131 people by the then news editor, Mr Des Grealy.
He won a Jacob's Award in 1962 and was also voted television personality of the year by 2,000 lip reading deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
He was involved in animal welfare in both the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the ISPCA. He was also committed to the Samaritans and the Friends of the Elderly.
On November 8th, 1984, he read the Nine O'Clock News on RTE for the last time. The final item was the announcement of his own retirement. The then director general of RTE, Mr George Waters, said at the time that "a loved and respected gentleman" had left the stage.
Charles Mitchel did not want to retire and believed he could have carried on working for many years. He said that he would have liked to host a music programme. His wife, Betty, remarked on one occasion that, had he remained an actor, he would have continued working "until the day he dropped".
His voice was heard in more recent years on advertising commercials, including one which referred to his news reading days. For a time he did some work for LMFM, an independent station in Co Louth, on which he read the news and presented a listeners' advice slot.
He once commented on his own career, saying. "I did not want to be director general or anything like that. I just wanted to go on doing what I was good at and what I liked doing. You could not have it nicer.