The broadcaster and journalist Ted Bonner, who died on May 21st aged 84, had a long and varied career in the media and marketing in Ireland. A war veteran, who circumnavigated the globe several times while working in the aviation and drinks industries, he was best known as a bon viveur whose talent for story-telling made him a regular panellist on the Late Late Show on RTÉ television in the 1970s.
Born in Belfast on May 18th, 1918, he was the youngest of four children born to Cathleen O'Dowd, who died within months of his birth in a flu epidemic, and Edward Bonner, a returned emigrant from the US who helped to set up and run a car sales and servicing agency in Belfast.
Ted Bonner received a traditional Catholic upbringing. One of his uncles was a priest. Another was Peadar Ó Dubhda, an Irish-language scholar who completed the first translation of the Bible into Gaelic.
Ted Bonner was educated at Holy Family PE School in Belfast and the Marist College in Dundalk, where his eldest sister, Eileen, who acted as a surrogate mother within the family, lived. He was subsequently sent to the Christian Brothers-run St Mary's boarding school in Beflast only to run away from it, without completing his exams, to join the Royal Air Force.
Specialising in signals and communications, he was promoted through the ranks of the force before being deployed in 1942 to North Africa to help in the Italian campaign. Among his duties were to raise, train and command a 120-man mobile unit for the invasion of Sicily. He later helped to co-ordinate air-ground attacks in Anzio and Montecasino, and was present also at the fall of Rome on June 4th, 1944.
He was nominated after the war to go to the RAF staff college in Palestine, from which he graduated to serve with the Ministry of Civil Aviation. He also worked for a resettlement commission for those displaced by the war. It was through this work that he visited Belsen and other concentration camps, witnessing the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Between 1946 and 1951, he acted as a member of a UK delegation on civil aviation, which sought to improve air traffic communications worldwide. He resigned, however, to join Decca Navigations, the international aviation equipment company, in a decision which he would later blame on the "almost intolerable inertia" of the civil service.
In 1956, he moved to Blackrock in Dublin from Croydon, Surrey, to take up a new job, managing a Dublin cleaning company. He also ran a sweet factory for a time, making jellies for a public still recovering from war rations.
He rejoined Decca in 1957 as assistant managing director. During this period he also began writing, predominantly on one of his early loves - cars. His mainstay was the magazine Motoring Life, for which he wrote under the pseudonym Richard O'Hagan.
His gregarious nature and talent for story-telling earned him a reputation as an entertainer among friends and associates, and drew the attention of RTÉ as well as presenter Gay Byrne, who become a lasting friend.
In an era when the Late Late Show used the formula of panellists to generate debate and controversy, Ted Bonner was an ideal candidate, full of humorous anecdotes and willing to speak his mind. Byrne made him a regular guest on the show as a foil to more prickly characters like Ulick O'Connor.
Ted Bonner was even drafted in to present the Late Late Show in 1972 when Montrose was in the grips of an industrial dispute.
Between 1971 and 1981, he also worked as manager of group communications at Irish Distillers, acting as a "whiskey ambassador" for the company in the US and elsewhere. In the late 1970s, he was also chairman of the Keep Ireland Beautiful movement, a body set up to increase public awareness of damage caused to the environment.
In the 1980s, he continued to write on motoring for the Sunday Press and other publications, although his interest in cars was said to have waned over time as he felt the romance, which once surrounding motoring, had left the business.
His collaboration with RTÉ also continued for many years, and he wrote scripts for radio shows, including some of Gay Byrne's later productions. He was a temporary presenter of It Says in the Papers. The lack of future opportunities disappointed him. However, he persisted in the media, contributing occasionally to various publications, including The Irish Times.
A collection of Ted Bonner's writings, Don't Shoot! I'm Not Well, was published some years ago.
Ted Bonner is survived by his wife, Kay, and sons, Jonathan and Desmond.
Ted Bonner: born 1918; died, May 2002