The Beatles wouldn't last a year, Frank Hall predicted. When the boys came to Dublin for their famous gig at the Adelphi in 1963, Hall interviewed them about their hairstyles and sex appeal, later declaring that, as a band, they were going absolutely nowhere, writes Hugh Oram.
But whatever his failings as a pop pundit, Frank Hall went on to front Hall's Pictorial Weekly, arguably the best satirical show produced on RTÉ television. Over 250 episodes were shown from the autumn of 1971 until the spring of 1980, usually high in the ratings. Hall wrote the scripts and invented all kinds of crazy characters and among those who portrayed them were Frank Kelly and Eamon Morrissey. Terry Willers drew the cartoons. The show was often bizarre and frequently irreverent; nothing was either safe or sacred.
Much of the show's genesis came from Hall's upbringing in Newry, where he was born in 1921, troubled times indeed. The then town council was a prototype for the fictional Ballymagash Urban District Council in Hall's Pictorial Weekly. Further inspiration came from the strangely extended Hall family household in Newry, which included his mother's sister, otherwise known as the Great Patriot, an uncle and a great-uncle. His father, a Dubliner, had a peripatetic career that included a spell as a seaman, another as a dee-jay on a US radio station, and a stint as an unsuccessful seller of post-war army surplus.
Fear of unemployment
Frank Hall himself left school at 12 and worked in a couple of men's outfitters in Newry before heading for London. There, driven by a chronic fear of unemployment, he not only double- but quadruple-jobbed; at one stage, he was even a waiter in a Lyons Corner House café. Always in search of safe, secure work, he managed to talk himself into the art department of Independent Newspapers in Dublin, before moving into journalism on the Evening Herald. He wrote showbiz news under such bylines as "Frank Lee" and "Rick O'Shea"; the seeds of Hall's Pictorial Weekly were being fertilised. He also did the social diary, competing with Terry O'Sullivan on the Evening Press.
In time, he moved to RTÉ, working first in the newsroom, then on the Newsbeat programme, for which he did quirky stories from all over the country. He worked on RTÉ radio, too, and was particularly identified with the early Sunday evening round-up of the provincial papers. Then RTÉ got daring and let him loose on an innocent nation with Hall's Pictorial Weekly.
He mocked gombeenism and political shenanigans; no rural sacred bullock was safe and neither was the Coalition government led by Liam Cosgrave that came to power in 1973. Richie Ryan, as Minister for Finance, was transformed into the "Minister for Hardship". Characters such as the two bachelor farmers - "boys, oh boys" - appealed to viewers and so too did characters that had their origins in Hall's early life.
Strong language
Cllr Parnell Mooney (played by Frank Kelly and nothing to do with a certain pub!) was based on a councillor in Newry, a man dedicated to strong and often vile language. The journalists at the press table in the council meetings could hear him very clearly, as could anyone passing up and down the street outside, but it was always reported that "the comments of Cllr ---- were inaudible". The character of Father Romulus Todd was based on a real-life parish priest from Co Tyrone, who once warned his startled congregation about the duplicity of Queen Elizabeth I. "She was the virgin queen, but she was no more a virgin than I am," he thundered.
Hall's Pictorial Weekly often homed in on issues of the day, such as the appalling phone service of the times. The programme even managed to extract humour from the new phone directory as soon as it was published annually. Hall often declared that he hated political posturing, hypocrisy and "oul' guff", so politicians were natural targets. It was widely believed at the time that the programme helped the Coalition lose the 1977 general election. After Jack Lynch returned to power that year, Hall dubbed him the "real Taoiseach" and the critics started murmuring that the programme had gone soft, that the dog had stopped biting. This belief even surfaced in Seanad debates years later, when it was pointed out that in 1978, Hall was elevated from deputy film censor to film censor. One of his controversial decisions in that role was banning The Life of Brian, a Monty Python "take" on the life of Christ.
But the spirit of the series lives on even yet; subsequent satirical programmes, including Father Ted and Bull Island on television and Scrap Saturday on radio, owed their inspiration in many respects to Frank Hall, his dedicated team of comic artistes and the characters they created. Not long ago, John O'Connor, in his column in the Munster Express, noted that the Anglo-Celt newspaper in Co Cavan had run a headline: "Cootehill's over-run with bonking dogs". The town commission had been told that the place was awash with dogs that were "bonking in the streets night, moon and morning". One town commissioner called for an end to this disgraceful behaviour. As O'Connor commented, this would have been ideal material for Hall's Pictorial Weekly.
Away from the weekly television slot, Hall lived a modest enough life, bringing up a large family in Santry. He and his wife, Aideen Kearney, had eloped as teenagers in Newry. Hall was dismissive of his own fame, remarking that his face was "as well-known as a beggar's ass".
Clerical hat
When he wasn't working, he was addicted to jazz and at one time played bass with Mick Delahunty's band. He was also practised yoga and had a strong attachment to a large clerical hat that had been sold to him in 1950 by Maureen O'Hara's father, who told him that his head size was similar to that one of a one-time Bishop of Galway, Dr Browne. "The bishop and I had the two biggest heads in the country," Hall was later heard to say.
It's over 20 years since Hall's Pictorial Weekly ended its seminal run and seven years since Frank Hall himself died, on September 21st 1995. Just when the country is crying out for a new Minister for Hardship, all we can do is call up the mocking ghosts of the past.