We first met Ronnie Mason when he was Head of Radio Drama at Broadcasting House, London. An Irishman born in Ballymena, his mother hailing from Sligo, he was always proud to emphasise the essential unity of his work in England, his earlier work as Head of Programmes, BBC North of Ireland, and his occasional productions for RTE. He constantly presented himself as a man of the whole of Ireland, and was delighted by the cultural and economic achievements of the Republic over the last few years.
As a drama director, he was a natural radio genius and an educator both to playwrights and actors. He never seemed to forget that he had begun his adult life as a teacher: he would inspire his casts by getting up from the directorial chair, moving all over the studio, telling stories, and more or less improvising the whole play from start to finish, with a running fire, of folklorish anecdotes from his childhood in County Antrim.
We remember one in particular; how, when very small, he was struck down by a sudden illness, the doctors gave up hope, and an old healing woman was called in to bathe him in an idiosyncratic fashion with water: she produced a miraculous recovery. (He used this story to illustrate the reality of a play about early Christian origins.)
He was extremely modest it is a pity that after his death on January 16th in London, he was not able to attend his own funeral. Only so would he have discovered how much his nutty, impish character will be missed - so many people wanted to come to the funeral that it had to be postponed for a week. There will be no one in radio in Ireland or Britain as rare as Ronnie ever again.