The late, great Pat Ingoldsby wore many hats throughout his career – both literally and figuratively.
Yet for an entire generation of Irish people, the poet, broadcaster and playwright is best remembered for wearing a telephone on his head.
Such bold fashion statements were par for the course on Pat’s Chat, Ingoldsby’s wonderfully absurd children’s TV show on RTÉ from the 1980s. Featuring wild inventions, ridiculous puppets and a steady stream of giddy schoolkids, the series proved that children’s telly could be silly as well as sincere. You wouldn't see anyone get gunged or have a custard pie shoved in their face – but if you ever wanted to watch a middle-aged hippie launch a cabbage into space ordance to the sounds of a musical cupboard, Pat’s Chat was the place to be.
After spending much of the 1960s bouncing between various jobs, Ingoldsby found steady work as a disc jockey, hosting the pop music show Saturday Spin on RTÉ Radio. During this time, he published his first collection of poems, wrote scripts for the iconic children’s TV series Wanderly Wagon, and debuted his one-man show Rhymin' Simon at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. The play was a smash, convincing RTÉ’s Head of Presentation, Denis O’Grady, to put the mad hatter from Malahide in front of the camera.
The programmes that followed presented further outlets for Ingoldsby to unspool his fierce imagination. Best of the bunch was Pat’s Chat, a show that eagerly blurred the line between children’s entertainment and absurdist theatre.
Ingoldsby, looking like a cross between Timmy Mallet and George Carlin, would steer kids around a television studio crammed with colourful curios. Yes, you’ve seen a cello before, but have you ever experienced Pat’s Psychosomatic Red Cross Cello? I doubt any single moment of children’s television will ever match the infectious joy of watching Ingoldsby revive a plastic duck by playing the instrument to a rabble of howling children.
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Listen: Brendan O'Connor talks to Pat Ingoldsby in 2022
"It was utterly mad… a maverick operation from the word go," the presenter told RTÉ Radio's Brendan O'Connor. Yet balancing the show’s flair for chaos was the warmth and empathy Ingoldsby brought to his interactions with the kids. He never spoke down to them – a habit all too common among presenters desperate to seem like a best friend. Instead, Pat embraced (and perfected) the role of the eccentric uncle, often guiding loose chatter toward moments of unexpected profundity.
Even when he stepped back from the public eye in the '90s to focus on his mental health, Ingoldsby's relationship with his fans endured. He became a familiar and beloved presence on the streets of Dublin, selling his poetry books from makeshift stalls decorated with handwritten signs: "Get one now before I'm dead and famous".
Ah, what sweet irony, then, that before his passing in 2025, the hatted star found himself back in the spotlight. In 2022, he got the bio-doc treatment in Seamus Murphy's The Peculiar Sensation of Being Pat Ingoldsby, while a long-overdue exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland affirmed his place in the country’s literary canon.
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