In this personal reflection, RTÉ producer Rory Cobbe remembers his friend and colleague, the late broadcaster Uaneen Fitzsimons, 25 years after her death.
22 November 2000 is a date that resonates with any of us who knew Uaneen Fitzsimons. There are many of us who shared the pain of her death that day, on a stretch of road between Limerick and Dublin.
She had just returned from a holiday in Australia. She loved it there. On the Monday, as usual, she came to Cork to record links for RTÉ2's late-night music show No Disco. She was buzzing, looking forward to the next few months. She had been seeing someone and it was going well.
On the Tuesday she travelled to Limerick for an event, which went well. The next day, with a train strike under way and needing to get back to Dublin for work, she accepted a lift. The car she was travelling in was hit head-on by an articulated truck travelling on the wrong side of the road.
Uaneen had been working at the BBC in Belfast before she took the journey to Dublin to study media in DCU. She was working in the Ormond Multimedia Centre on the quays when I met her. It was a venue many people of a certain age will remember as a dance club and live venue. Music was everything to Uaneen and to many of our generation; it defined us. She loved being involved.
Around that time, the presenter of the show, Donal Dineen, had moved from No Disco to Radio Ireland. I had been helping Donal put No Disco together and it was decided we should find a new presenter.
No Disco was a video clip show, but for alternative music, the kind that was not broadcast in the mainstream. Irish bands had the opportunity to have their videos played, and we interviewed bands and musicians who came to play in Ireland that you would not frequently see on TV. Colm O’Callaghan and Donal had started the show on half a shoestring in the earliest days of RTÉ Cork. It had a cult following. It was the days before the internet and no one had heard of streaming or Facebook.
The presenter of No Disco was not just someone who could read a script to camera. They acted like a curator. They had to have a point of view, love all sorts of music, and have a desire to hear new music and spread the word. Donal was a hard act to follow.
Uaneen went for the audition. She was in a very strong field of people who fit the bill. She had a rawness about her that stood out. She had her own style. No one else looked like her. She was a woman in a man’s game. She was the obvious choice, and she grabbed the opportunity with both hands. She had charisma and a warmth that could disarm the most guarded of subjects.
The look on the faces of her interviewees when she handed them a gift before the interview was always telling. From Jarvis Cocker to Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, they were all taken aback by her enthusiasm and integrity. She was genuinely thankful and grateful to meet and talk with them and wanted to give something back to them, however small. She was also canny. PJ Harvey was the last person she interviewed for the show before she went on holiday.
A year or so into the No Disco job she was approached by 2FM to host a late-night show, championing new music and emerging artists. She began working with legendary producers Ian Wilson and Jim Lockhart. She was "made up". In her own head this was the dream. Dave Fanning and John Peel were her idols, because that is where we heard music growing up. She now had the opportunity to contribute to the canon. She loved loud guitar music, but she also had a growing interest in electronic music and hip hop. Radio allowed her to spread her wings.
It was lovely to watch her grow as a broadcaster. She had also been approached to do some non-music TV work. She went at that full throttle, like everything else.
She needed that holiday. She was looking forward to it. She came back refreshed.
The impact of that fateful day in November has weighed heavily on so many. Uaneen’s family were, and are, so gracious. The funeral was on a viciously cold and wet day. We sang songs in her Uncle Manny’s pub the night before. There were so many young people experiencing this grief for the first time. We comforted each other and cried about what might have been.
Uaneen’s beautiful mother Mary died in October 2023. She had been suffering from dementia for several years. She was a strong and graceful woman; her heart had been broken to see her "little lamb" go before her. Brian, her husband, was steady and a rock for her and for Uaneen’s brothers, sister and sisters-in-law. Many of Uaneen’s friends, Aoife Woodlock, Sharon McGlone and Paul Noonan, to mention just three (there are so many), kept in touch with the family and with each other. How could we not? We found solace in them. Her family is an example to us all.
A few years later, there was a service for Uaneen in her hometown of Ardglass, a small, beautiful fishing village on the coast of Co Down. I met her nieces and nephews, who had shocks of red hair and the palest skin. Mary, their grandmother, was smitten by these beautiful children. I could see where Uaneen got it from. She would have loved to have been there. She spoke about them all regularly despite living away from her hometown.
She stayed with us in Cork when she came to work. My own daughter Sadie was only small, but Uaneen’s influence is there. We talk about her regularly and her photos are on the wall. We grow sunflowers every year because they were Uaneen’s favourite flower.
This time of year, there are simple text messages and notes from a gang of people just checking in on each other, just to remember "mucker", that girl who died too young, who came from "a wee fishing village called Ardglass in Co Down".
