A year on from his departure from the RTÉ newsroom, Bryan Dobson has no regrets about taking early retirement. In fact, he describes it as "intoxicating". The veteran news journalist talks to Janice Butler about new projects, the joy of grandchildren and the advice he'd give the newly retired Joe Duffy.
"I sent him a card. I’m sure it’s amongst the thousands of cards that he’s got, to wish him well and to say, speaking from my own experience, that retirement is great," beams a relaxed and healthy looking Bryan Dobson, sitting in his office at his Dublin home, surrounded by books and paintings of the sea.
He is talking about the recent departure of Joe Duffy from RTÉ’s Liveline and his own retirement, which the broadcaster began last summer. "I think he could be very busy if he wants to be. The phone will ring with all kinds of offers, I would say. Enda Kenny, who I met around the time that I was retiring, said to me that you should do nothing or make any decisions for about six months. Don’t make any commitments and then see how you feel.
"So I more or less did that and I think that’s good advice for anyone," he adds, content with his decision to leave at 63, after 37 years with the national broadcaster, or as he puts it, "to go out on a high."
"How’s everyone getting on in there"? he asks, always the gentleman. "I’ve had a bit of contact with a few people since I’ve left, but not that many."
Having worked in the busy and high-pressure world of news for almost four decades, finishing his career on the News at One on Radio 1, Bryan admits he was surprised by how easy he found it to detach himself from the working environment.
"I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms at all, and I expected maybe I’d have a little. But when I retired, I immediately went away for a week and then when I came back, I had things planned, so there was never a moment of missing work," he remarks.
"It’s gone very fast, too fast really. But I’ve kept pretty busy, which is good, but you’re able to create gaps where you don’t do anything or just have some time to yourself. The freedom is quite intoxicating. I left a bit early, earlier than retirement age, because I wanted to go while I was still enjoying the job and still looking forward to getting up and going in. I hated the idea of getting to the point where I resented having to go to work because I think that would show; hard to disguise that on the air. It was the right time," he adds.
While he’s taken the foot off the pedal, he’s still taking on bits of TV work: his latest project, The Last Irish Missionaries, is on our screens this week.
Last autumn, he was contacted by a production company to work on a documentary about the history of the evolution of the Irish missionary movement, and he jumped at the opportunity, saying that it appealed to his love of history and innate curiosity about people.
In the two-part documentary, Bryan and journalist Dearbhail McDonald chart the evolution of the Irish missionary movement, from its earliest colonial era, right up to the present day, when far fewer people are entering the religious life.
It’s a story of self-sacrifice and philanthropy, as well as questionable politics and abuse cover-ups. The last missionaries are largely elderly and either retired or never coming home. So, what will be their legacy? This is what Bryan and Dearbhail examine over the two-parter.
"It was a chance to hear their testimony," says Bryan of the people they met for the show. "And it struck me that a lot of people will connect to this documentary because there mustn’t be a family or a community in the country that doesn’t have some connection with those missionary priests and nuns. My wife had an uncle who was a Holy Ghost father, and he’d come home every three or four years, and I remember talking to him about his experiences in Nigeria," he adds.
Bryan and Dearbhail got to travel the country and the world, with a "brief trip to the Philippines" for Dobson, to explain the origins and impact of the Irish missionary project, for better and for worse, and to assess its legacy.
"It’s very interesting to watch the evolution of missionary thinking. In the early stages, it was conversion and spreading the word of the gospel and then as the enterprise grew, they began to see very quickly that there were huge social needs: education, healthcare and then it evolved into social justice and social structures and that’s where you get this image of the radical priest or revolutionary figure. There was this sense of standing with the people and understanding their suffering," explains Dobson with his newsman’s hat on.
What was his takeaway from working on the project? "I was struck by a few things. We asked the interviewees why they ended up where they ended up, and they almost looked puzzled by the question and said, 'because we were sent’, so there was extraordinary obedience. Then there was a life-long commitment; they were there to stay and in many cases, they never came home. Nothing deviates them from their mission, and I found all that fascinating."
He remarks that after decades of grilling politicians and reporting from high-profile events (he covered two papal conclaves and would be "greedy to want to cover a third"), it was nice to have the time to delve into a project like this over a number of months.
"It was lovely. My day-to-day job was news. When the day was over, you started on a fresh page and off you went again. The chance to spend time with people and give them the opportunity to tell their story was an honour. It’s always a great privilege. When it was all over and the filming was finished, I felt a little bit sad, I missed working on it," he reflects.
Another outlet that’s keeping him busy is his role as the chairperson of the new State Commemorations Advisory Committee, which has been established with the aim of advising on the planning and delivery of commemorative events.
"When you join these committees, they say it’s only a couple of meetings a year, and then it turns out to be a bit more," he laughs.
"We had our first meeting recently, and the purpose is to advise the Minister and his officials on events that might be commemorated and how they might be commemorated over the lifetime of the Government. There’s some stuff going on this year around the 250th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell and the committee has some ideas on what should be commemorated," he explains.
Any plans to reflect on his life and career in a memoir, as his former colleague Miriam O’Callaghan will be doing in a memoir this autumn? "I had a couple of publishers that contacted me after I retired to see if I was interested, but I’m not at the moment," he answers. "I doubt that I’d have much of interest to put into it, to make a book out of my mundane life," he laughs. "I might be tempted to write something for my children and grandchildren. We’ll see, but not at the moment anyhow."
Away from occasional work projects, family life keeps Bryan busy in retirement. He’s a picture of health, having lost almost four stone over the last number of years, with healthy eating and cycling. He and his wife Crea became grandparents again at the start of this year, with the arrival of a granddaughter, Lucy, the second child for his daughter Sophie (he has another daughter, Hannah). "We’ve two now", he says proudly.
"Myles will be four in October, and Lucy was born in January, and she’s very sweet," he smiles. "Being a grandparent is so much fun. I never knew my grandparents, but they take a more relaxed approach to things now, and the kids can get away with a lot more with their grandparents."
His "escape" is to go sailing, which he plans to do over the summer. He laughs that his wife "stays firmly on dry land." He has a sailing buddy who joins him for these trips. "I’ll be floating around on a boat next week. That’s the plan," he says. "We go around the Irish Sea. The boat is in Carlingford at the moment so we’ll go up and take it out. It’s all a bit aimless; we just go wherever the wind takes us. We took it up to Carlingford last weekend and we sailed through the night on the shortest day of the year. It was beautiful."
With the world news so chaotically fast now, does he ever miss the cut and thrust of reporting the stories of the day? "I follow the news and like everyone else, my jaw is on the floor most days with what’s going on, and I am horrified by it. But I don’t miss it from the point of view of being a reporter. I really have managed to shut that door in professional terms. I think it’s because I had a good, long run, I did everything that I’d reasonably expected to do," he answers.
"In the past, I would have listened to the news as a journalist, working the angles, but now I tend to listen to it as a citizen and voter, and that’s been an interesting change. I didn’t expect that."
