Memories of one of the great poteen raids of our time
Date Published: {J}
The death in recent weeks of Cathal O’Shannon has stilled one of the great broadcasting voices of our era – but for me it brought back memories of one of the great poteen raids of all time.
O’Shannon, who in his career was everything from an RAF man to a top class documentary producer, was involved in RTÉ during one of its most successful periods in the ’70s, when names like Cathal O’Shannon and Frank Hall could strike terror into the hearts of ministers. I was their local contact in the West.
Frank Hall, who edited Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, brought together a team who almost single-handedly turned the Liam Cosgrave-led Fine Gael-Labour coalition into a caricature.
It helped that Cosgrave had a gravelled and somewhat miserable sounding voice but when the Cosgrave caricature ‘The Minister for Hardship’ was played by Eamon Morrissey, it took on an extraordinary resonance among the electorate.
‘The Minister for Hardship’ appeared on telly making ministerial broadcast in a Homburg hat, a Rab C Nesbit string vest, the set was lit by a single guttering candle and in the background the gale could be heard howling as ‘old hardship’ told how times were bad now, but they were going to get worse.
Meanwhile, other members of the Cabinet were given an equally cruel Scrap Saturday treatment - Posts and Telegraph Minister, Conor Cruise O’Brien, was ‘Con the Post’ Finance Minister Ritchie Ryan was ‘Ritchie Ruin’ and the handsome young Labour member Michael O’Leary was ‘Dimples O’Dearie’.
Into the middle of this potent news mix came Newsbeat where people like Cathal O’Shannon and Michael Ryan and Bill O’Herlihy travelled around the country doing unusual stories in unusual ways . . . and none was more unusual than the Cathal O’Shannon poteen raid in Connemara.
The day had been set up by a very good friend, Garda Superintendent Paddy (PJ) Gallagher and, unless I’m mistaken, among those in the raiding party would have been people like Gabriel Colleran and Michael Needham.
On a day when nobody should have been out in a boat, we set off from near Lettermore to search a number of islands in the locality. The islands were used because of their isolation, because they were difficult to get to, because you were less likely to get the stink of distilling going on and because even then, some of the poteen makers were still using turf to distil poteen, though cylinder gas was odourless and reached the necessary temperatures much quicker.
The formula for making poteen is pretty simple – soak barley, oats or wheat in water until the individual seeds begin to sprout, take them out and put them in a barrel, put in an enormous amount of sugar, a bit of yeast and bring to the boil collecting the precious ‘steam’ which flows out of the makeshift distillery, usually through a piece of copper pipe.
For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.