Courtenay’s Column: We’re All Off To Italy

Working for an up-and-coming billionaire can have its rewards, like an all-expenses-paid ten-day trip to Sardinia. After fifty years of trying to get into a World Cup it was no wonder our qualification for Italia 90 caused a rush of blood to the nation’s heads including, lucky for some, Denis O’Brien’s. There was no question: 98fm was going to do an Outside Broadcast from Cagliari.

Liam Brady was brought on board as the pundit, Our Man Aidan Cooney was the resident Sports brain, and the legendary techspert Peter Gibney (RIP) made it possible for Elaine Geraghty and me to go live from Sardinia’s capital.

It was a big job back then. It used to take, I think, three flights to get to Sardinia, and the equipment (about the size of a midi stereo system plus microphones, headphones and the usual paraphenalia) had to go through Customs clearance every time we crossed a border. Once we’d get to the broadcast point, Gibney would use his MacGyver-like powers to marmalise a hotel phone jackpoint to send The Morning Crew across Europe from a desk in the lobby. The vocals and recorded inserts went under the sea on fibre-optic to Londingham, Co England, up their Post Office tower, out to a satellite, then back down to Mount Street in Dublin where a colleague would drive the ads and music.

Hanging out with Liam Brady was like walking around with the Pope. Italy loves Liam Brady, Everywhere we went there were waves across the street with “Ciao, Brady!” He was also quite the leader. Like the morning I barely made it to the lobby on time from a car trip up the coast with a box of beer and a French photo-jounalist. What happened was, one evening I was on the balcony outside my room at the same time as this guy was on his. We got chatting and went for a beer or three, something the English supporters couldn’t do because they were banned from the bars. (I discovered possibly the two most important words in Italian at the time: giornalisto Irlandesi. No doors were closed.) One beer led to another and we did something we should never have even thought about, the French photo-journalist and I. We bought a case of beer and went for a blast up the Sardinian coast in his rented turbo-charged Lancia. When I realised it was the sunrise we were looking at, I also realised that we had to use every horse in the turbo to get me back to the hotel to do a Breakfast Show. Brady could see straight away that I was in need of looking after. Pot of coffee, croissants, blood-orange juice and a good deal of on-air camouflaging of the fact that my mouth and my brain were pretty much unfit for purpose.
After making it through four pretty ropey hours, I repaired to my room and corpsed. For some reason, my door was unlocked and Elaine burst in, furious. “I never want to work with you like that again!” was just the start. She tore a sizeable strip off me and stormed out. Next of all the phone rings and it’s the Programme Director Jeff O’Brien calling from Dublin. “Uh oh. This is it.” Quite the opposite. I could hear the smile in the Australian voice turn to an all-too-familiar snarl. “F%&king great show this morning, mate.” (Oooh kay. How did that happen?) “Now, what the f%&k was wrong with Elaine? Put me through to her room.”
I don’t know what was said but I do know Jeff never took any prisoners when he was unhappy. Respect to Elaine, though – she didn’t shop me.

Next time, adventures in Italian.