I love those final scenes in Cimino’s film The Deer Hunter. Thankfully, the Vietnam war is over. At what was once their local bar near a steelworks in Pennsylvania, the soldiers and their pals regroup. They are mourning their friend, Nick, who dies in that Russian roulette scene in Saigon, beautifully played in the film by Christopher Walken.

One of them is in the kitchen, struggling with his emotions. He starts to cry. And then, in honour of his friend, he begins to sing ‘God Bless America.’ The sound drifts in to the table where the group is sitting. A very young Meryl Streep, joins in the singing. So do the others, including Robert De Niro.

“From the mountains.

To the prairies,

To the oceans,

White with foam…..”

In the closing shot they raise their glasses and toast ‘To Nick.’

If we had shot glasses this morning, we could all raise them now, and our toast would be “To Mike.” He was our film star.

Every time I drive the road from Sligo to Dublin I think about him.

It dates back to when I made the journey in September 1980, 42 years ago. I was 24, the editor of a weekly newspaper started three years before by John Healy and Jim Maguire, The Western Journal.

I was heading to an interview at RTÉ, for the job of North Western Correspondent.  I had never worked in broadcasting, never worked for a national newspaper in Dublin. After two years in the School of Journalism, my experience consisted of three years in the provincial newspaper version of the school of hard knocks.

Burns was one of those on the interview board. 

“You had the sun in your eyes on the way up and it will be in your eyes on the way home again.”

With that observation and the trademark smile, he set me at ease.

The person with that clipped mildly English accent and wonderful broadcasting voice was one of us. A culchie from Ballintubber, Co Roscommon.

*****

When I came back a second time to Donnybrook for training, he brought me into his office and gave me the crash course in radio reporting.

He unscrewed part of the telephone handset and took out a circular silver part from the mouthpiece section.  This is the voice box, he explained. After a lot of use, the crystals inside get dampened by the callers’ breathing. And what you have to do is loosen the crystals.  e then bounced the silver piece on the carpet several times and then shook it to check that the beads inside were moving freely.

This was Burns, introducing me to the magic of journalism. As Burns saw it, journalism wasn’t a job or a career.  It was a life. And fun. He loved the stories of mild skulduggery in the field. Of reporters removing the voice box from the one call-box phone in the village where a story broke so that the service would be out of order when a rival arrived and tried to use it. 

He was drawn to lash ups and situations that squeezed the most out of a challenge.  Like a Simon Templar or James Bond or at times a Max Smart, he brought a secret agent sense of adventure to journalism.

*****

In the mid-seventies at the Rathmines School of Journalism, sixteen students in our class studied Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer’s account of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. It was an example of the new journalism. A second book on our course was All The President’s Men.  Burns and his pal, Sean Duignan, didn’t just know about those political conventions, they were at them.  They were our homegrown version of Bernstein and Woodward.

We couldn’t have a gathering like this without referencing Mike’s extraordinary talents as a reporter. A finder and a teller of stories. In August 1939, IRA members planted a bomb, attached to a bicycle in Coventry, killing five people. Two people brought before the court were convicted and hanged. But some of the key figures escaped. 

In 1969 Mike Burns interviewed Joby O’Brien, a man from Co. Cork, linked with the attack. I spent nine years working for RTE in the North West and twenty more based in Belfast. I’ve never heard a piece of work, with a first-hand account of paramilitary activity, like it. John Bowman, the gifted broadcaster, featured it on his radio programme, Bowman: Sunday: 8.30 after Mike died. 

*****

Burns, along with Seán Duignan, Kevin O’Kelly, Dick Hogan, Eddie Barrett, Barry Linnane, Danno Halloran, George Devlin, Sean Egan and Reg Cullen, were among the early generation of television reporters.

His RTE career moved to the next stage when he was given responsibility for what we called the News Features department in radio. He started the News at One, This Week and World Report programmes that remain part of the spine of RTE’s output today.

The members of that unit were an elite corps. Cadets or Rangers in the Army. The Seals, the Special Ops people. They were a cut above the ordinary. They had more daring and more interesting lives. Burns and Diggy were their inspiration because everybody admired them.

Burns was smashing fun. He loved the craft. He could spot a story.  He loved the chase. He had such charm in the field. He could get a person’s trust. He enjoyed scripting. Words really were his tools and he was so able at using them. And in radio and television terms, but especially in radio, because of his wonderful voice, he had presence and personality.

Think of the people he attracted and sometimes recruited. Gerry Barry, Kevin Healy, Brendan Keenan, Olivia O’Leary, Shane Kenny, Leo Enright, Michael Heney, Cian Ó hÉigeartaigh, David Hanley – the later generations, Sean O’Rourke, Emily O’Reilly, Caroline Murphy, Fintan Drury, David Davin-Power, Michael Good, Cathal MacCoille.   Right through to the current generation, Bryan Dobson, Áine Lawlor, Carole Coleman, Justin McCarthy, Rachael English, Audrey Carville, Gavin Jennings, Mary Wilson….they can trace their roots to that assembly line, created by Burns.

His colleagues in the print trade all knew him and liked him as well as respected him. They recognised that Burns, on the job, was the real deal.  The heavyweights – the likes of Vinnie Doyle, Tim Pat Coogan, Vincent Browne, Conor Brady, Aengus Fanning, Geraldine Kennedy knew that Burns really had the track record as well as the gravitas.

*****

It’s fair to say he was a Fine Gaeler at heart. He was on the same wavelength as Declan Costello and shared his interest in a just society.

He was part of that generation of centre, occasionally left of centre Fine Gaelers, like Garret Fitzgerald, Maurice Manning, Peter Prendergast, Liam Hourican, Sean Donlon. But it was also part of the Burns personality that he got on with everybody. I never came across anyone who disliked him, or thought him unfair or biased in his dealings. He literally had friends across the political divide.

*****

Unless you were part of it, it’s difficult to properly get a sense of the fun place RTE was in the 80’s. Wesley Boyd was the Head of News, Rory O’Connor was the Head of Television and Burns was in charge of Radio. The editors and managers were people who had soldered with Burns in the field. The likes of Barney Cavanagh, Eddie Liston, Colm Brennan, Barry Linnane, John Ryan, Rivers Carew, Dan O’Shea, Norman Walker, Dermot Mullane, Peter Mc Niff, Katie Kahl Karl, Roberta Wallace, Jim Flanagan, Ken Shaw. They’d have a tea or a coffee in the canteen after the morning news conference. After the Friday morning conference they’d head for Madigans or Kielys. It was our equivalent of Mulligans, or the Oval, the Pearl Bar. There was too much alcohol. It couldn’t be done now but it was wonderful fun. 

And yet, for all that, Burns never really made a perfect transition from cowboy to sheriff. Yes, he could inspire those around him but he was at his best when he was out from the compound, in the jungle. Burns really needed to be in the field.

That’s why his years as London Editor were such a fulfilling part of his life.

I’ve thought a lot about this in recent years – I chatted about it with Eileen Dunne in Wexford during the summer – how shared membership of the European Union was so good for our relations as neighbouring islands. And how Brexit has thrown a spanner into that dynamic.  When we were both members of the bigger Brussels club, we began to see how much we had in common. Burns, with his years spent in England, his roots in Roscommon, his flying hours as a star man for the national broadcasting service, really was the ideal person for the RTE London role during those years.

He was everybody’s friend in Westminster. Peter Temple Morris, Paul Murphy, Michael Heseltine. And it is much more than a coincidence that some of the most positive years in British-Irish relations were when Burns was active in London, first for RTE, and later as Media Officer for the British-Irish Parliamentary group.

*****

I remember our paths crossed when I was over in London from Brussels on a story.  Wimbledon was on at the time and hotel beds were not cheap.  Mike walked me back to the hotel and – this is a true story – such was the quality of the conversation and the craic we had that night talking in the lounge, I went straight to the airport without using the bed.

One of the pieces of advice he gave me then – don’t go into management. The real fun in this job is reporting.  There was an element of regret as he said it …a sense that he had lost out on some of the magic during his years drawing up rosters and schedules.

*****

There was a very private side to Burns.  I didn’t know Bernadette, his first wife. But they obviously loved each other, deeply, at a time in their lives. And they remained close friends.

I knew Lynette, in her European Commission life….and later in the RTE London office.

I remember them coming to visit me in Sligo, once on a Good Friday.  We went to Ballincar House Hotel….nowadays it is known as the Radisson. We ate lamb. When we belatedly realised it was Good Friday, Burns gave me absolution.

Burns said that day, did you ever notice how there is always a half bag of cement or a missing gate at every new house?  The tidy up is never really finished. How many times since have I smiled at his wisdom.

Burns and Lynette were so good together. She understood him and she loved him.  It was so utterly cruel when she died.  It all happened so fast. I often wondered did his grief and loss those times explain why he was so reluctant to make hospital visits.

*****

I doubt that he knew how much he influenced and affected people.

When Gerald Barry was ill, I went to see him in hospital.  I wanted to thank him for many things….one of them was how good he was to me during a phase as Northern Editor. I did a number of interviews with Ian Paisley…I’d send them down to Gerry. He would listen to the material several times, from beginning to end, and tweak it.  But he ran huge amounts of it. I think it contributed to an understanding of Paisley and in a small way, it helped Paisley to understand himself.  That rigour was encouraged in the News Features unit. Much of that final time I had alone with Gerry Barry was spent talking about Mike Burns.

*****

In September 2018, with Seán Duignan and Eoin Faherty, Burns arrived by train at Belfast’s Central Station. They were so sorry that their pal, Lorna Reid, had cried off.

We had rooted out black and white footage from the late 1960s. Burns, reporting from the border, where new Garda checkpoints were in place….Diggy, in action, further north, after loyalists had bombed a water tower. As they looked at the footage in the editing suite, you sensed them remembering every frame of the story. 

We went from there to Stormont for lunch in the Members’ Dining Room. Gerry McCann and Brendan Wright joined us and the memories flowed.

Tommie Gorman, Mike Burns, Gerry McCann, Sean Duignan and Eoin Faherty at Stormont in 2018.

Next stop was the Crown Bar, opposite the Europa Hotel. We worked our way into a snug, sharing it with some visiting Americans. Within minutes, Burns and Diggy had established a link with their ancestors. 

That evening we made plans for what would be our next gathering. I was to get the gang access to Classiebawn Castle, through a wonderful woman, Caroline Devine, from Loughrea, the former partner of Hugh Tunney, who would love their company.

Eoin, as chief convenor, was to come up with dates. We agreed that Lorna would be part of the next excursion.  All was in order. I brought them to the station. 

Afterwards I discovered a few cigars in a packet and said I would return them to Mike when we next met.

Lorna died in March 2019. 

Covid came and stopped us meeting each other.

Burns died in February last year. A week later Eoin died.

I remember ringing Joe Mulholland to tell him about Mike’s passing.  He cried like a child down then phone. 

He loved Mike, like we all did.

*****

I always thought he would have made a great father. That caring nature would have found expression in the role of a parent. 

But the Burns we all loved took the world as his family. He was a great brother, a great uncle, a great friend.

He was classless. Taxi drivers, porters, barmen, cleaners as well as the well-known and the successful all liked him. 

He had such a generous heart.

I remember my sister Paula died suddenly in April 2016, he was there at the back of the church, in Sligo, in that distinctive trench coat. When Jim Fahy passed away in January, I could swear that Burns was there in the church in Tuam. I felt his caring presence.

That’s why I think we are here today, confirming that in one way or another, Mike Burns, the person we loved, the person we admired, the person who brought out the best in us, he will always be with us.