FAIR CITY REPRESENTS THE IRELAND OF TODAY
As the show celebrates 30 years, Tony Tormey on what has made it such an enduring success
‘That was like being in a proper movie’ ‘I’ll miss Karl Shiels so much walking around’
IT’S only ten days since RTÉ’s Director general warned that tough times were ahead. The station’s future seems under threat: salaries may have to be cut, orchestras amalgamated, indeed some are even suggesting that Montrose sells its Dublin 4 site and moves somewhere cheaper, such as the Northside.
The root of the problem, of course, is that TV audiences are changing: rather than just sitting down and watching whatever’s on RTÉ One, people are turning to streaming services, binge-watching box sets of hugely expensive TV series made for global audiences. For a public service broadcaster in a small country with limited budgets, that’s hard to compete with.
And yet, extraordinarily, every week one RTÉ TV show does that. It may not be RTÉ’s most celebrated, but it has an extremely loyal audience. And even more astonishingly, it has been on our screens without interruption for 30 years. Somehow, this one programme — without the budgets showered on costume dramas like Rebellion or Haughey — has time and again proven itself more successful than virtually any other TV show made by Radió Telefís Éireann.
And just as astonishingly, ever since that first broadcast, one actor has been ever-present: Tony Tormey, who plays Paul Brennan, was there when the very first episode aired on September 18, 1989.
So how on earth has it survived and prospered when almost every other TV show has fallen by the wayside?
‘When you think about it, Glenroe was only on air for about 16 years — The Riordans was on for less,’ Tony reflects. ‘Thirty years is a long time for an audience to invest in something.’
That said, investing in Fair City is something the actors do as well. When we meet, Tony has been shooting outdoor scenes from 8.30am to 7pm for much of the week, appearing in a staggering 12 scenes in one day. This morning, on a rare day off, he’s been ‘tidying up after the kids’ (Max and Izzy), but given the week that’s in it, he’s had reason to pause for reflection.
So, from the man who’s been there all the way through, what is it that has made Fair City so astonishingly resilient?
‘The one thing about Fair City is that it embraces all sorts of life — people with problems, people figuring out their sexual identity,’ he ventures. ‘It represents the Ireland of today.’ He thinks again. ‘It’s grown with the country, and the country has grown with it. People might laugh and sneer, but there’s no doubting that it’s in people’s psyche.’
The other asset, you sense, is the investment that both RTÉ and the actors have made in the characters — turning them from actors speaking lines in scripts into people who are in their own way every bit as real as the millions who’ve watched them.
Even before Tony stepped on set, he and the rest of the cast were given detailed background descriptions of their characters — and what kind of people they were.
‘My sheet of paper went down to what Paul drank — which was Smithwicks — and the fact that he was a Catholic that went to Mass every now and again,’ Tony laughs. ‘He was kind of trendy and would have worn jeans from flea markets — which I was horrified about at the time because they were manky.’
The character descriptions went as far as to setting out which bands Paul Brennan liked (in his case, the Radiators, The Jam and Rory Gallagher). ‘It was all great stuff that brought the character right to life,’ Tony says.
But, as he said, the show has grown with the country. In time, Paul Brennan would shake of his trendy indielad roots and become one of television’s major Celtic cubs. As Ireland’s fiscal fortunes waxed and waned in the Nineties and Noughties, so too did Paul’s as he became the area’s hardest working and most ambitious entrepreneur.
Critical to audience interest, though, was something else: love. Long before First Dates or Love Island allowed us voyeuristic seats in the dating game, Paul Brennan was providing the next best thing: love stories that became just as real (if not more so) than the modern-day TV couplings epitomised by Love Island’s Greg and Amber. Paul Brennan fell for people in a way audiences could believe in.
‘Paul liked older women — though he wasn’t always successful,’ laughs Tony. But isn’t that what real life is like? His character was engaged first to Bernie (played by Ger Ryan) ‘and then of course there was “Paul And Helen”.’
Tony is referring, of course to Paul’s big love Helen Doyle, played by Kira Carroll, who died after a car accident in 1989. Ultimately, Paul has had the sort of love life that would make Mick Jagger wilt, having four children with four different women, as well as several affairs, engagements, marriages and flings. Currently, he is involved with Fiona Piggott (played by Amelia Crowley)— on top of being drugged and blackmailed by his ex Jane (Rachel Pilkington) to being double-crossed by another ex, Niamh (Clelia Murphy).
Given the need for authenticity, though, has he ever taken a look at a storyline that the scriptwriters have given him and thought to himself, “ah, give poor Paul a break”?
‘Ah God no, I love all that stuff,’ he enthuses. ‘I can’t remember the wildest ones. I think the storyline where Fiona came in first, and her husband was killed and she and Paul had an affair and there was money laundering going on — that was like being in a proper movie. That was a great storyline, but then so was the stuff with Helen and Paul, or when Paul lost the run of himself and tricked the Molloys out of the garage, or when the Bishops came back… god, picking a favourite is like picking a favourite child. Just being able to hold my own amid so many great storylines is brilliant.’
Being Carrigstown’s resident villain, he says, is a hugely enjoyable role. ‘It’s outlandish, but you have to keep some semblance of reality and go real,’ he reasons. ‘I think if Paul started walking around with a cane you’d be a bit like, “cop on, will ya?”’ You have to base it in reality.’
Naturally, that reality eventually becomes blurred, as people start to blend Tony Tormey and Paul Brennan into one person off the set.
‘A lot of people mistake you for the character but you have to roll with it,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’m shocked when people call me Tony and not Paul. Look, it’s nice — 99 per cent of people are great.’
Such is the measure of Fair City’s adoption into the national psyche, though, that sometimes Tony Tormey actually gets given out to in public for what his fictional character has done on screen.
‘Sometimes in the pub or at a party, someone will have had a few drinks and they’ll say the nasty stuff to your face,’ Tony says. ‘My mum finds that hard, when someone comes up to me and says something in front of the kids, but, sure, it’s a laugh. At the end of the day, I’m in people’s front rooms four days a week.’
And with such familiarity here also comes an extraordinary bond to the audience. ‘I was down in Wexford and a woman came up to me and said, “I lost my husband eight months ago, and he used to watch Fair City and he loved to hate you, so you are my link to him.” When you hear stuff like that, it really fills you up.’
It’s certainly been a long journey since the very first day of work back in 1989 when, Tony admits, he was ‘completely s ***** g it’. He had just graduated from the relatively new course at Dublin’s Gaiety School of Acting, and had recently appeared in Borstal Boy at the Abbey Theatre.
‘I still am s ***** g it, half the time,’ he smiles. ‘We drove around Fairview and Drumcondra, where Carrigstown is loosely based, to get a feel for the place. Then we had to meet the press. All this before we’d done a day’s work in front of the cameras.’
Initially, Fair City’s outdoor scenes were filmed in and around Drumcondra, where Tormey’s mother still lives today. Interior scenes were shot in Studio 4 in Drumcondra, before moving to Ardmore, and then eventually to RTE’s premises in Donnybrook.
He may have been nervous, but he also recalls, ‘I thought I was James Dean, with the hair.’ One director had to remind him that even when it wasn’t ‘his’ scene, he was still in shot.
‘He said, “you have to do something. There’s a very small line between doing nothing and doing f*** all”,’ he says. ‘Well, that put me in my place.’
He also learned, he says, from the acting greats, among them Jim
‘Paul will be having a goo at the women’
Bartley (Bela Doyle) and Tom Jordan (Charlie Kelly).
He counts Victor Burke (Wayne Molloy) and Enda Oates (Pete Ferguson) among his closest on-set friends: the latter was best man at his wedding to Kate in 2000.
However the recent deaths of cast members Tom Jordan and Karl Shiels, both close friends, has changed the energy on set.
‘I’ll miss Karl so much walking around on set. We’d always crack each other up and he’d try to make me laugh during filming,’ recalls Tormey. ‘Tom was just a real actor, who ate and drank acting, and gave great advice to the kids [in the cast] every now and again. I’ll miss him a lot.
‘It sounds really clichéd, but there’s always been a lovely family vibe on the set,’ he says. ‘The actress who plays my daughter Ruth, Kacey [Wallace] is like my manager. She gives out to me when I lose my lines. If I’m drinking out of a coffee cup on set she’ll say, “Daddy, continuity!” She’s an absolutely adorable, open child.’
He does occasional stage and voiceover work, and appeared briefly in the mini series Neverland (alongside Keira Knightley and Anna Friel) and Aristrocrats (alongside Sian Phillips and Ben Daniels), but time and time again, returns to Paul and Carrigstown.
‘I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want to go to America and be in a Hollywood movie as I’m a complete movie buff,’ he says. ‘But to be there on Fair City has been the making of me. Sure, my mum still asks me when I’m going to get a proper job.’
As to what drama lies in Paul Brennan’s future, it’s hard to predict.
‘In 20 years’ time, Paul will probably be at the Barry’s tea dance, having a goo at the women there, with the hip gone,’ Tormey laughs.
‘I’m proud of what I do and what I’ve created,’ he adds. ‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of it and I always say to myself, I’m one of the few actors, if not the only one, who has been in constant work for 30 years. That’s a hell of a thing to say.’
An hour-long 30th anniversary episode of Fair City is airing this Wednesday on RTÉ One at 8pm.
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