Remembering Michael Tierney

A documentary compiled and narrated by Ennis journalist Brian O’Connell will examine the life and legacy of Michael Tierney, whose individuality, warm personality and flamboyant hats were admired by the people of Ennis and the wider community.

For decades, Michael could be seen walking the streets of Ennis, delivering newspapers on his daily round or standing outside the cathedral on Sunday mornings after mass. He was recognised by his hats, his choice of jewellery, or the smell of perfume as he walked by. He wore make-up and had a large collection of wigs – some blond with pigtails and others jet-black like Elvis.
Michael was an individual in an age of conformity. From the 1950s onwards, he dressed in feminine and increasingly flamboyant outfits, yet he was fully accepted and respected as a member of society. Country folk came to the market town at weekends and would only buy their papers from Michael.
The business community protected him from teenage taunts and general society took him in as one of their own. As families began to holiday abroad from the 1960s onwards, the women of the town would often bring back ‘a hat for Michael’. When he died, in August 1998, it was one of the largest funerals seen in Ennis.
The Documentary on One: I Could Have Danced All Night on RTÉ Radio 1 features an assortment of characters who knew Michael and recall his joie de vivre.
These include Grammy-winning singer Maura O’Connell, writer and actor Mark O’Halloran and members of his family and friends. Michael’s legacy lives on and young people in Ennis talk about how his ability to be who he was in more straitened times has also set an example for young gay men and women in Ennis today. Few recordings are known to have been made of Michael during his lifetime and Brian begins a quest to unearth his voice. His search leads him to those involved in a local pirate station in Ennis in the early 1980s and the slim chance that a recording may still exist.
O’Connell reassembles the life and times of Michael through recollections of those who knew and loved him. He takes a walk around Ennis and calls to the shop owners on Michael’s newspaper route, speaks with jewellers who supplied him with earrings, and hears from neighbours and friends who recount his extraordinary life lived to the full. They remember the mystery tours that Michael took many people on, his affinity with the elderly and lonely and how he handled abuse thrown at him with humour and indifference.
Efforts are currently underway by locals in Ennis to try to commemorate the life of Michael Tierney and a Facebook campaign to explore how people would like to see him remembered is receiving considerable support.
Among those who have added their name to the campaign is internationally renowned singer, Ennis native, Maura O’Connell, who states in one Facebook posting, “Michael was a gas ticket. I remember when I was a kid, all the young boys used to be very mean to him. Kick his papers around and throwing things at him. By the time I was a teenager, attitudes seemed to have changed enough to where Michael was almost like the town mascot.
He used to come into the shop in the market to show off his new pearls and regale us with stories of his latest mystery tour and have us in stitches. He is someone that will always remain in the hearts of all us Townies. I believe a statue to honour him would honour all of us, because he, in his own way, helped to change the outdated, bigoted notions of the time. He was a phenomenal storyteller and would have been a great stand-up comedian.”
Brian, who writes for The Irish Times, noticed that the Facebook page about commemorating Michael had been set up and he started off with the intention of doing a feature on Michael for the newspaper.
“When I started speaking to people about Michael I realised the wealth and value of the stories that Ennis people had about him and the role that he played in the town. I knew it would be much more suitable for radio,” Brian explains.
While the documentary focuses on the character Michael Tierney, Brian adds that at another level it emphasises the changes in Ennis in the past 40 years.
“Ennis used to be a town of independent grocers, newsagents, drapery stores and there were families who were synonymous as traders in the town, including the O’Connors, the Guerins and the Tierneys. The town is still quite vibrant but it has changed and the documentary captures some of those changes,” he says.
“I think Michael’s story, actually people’s stories about Michael, are amazing and say a lot about social perceptions of someone who was different but yet very much accepted as a part of the fabric of their local town.
“I found it very interesting that given the fact that the 1950s and 1960s were more conservative times, that someone like Michael was accepted for being himself. In the documentary, I also pose the question of whether or not Michael Tierney would have been accepted as much in today’s society. I’m not so sure he would have been.
Most people who speak in the documentary about Michael Tierney remember him as a fun character and a very warm and generous person who in return gained the respect, friendship and generosity of others in Ennis, including many who brought hats back to him from their holidays. In return, if a woman needed a hat for a wedding, he kindly obliged with one from his vast collection.
The documentary also discovers that while there are people with wonderful personalities in Ennis these days, there is no one who would be anything like the character of Michael Tierney.
Brian also remembers regularly seeing Michael outside the cathedral too but as a child, he did not stand out in his mind. He finds it disappointing that there is no video footage of Michael remaining, or at least not that he has found as of yet.
He did manage to locate one audio recording of him though, which is about three minutes long and features him talking and singing at Christmas in the mid-1980s. “I think Ennis people, or anyone who remembers Michael, will love to hear his voice again. He had such a positive effect on everyone who knew him and people still smile when they think of him, his laugh and his voice,” Brian adds.
Following his interviews, Brian now faces the very difficult task of editing about 30 hours of recordings. “It’s going to be almost impossible to narrow it down to 45 minutes. All of the stories and memories have a place in this feature. I will of course keep all of the recordings and who knows where they might be used again,” he says.
Michael Tierney was regularly mentioned in The Clare Champion in years gone by. One feature with him, following his retirement from his newspaper sales job in February 1995, described him as “flamboyant, colourful and for many Ennis people, he’s the last of the great local characters”.
The article continues, “Michael Tierney has been brandishing his own particular brand of showmanship around the town for as long as anyone can remember and is all the more famous for it.
“His vivid outfits, big rings, bigger earrings and amazing collection of hats make the sort of sartorial statement old Dev never envisaged for the crossroads but to their credit, the people of Ennis never bated an eye.”
It also states how the women of Ennis loved him and “he’s privy to their confidences and regularly invited on their nights out”.  His mother was a huge influence on his life and until her death there was “just the two of them”.
He also did odd jobs to supplement his newspaper job, like carrying suitcases at the railway station. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s he became famous too for a series of Sunday bus tours that went to places such as Killaloe, Ballybunion and West Clare for “the sheer hell of it”.
“I’d hire out a bus, sell the tickets and get them all organised. We’d set off early but we wouldn’t come home until five in the morning, having spent every penny I collected on the outing.
“They’d all be dying the following day but I was always up at the crack of dawn for the newspaper,” the article tells of Michael.
The documentary will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio I on Saturday, July 31 at 2pm.