Brothers of the Airwaves 

 By Desmond Devoy

Never have so many been so honoured by, well, so many.
For the first time in the history of Toronto's Irish community, the Irish Person of the Year Committee has decided to quadruple its pleasure by honouring the four men who keep the city's Irish-Canadians, and those who love Ireland, informed and entertained every weekend.

Perhaps picking a cue that if four provinces are good enough for Ireland, honouring the four Brothers of the Airwaves certainly makes sense, as the community honours Frankie Benson, Colm O'Brien, Eamonn O'Loghlin and Hugo Straney.

FRANKIE BENSON

Ironically for a man who works at a radio station that can be heard as far away as America, when Belfastman Frankie Benson first heard the good news, he had trouble hearing the good news.

"I was in a noisy place and she [Kitty Freeley] was in a noisy place. I could hear her but she couldn't hear me as well," said Benson of the phone call that let him know he was being honoured. He's glad to be sharing the accolade alongside his fellow radio friends since "the community's too small for us all to walk on each other."

Benson is honoured to be part of such a group and notes that "it's good that everybody else is there. We work hand-in-hand." But after previous multiple inductions - see last year's accolades for the Kearns' brothers - Benson isn't surprised at the IPOY committee's decision.  

"I figured once they went for two, they could go for 100!" he said with a laugh.

(This is not the first time though that Benson has been honoured alongside his fellow Belfast radio host, Hugo Straney, since they both shared the title of Belfast Person of the Year.)

Frankie, as he is affectionately known within the community, has been hosting the Radio Erin Show, for the past 31 years. When he first started out, there was some concern about what the show would be about and "I reassured them that they had nothing to be concerned about."

Just as Colm O'Brien's show is non-commercial, so too was Benson's...for the first edition, anyway. Slowly though, businesses came on board, once they  heard what was on offer.

A lot has changed in both Ireland and Canada in the past 31 years, and Frankie's station ownership has changed with it.

"The studios are brilliant. My music is programmed into the computer in advance," he said of AM 740, Zoomer Radio, owned by City-TV founder Moses Znaimer. "It's amazing the technology that they have."

However, no amount of technology can compensate for the hard deadline that is live radio. Frankie is also well known throughout Toronto as a singer and entertainer of renown. One Sunday afternoon, "I was doing a sound check at the Irish Embassy."  With green lights all around for the sound system, Frankie was ready to head over to his radio studios. However, "my van was blocked in the alleyway!" As a result of his very late start, "I did my show on a cell phone on the QEW." Thankfully, he was able to screech into the parking lot and do the final 15 minutes of his show live from the studio.

One of his show's enduring draws has been his friend Jim McLean phoning in his sports report from Belfast every Sunday evening, with all of the latest weekend GAA results, for the past 12 years.  "It's one of the draws," he says proudly of McLean's reports. That, "plus the dulcet tones of Frankie Benson!...[But] it all comes together. It's like one of those Harrison Ford movies."

Like the other radio lads, Benson has had some noteworthy voices join him mikeside, including former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, singer Dickie Rock and entertainer/comedian Brendan Grace in the studio.

"I had Joe Dolan on my show, live, for the whole hour," he said proudly of the late Westmeath singer's appearance to promote an upcoming Toronto concern. "People were calling in, he had a phone in."

Benson was also able to keep it in the family when "my daughter interviewed Maeve Binchy," on his show.  

COLM O'BRIEN

Of the four radio lads, to quote Brendan Behan, Colm O'Brien may well be The Quare Fella amongst the four, in that he doesn't sing or play any musical instruments.

"I'm afraid I don't! It makes me the odd one out there! I don't dance very well or sing, but the other three lads have a jump on me there," says O'Brien with a laugh. That lack of musical or singing talent doesn't stop his love of traditional Irish music though.

Another way in which O'Brien sets himself apart from his three radio contemporaries is that  "mine is a non-commercial station," driven by listener support, like PBS, and that folk and traditional music, "would be the mainstay of my show."

But one way in which he is in the majority is that he, along with Benson and Straney, are natives of Ulster.

"There must be something in it, now," says the native of County Cavan. "I feel very proud to be part of that group," of the radio lads.

When he found out that he would be sharing this year's award, "you could've knocked me over...I simply couldn't believe it, but mighty proud of it just the same. I'm very flattered actually and honoured and I still have to pinch myself. I am glad of the way it happened."

O'Brien's show, The Long Note, premiered on the Ryerson University community radio station CKLN 88.1 FM in February of 1986.

"Mick Casey and I started The Long Note," he recalls of his former co-host. Now, his friend Pat Murphy takes over the show on the last Sunday of every month to do "a more poppy show, how radio in Ireland would have sounded in the 1950s or 1960s."

Over the years, in keeping with his show's mandate, O'Brien has welcomed the likes of the Inis Owen Ceili Band, who were on for a full hour of the show, and promoted the Barra MacNeils.  "We had Christy Moore on, very early on," O'Brien recalled.

Other guest of his show over the years have included Johnathan Lynn and Kevin Kennedy. But his show wasn't exclusively the domain of musicians. Author Dermot Healy went on air with O'Brien "reading from his books," leading to "a fair range of people," on air.

But for O'Brien, one of the best interviews he did, both on and off the air, was with The Pogues.  

"They were kind of at the height of their fame at the time," he remembers of the lads in the studio. However, "the one thing we weren't allowed to ask was where [Shane] MacGowan was!"

In spite of their reputation, O'Brien defends the group and notes that "it's amazing how many people got interested in Irish music because of The Pogues."

After the interview, O'Brien and Casey sat down to speak with band member Terry Woods outside of the studio. "It might've been the best interview we've ever done," O'Brien said. "Unfortunately, our recording machine wasn't working. It was two hours of blank tape...The legendary missing tapes!"

 EAMONN O'LOGHLIN

It's hard to write dispassionately and objectively about someone you revere and hold in such high regard.

Certainly, there are facts that are clearly, from the start, a matter of public record - that he is the only non-Ulster winner this year, hailing from Ennistymon, County Clare.

Eamonn O'Loghlin is the publisher of this publication and our predecessor, the Toronto Irish News. After graduating from University College Cork with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1975, he emigrated to Canada the same year. He spent 18 years with Hallmark Cards, and now runs O'Loghlin Communications Inc. He is also Executive Director of the Toronto branch of the Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce, as well as a longtime supporter of Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann - not surprising given his Billy Joel-like piano skills - and supports the Ireland Fund of Canada and the Gaelic Athletic Association.

On top of being an avid golfer, he is the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Corporate Sponsorship for the Canadian National Exhibition and Exhibition Place. Further to this, he helped found the band Tip Splinter with his wife Madeleine O'Loghlin, and their friends, where he played piano.  That's the public face.

     In private, he is generous to a fault, keenly intelligent, and the best friend and mentor a man could ever want to emulate.

     Just as the other three shows have something that sets them apart, O'Loghlin has been heard to joke that his show, Ceol agus Craic, on Fairchild Radio, AM 1430, is "the best Irish radio show in Toronto. On a Chinese radio station. On a Saturday morning."

     Like his co-winners, O'Loghlin is also humbled that the community has chosen to honour him and his friends.  "I really appreciate the vote of confidence from the grass roots of our community and the IPOY Committee's fortitude in making this award not just to one individual but to the four of us collectively," O'Loghlin wrote in an email exchange. "That really makes it special for me. I am really looking forward to a fun, upbeat occasion where we can all have a laugh amidst the doom and gloom that's all around us. Those other three boyos better hold on to their hats when I get to the microphone - I've a lot of stuff on all of them!"

     While O'Loghlin is glad to be one of the honourees, he is also proud of the community at large.  "We live in an incredible Irish community here in this town and I am both proud and humbled to be joining the illustrious group of recipients going back as far as 1991," O'Loghlin wrote.

 HUGO STRANEY

"We'll have to figure out who gets the trophy! We'll all get a piece!" jokes Belfastman Hugo Straney of how he and the other three fellas are going to share the spoils at the IPOY luncheon this year. "I'm very humbled about it. It's hard to say, you don't know how to react," he says more seriously a moment later. "I never thought I'd be in that mix. There's a lot more worthier recipients."

     In looking at all four Irish shows in Toronto, Straney notes that, taken as a whole, "it's like a line-up on a major radio station," a type of RTE Radio One for the Toronto Irish.  "Each one has their own niche."

     While he has had big name guests on his show over the years, ranging from Dickie Rock to Daniel O'Donnell to Frank Patterson, as well as comedian Hal Roach, Straney is adamant that "my next guest is my biggest guest."

One of the rewards, and curses, of live radio, is the intimacy, and timeliness of the medium.

"The one thing with radio is that it's not today, it's now. That is the one exciting, frightening thing about it," Straney says of his show "Songs from Home," on CHIN Radio, 1540 AM. "When you have to be on radio, your audience has to be from [age] nine to 92."  One thing that does worry him about live radio just before, of while live on air, is if "I hit the dry...that's scary," where his throat dries up and makes it very difficult to speak. "Before I do a gig, I do a little prayer that I don't get it."  But, when your microphone is live, even divine intervention can seem a long way off.

 "You  have to give back to the community. It's a given," he says. "You don't have to give back...but it's no problem to give your time."  Some of the charities he donates his time to include Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, the Irish Peace Shrine in Midland, Ontario, as well as fundraising for cystic fibrosis and breast cancer.  "I do a lot of work with Special Olympics, especially when they sent the athletes to Ireland," in 2003, adding that, like the mafia, "once you're into them, you're in for life!"  "They're the real athletes competing," he adds of the Special Olympians.

     When he was first starting out with his live hosting duties, the smallest crowd he ever played for was for a Gaelic Athletic Association fundraiser in Brampton, which attracted a grand total of six attendees...not including the host. But the show must go on. "For six or 6,000, I still give the same show," he says.

     Straney chalks up his fearlessness on stage to his mother's performing skills, but his singing skills to his dad.

"Everything I learned at my mother's knee, and other low joints," he jokes. "My modus operandi is you're only as good as your last gig."

     One thing that sticks in people's minds about Straney - it's often seared in there, so it's hard to erase - are his famously loud suits, especially his so-called Leon's "Do Not Pay 'Til 2011!" suit. Straney wore an outlandish suit when he was hosting a Brendan Grace concert at Massey Hall one evening. After seeing the suit backstage, Grace told the audience "it takes a brave man to wear a suit like that!"  Straney bought the suit from a men's store called Sherman's in Detroit after seeing similar garb worn by a band called Paulie and The Goodfellas.  "It's a bit of a showbiz thing," he explains. "That only comes out on special occasions," he said of the suit, before adding hastily, that "I won't wear it at the Irish Person of the Year luncheon!"

Images from Irish Person of the Year Luncheon March 8, 2009