INFAMOUS for taking a hard-nosed approach to questioning politicians, paramilitaries and other persons of interest throughout his 40-year career as a journalist, Eamonn Mallie is well equipped for his latest role as TV inquisitor.
Eamonn Mallie Meets offers viewers nine one-on-one exchanges between Mallie and well-known names from across the spectrum of public life in the north.
It finds the south Armagh man – who describes himself as an 'in-your-face journalist' – dispensing with the niceties of the modern TV interview 'experience' in favour of 30-minute blasts of hard questioning.
"In my previous life, I only had 30 or 40 seconds to challenge people," explains Mallie, who cut his teeth as a reporter and political correspondent for Downtown Radio in the 1970s and 80s before establishing Eamonn Mallie News Services.
"In a doorstep situation, you got perhaps two questions and then they were gone. It's very different when they sit down with me face to face. They've nowhere to run and I'm coming back at them again and again."
Guests going head-to-head with Mallie on the Sunday evening Irish TV show (produced by his son Michael) include Martin McGuinness, Patrick Kielty, Archbishop Eamon Martin, Michael Longley, Eamonn McCann, Kyle Paisley, Colin Davidson and Phil Coulter.
First in the firing line is Jarlath Burns, principal of St Paul's High School in Bessbrook. A former captain of the Armagh senior football team and member of the Eames/Bradley Commission, Burns is one of the most outspoken, progressive voices in modern GAA circles.
"He's secretary of Silverbridge Football Club, which would have been my club at home," Mallie (65) tells me of his fellow south Armagh man, who is widely tipped as future GAA president material.
Apparently, Sunday's televised discussion is likely to ruffle feathers among the GAA establishment.
"He's posing some of the most fundamental questions in the history of the GAA," the question master reveals.
"Jarlath's argument would be that, if the GAA is serious about reaching out and becoming acceptable on a cross-community basis, the time has come to really examine the sacramentals of Gaelic games and how the GAA presents itself.
"Is it alienating itself from the Protestant community who find it hostile because of its charter, constitution and the symbols it promotes: the Irish tricolour and so-called national anthem at Championship matches and the naming of parks after deceased militants?
"At this stage of his life, Jarlath basically sees flags as divisive and is wondering how the GAA can be genuinely corrective towards Protestants who see Gaelic games as foreign and some sort of a threat territorially."
While Jarlath Burns may not need much encouragement to expound on such matters, it sounds like Mallie's upcoming encounter with the north's deputy first minister Martin McGuinness was a rather more intense affair.
"I've known him for over 30 years, but this was our first sit-down, face-to-face interview," he tells me.
"It was quite evident from the very moment we began that a tension was going to develop – and develop it did. There was a palpable tension in the studio.
Again, Mallie's distaste for soft-soaping his subjects promises electrifying viewing, particularly for those who feel that 'former combatants' like McGuinness too often get an easy ride from the media.
"I was relentless," is how the veteran journalist puts it. "It was a bare knuckle interview, but not in a crude way.
"Fundamentally, I was addressing the role he has played in history as an IRA activist. I was challenging him on his psychology as somebody who took up a gun to go and shoot soldiers and police officers, to fight what he saw as the foreign forces in Derry.
"I suspect that not since his days in Castlereagh or wherever he was had he been subjected to such a grilling. But he wouldn't have expected anything less from me.
"Martin took it on the chin but, had we not known each other or so long, I think it might have been a very different situation. I don't know if he would have allowed himself to be subjected to my line of questioning.
"You could see the colour change in his face and you knew that he might have liked to have said some other things to me which may not have been very favourable to me, but he was very controlled and dignified throughout."
During this verbal sparring session, Martin McGuinness also "spoke affectionately" of his relationship with the late Ian Paisley, the subject of Mallie's two-part BBC documentary Paisley: Genesis To Revelation last year and father of Kyle Paisley, who also sat down for an illuminating discussion with Mallie for the show.
As for Archbishop Eamon Martin's 30 minutes in the hotseat, Mallie describes his encounter with the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland with typical modesty as "probably one of the most challenging interviews ever done with a churchman on the island of Ireland".
"I so admired his behaviour, because I hit him so hard," reveals Mallie, praising his subject's relaxed approach to the encounter and lack of "pomposity" about his status.
"I took him places no other churchman was ever taken in a public interview. I challenged him about his own sexuality, about the state of the Church, celibacy, homosexuality – he was so brutally frank and personal in all these areas.
"He didn't duck, he didn't dive, he didn't shirk or walk away from any of the questions."
While his most recent interviews have been memorable, perhaps even historic affairs, they have some competition from Mallie's past press encounters: particularly when the life-long Irish speaker visited Long Kesh in 1979 to interview IRA OC Bobby Sands – entirely in Irish.
"That was a remarkable story," remembers Mallie. "I still have no idea why I was given such access. I walked in and as soon as Sands came out, he started off in Irish – there wasn't a word of English for most of an hour.
"There was absolute pandemonium all around as the authorities went running to try and find someone who spoke Irish. It was laughable – but it was also very sad: the lovely free-flowing hair and healthy looking face that you saw on the posters and gable walls, that's not the Sands I met.
"He was pitiful looking, emaciated. But he spoke the most brilliant fluent Irish, which he had learned in jail."
Although the host of Eamonn Mallie Meets is proud of his latest TV endeavour, the Co Armagh man admits he prefers the rush of covering stories as they happen.
Little wonder then that Mallie is well known for embracing the social media revolution via Twitter and Periscope.
"I love live broadcasting, the buzz, the adrenaline," he enthuses. "I love Periscope, it's a big big thing in my life now. I think it's such an opportunity for expression and sharing experiences. I love painting pictures and I love using words.
"Not everybody likes it, but I have big plans for the future."
Eamonn Mallie Meets, Sunday September 27, Irish TV (Sky channel 191, Freesat channel 400, Free to Air set-top box & television channel 191), 10pm, repeated Wednesdays at 11pm. Find Eamonn Mallie online at Eamonnmallie.com.
