Vincent Hanley: Sex, Lies and Videotape, RTE 1, Monday
It’s unfortunate, but realistically unavoidable, that the story of Vincent Hanley is one as much about his sexual orientation as his broadcasting talent.
There were few more famous broadcasters in 1980s RTE.
And there are few more tragic stories than the death of Hanley at the age of just 33 when his career trajectory looked like making him the next major Irish star in Britain.
Born in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, he began his DJing career in Cork, before getting a job with the regional arm of RTE.
The timing was fortuitous and with the launch of a dedicated pop radio station, RTE 2, in 1979 Hanley was off to Dublin to be a presenter.
Determined to get to the top of the business, he refused to accept that his future was a long term RTE career and he took a job with Capital Radio in London in 1981.
His friends point out that he was signed by a famous London agent who restricted herself to just two other mega clients – Terry Wogan and Kenny Everett.
But suddenly things changed and his friends were initially unsure why.
Hanley quit Capital and decamped to New York, where he created MT USA with producer Bill Hughes, who tells the story of his friend in this important and moving documentary.
It was just a few years after MTV launched in the US but at a time when the Republic was served by just two, conservative, state television channels.
MT USA broadcast for four years from 1984 and was a revelation to Irish viewers in the midst of a decade long recession and mass emigration.
Hanley introduced music videos from the streets and sights of New York, but also interviewed celebrities and discussed American music and culture.
The three-hour Sunday afternoon show on RTE 2 was a must watch for a new generation eager to see more of an exciting and vibrant world.
Like many others who left Ireland for London, New York and San Francisco, Hanley may have been escaping from a society which criminalised and repressed homosexuality.
It was impossible for a privately gay public figure at the time to live an open life in Ireland and while friends said he never hid away, he did not advertise his relationships.
In New York, Hanley found more freedom and we heard how he started dabbling in cocaine and was promiscuous at a time when there was little consciousness of AIDS.
It wasn’t clear if it was at this time that he contacted the then deadly virus but within a while it started affecting his television performances.
His friends described how he declined dramatically in the last year of MT USA and towards the end of the season the effect of AIDS meant he was unable to stand up on set.
In a heart-rending account, Hughes told of getting on all fours and arranging for Hanley to sit on his back, with a camera angle that made it look like the presenter was standing in front of a classic New York backdrop.
He made it back to Ireland so close to death that a friend told of how he stopped breathing on the way from the airport and he had to stop the car and give him mouth to mouth. In itself, a courageous choice at a time when the fear of AIDS was getting to fever pitch.
Vincent Hanley died six weeks later with his friends around him in a Dublin hospital in April 1987.
It would be another six years before homosexuality was decriminalised in the Republic.
