 My life in our times and to outlines his life growing up in Slago in the 60s and then becoming a local reporter at the Western Journal and taking up the post eventually of Northwest Correspondent that was actually back in 1980 and over the next 40 years he became a very familiar presence in our homes on our TV screens every evening and that was for his coverage not just from the northwest but then from Europe and from the north and along the way he interviewed all the major figures really likes of Jerry Adams and Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster and of course Roy Keane and as well the book outlines how he coped with a cancer diagnosis that he got back in 94 and had to look about ways to access life-saving treatments well delighted to Tommy's now on the line for a chat about the book Tommy how are you lovely talking to you um I was chatting to one of your colleagues there as I was waiting and I was telling her it's a blue sky down here in Slago plus she was telling me it's not as rosy as letter came so I hope I hope some of that sky makes its way up here before the evening well it's far from blue here at the minute does and there's just a window in the room beyond here and and I can see the the rain up against it in the gray sky beyond but um the new book Tommy never better my life in our times and there's a picture of yourself smiling on the front and at a time I wasn't too sure if you would be you know smiling at this stage of the game because I saw that documentary that you'd on a few years back about your battle with cancer and it ended up being something of a of a campaign as opposed to just you know going in getting your cancer treatment it would end up being much more than that yeah uh I suppose the first thing uh about it is in a way it was kind of this may sound like a strange thing to say but in a way it was kind of liberating because it brought home to meet the reality that we're all just passing through uh that none of us gets out of here alive and that at some stage in the course of your journey you're going to be ambushed um I was in my late 30s at the time uh it happened in 1994 when I was brought into hospital in Brussels for what I thought was an appendix operation but it turned out to be a primary tumor with secondaries and then lots of spots metastases on my liver and one of the fascinating things about it John was um I discovered that I couldn't get the kind of treatment that I needed in Ireland or indeed in Belgium and um there was a center of excellence at that stage in Uppsala in Sweden and I went back to my roots I went back to the contacts I had in the northwestern health board in our region uh people like Donald O'Shea and Pat Harvey and Tom Daley were some of the executives I had known in the northwestern health board and because I was working in Brussels I had learned of a court of justice decision that allowed you to access treatment in another country if it wasn't available in your home country and the northwestern health board uh so far away from Dublin from the center of power it actually signed off on one of those forms for me and the consultant in Sligo General Hospital had the courage to say I couldn't get the treatment in my own country that I needed to stay alive so that man Peter Morrison signed the form for me as well and I became the first Irish patient to benefit from what's known as an E-112 and of course nowadays you have an extension of that scheme in so many ways with the cross-border directive that has the Healy raise sending bus loads of people from Kerry and Cork up to Belfast to get cataracts removed and you have people and this is important for your listeners that if there are people on public waiting lists and they're having delays for procedures as are right as a European citizen they're entitled to go to another EU country to get that kind of treatment and paid for at Irish rates in those in those member states and that's their right as a European citizen and I alive today because of that particular measure yeah and this was back at a time when it wasn't known about so you were you were breaking the mold and and luckily enough it did all work out for you but it's important that to this day that you know people are reminded that that is available and yeah John and we formed our patient support group for people with my disease it's known as neuroendocrine tumors are next it's the disease that actually killed Steve Jobs the founder of Apple and we had the 10th anniversary of our patients organization support group in Dublin last week we now have a center of excellence in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin where a lot of the procedures that I had to access abroad they're now done in Ireland but I was really interested that our patients group that I met several people who had traveled down from Donnie Gall I met somebody there from Movell I met somebody else from letter Kenny with their family members who had actually traveled down who are now attending that patient support group so it was good to see the way the services for people like me with my disease the disease I have that they're able to access better quality care in Ireland through the Irish system indeed well that part of your life is dealt with in the book as is early years growing up in Slago and becoming a reporter with the Western Journal and then your encounters with the great and the good down through the years people in in power and your encounters with them and interviews with them and in a way I suppose you'll be best remembered Tommy for an interview with a sports personality not a world leader not a politician or a prime minister or or whatever but instead a sports personality in in Roy Keane and even this week was documentary on I think it was Monday or Tuesday and it was outlined we're going back over the whole Saipan saga again just tell us a wee bit about how because everybody wanted to interview Roy Keane at the time nobody could get near him he was out walking the dog but you managed it well that's the sort of a that's looking at it 20 years on but actually at the time I was back in Belfast I had been working based in Brussels for 12 years and I covered lots of football including champions leagues games with Manchester United during those years and I had a bit of a relationship with Alex Ferguson because he had big links back to Ireland he had friendship with Sean Fallon who was a sligo born manager of Glasgow Celtic that Ferguson liked Ferguson's brother at one stage had managed Waterford and we used to joke about the time that he traveled to the showgrounds and Sligo as manager and he had to drive the team boss back but the dynamo not working properly and they needed a scout car in front so you'd have those kind of exchanges on the margins of the Champions League matches with Ferguson and in those games I got to see Keane so here I am in 20 years well 20 years ago I'm back around the time of Saipan I was based in Belfast and most of the sports journalists were on the other side of the world and RT needed somebody to go to try and track Keane when he was coming back to Manchester and our colleague Brian O'Connell who was RT's London correspondent he was on holidays at the time so they asked me would I go to Belfast airport and nip over to Manchester and see could I track him down and when you say there was a big push to try and get an interview with him as soon as he got back the word was out that he was doing an interview with the mail on Sunday so I got in touch with his agent at the time a wonderful man called Michael Kennedy and I said look Michael this isn't going to look right if Roy Keane wants to get a story across and he's getting across through an English newspaper like it's the Irish audience that he wants to talk to so I made the case to him that RT would you know give him a prime time thought and we'd let him give his side of things and Michael Kennedy on that basis persuaded Roy Keane that it would be the right thing to do to talk to RT I think he asked him and Dunphy the journalist about you know my work and Dunphy said I'd be an honest broker I'd give a fair chance to tell a story and that's how it happened but I'd hate my life to be defined by say the Roy Keane story because I had many many happy times in particular say that nine-year phase when I was the Northwestern correspondent and the first day I went to work as Northwestern correspondent was in an office on the Port Road in letter Kenny Donald McLaughlin the accountant had an office building there and RT had a share of the taken so I spent many today traveling the roses in Northwest I traveled every inch of Dunny Gull had great affection for Dunny Gull and I learned an awful lot of the knowledge about North-South relations and about the complexity of them and about the possibilities of them I learned an awful lot of that during my nine years as Northwestern correspondent before I went to Brussels and before I returned to Belfast I loved my time in the Northwest in the way you had a front row seat at some of the biggest stories of the time and you're looking back now you would have dealt with the the major players you know the prime ministers and the ministers and leaders and so on in general how did you find them Tommy where they I suppose we're all different was it generally if you know you treated somebody with respect and as you say there with Roy Keaton if you give them a fair hearing they're more likely to be a civil and accommodating well that's a lovely word you've used being civil you know yourself when you're involved at your grassroots level um and it's always best to have manners um it actually serves your purpose uh much better if you actually try and give people the space to say what's on their mind uh and say from everyone from Ian Paisley uh like living down south I was terrified of Ian Paisley you know the images I saw on the things that were being done uh encouraged by him I was terrified of him uh but I found with him and it was a lesson that was repeated over and over again it was the same with Jerry Adams the same with Martin McGinnis the same with Arlene Foster the same with Peter Robinson the same with Jack DeLore uh the same with you know British prime ministers over the years if you tried to find the human side of them you'd learn a lot more uh if you tried to find what really concerned them if you if you got a chance to understand their vulnerabilities their fears if you got a chance to have a sense of why they were doing things um that you could get an awful lot more out of them like Paisley was an absolutely perfect example of this I found that it was the easiest thing to do to have a row with Ian Paisley because if you confront them he's hit back and then you just something else hires back to him and then he'd come at you again and then it was just into a formulaic setting and I found that if you tried to create a bit of space to learn about where he was coming from that certainly things were different and some of the most beautiful moments I had in journalism were those tender moments where you saw the human side of people like say for instance um you know I saw sites of of serious Republicans people who had had an IRA passed when terrible things were done and I saw in many cases it was probably a pattern I saw repeated over and over again that there was a basic decency in most people and people were trying to do to do some good in the course of their lives especially as they got older and that was one of the ongoing pains of my working life I also saw it like I covered many tragedies um and the dignity of people the decency of people at a time of tragedy you've seen it in recent weeks in your own community in Creaselagh I saw that during fishing disasters uh off the coast of Donegal I saw it after bombings I saw it when when people were killed and while I was traveling around the country in recent times John I was down two weeks ago in Emerson county care uh and a woman came to a book signing and 20 years ago 22 years ago actually her son and two young lads from Banshee were killed they were murdered over in the Netherlands um and I just remembered how vulnerable that woman was poor woman coming across to collect the remains of her son uh and I just tried at the time to have manners in my dealings with her and she came back 22 years later when I was signing the book to thank me and that was a that was the story in my life many times that that the ordinary decency of people the basic decency of people uh it was a recurring theme and I think that's what's at the heart of the peace process that we have in Northern Ireland I think that's why the killing has stopped that the decency got a chance to surface well your your optimism comes comes comes out in this book and I think also it's you've just been outlining there your your faith in humanity and it's a it's a great read it's called never better my life in our times Tommy Gorman thank you very much and the best look of the day thank you John if I could just stay I'll be in for masters in Dunigal tomorrow at lunchtime and I'll be in the bookshop there in the shopping center in letter Kenny in the afternoon and if anybody wants a book signed or anything like that I'd be delighted to do so and thanks for thanks for the space on your station and I congratulate you John and your colleagues for how rude it is in the community all the best thanks Tommy just remind us once again the in the four masters tomorrow at what time oh he's gone so we get those times don't remind you but he's the four masters and he's also here in letter Kenny then one before the other but both tomorrow signing copies office book and never better my life in our times order there's a lot to be said for it not the restrictive always play by the books straight down the line kind of order but the order you place for a brand new 231 Audi an order best placed having experienced true progress the test