A pioneer in television news and drama who brought first GAA matches to BBC – The Irish News

Cecil Taylor was BBC Northern Ireland’s first television news reporter, a pioneer in TV drama who launched the career of Kenneth Branagh, and was responsible for bringing the first GAA matches to local screens.

Colleagues have paid tribute to him as a talented and committed journalist at a momentous time for news reporting as well as laying the foundations for a thriving indigenous television and film industry.

Born in Larne in 1927, the youngest of nine children, Cecil often attributed his robust health – he lived until 96 – to a childhood love of warm goat’s milk from goats on two family allotments which helped sustained them during the lean war years.

He won a scholarship to Larne Grammar School and began his career in journalism in newspapers, working for the Larne Times, the News Letter and The Irish Times in Dublin, where he and his first wife, Isobel, began 50 years of married life.

At a service of thanksgiving at Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church in Bangor on Wednesday, minister Christoph Ebbinghaus shared a tribute prepared by the family which recalled how, as a fresh-faced reporter at the Dáil, he was listening to a politician from West Cork speaking what he took to be Irish. After approaching him later in the bar to politely ask what he had been talking about, the TD “thought that Cecil was just being a bit too smart and in no uncertain terms told him that he had been speaking English, lifted a paper and smacked young Cecil around the head”.

He joined the BBC in Belfast in 1955, at a time when there was barely a news department and the earliest bulletins were being produced.

He was the only reporter and contributed to a five-minute radio bulletin in the evenings and TV report each Friday, working both in front of and behind the camera.

When he became news editor in 1965, he could not have imagined that he would soon find himself at the centre of a huge international story as the outbreak of the Troubles brought the world’s media to Belfast.

Cecil himself recalled how reporters, camera crews and desk journalists found themselves “working impossible hours, day after day, without adequate breaks”.

On one occasion in November 1968, a temporary radio studio set up in the Melville Hotel in Derry to cover a civil rights protest ended up in use 18 hours a day for five days, as 39 broadcasts went out for BBC regional and network programmes as well as broadcasters from around the world.

“Cecil’s work was his life and frequently if his family wanted to see him, the only way to see him was to go to the BBC and look for him. It was like a home from home,” Rev Ebbinghaus said.

In 1970 Cecil moved into BBC management and as head of BBC NI programmes, he commissioned many dramas and is credited with allowing writers and directors a creative freedom they hadn’t previously enjoyed. It was at this time that Kenneth Branagh earned his first main acting role in Graham Reid’s groundbreaking Billy Plays.

“One of the things Cecil was particularly proud of was the part he played in bringing the first GAA matches to the BBC,” Rev Ebbinghaus added.

“On a particular weekend in 1961 three major sporting events were about to happen: a rugby match between Ulster and Lancashire at Ravenhill, a soccer match at Windsor Park, and the All-Ireland Gaelic final between Down and Kerry at Croke Park. When Cecil went to meet the GAA secretary in Dublin with a proposal to televise the match, the secretary asked him how much the BBC would be seeking. ‘We’ll be paying you,’ Cecil said.”

Cecil was a great sports fan, having played football in his youth and in retirement employing his 6ft 3in frame on the fairways, once hitting the passing Belfast to Bangor train off the first tree at Carnalea.

While serious about his work and imposing high standards in the newsroom, he also loved a laugh and was hugely proud of his family, revelling in hearing about their achievements.

He cared lovingly for Isobel at the end of her life, and some time after her death joined the bowling club at Hamilton Road where he met Doreen, who had also been bereaved.

Rev Ebbinghaus said Doreen’s children recalled Cecil, the perfect gentleman, asking them for their mother’s hand in marriage.

“He told them that he hoped they would have at least five years of happiness together. They managed 20.”

The couple continued to enjoy bowling and travelled widely, although Cecil was renowned for being the most careful of drivers, telling his family that he had learned to drive in hearse.

Cecil Norman Taylor died aged 96 on January 16, having enjoyed a final Christmas at home surrounded by his extended family. He is survived by his wife Doreen, daughter Olwyn, son-in-law Iain and grandson Matty.