For 30 years Kerry legend Pat Spillane was on our television screens speaking about Gaelic football, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Spillane was part of the furniture on The Sunday Game programme, and his on-screen relationship with Derry's Joe Brolly in particular attracted a lot of the viewer's attention.
The two were legends in their own county, both incredible players, but could talk for Ireland, and very opinionated when it came to the sport that they loved.
This often created friction in studio, which resulted in some fiery results, but ultimately the two got on very well, and now on the latest episode of the Free State Podcast, they have been reunited.
Reminiscing about the glory days, Brolly made an interesting point about Spillane personality off camera, and how it greatly differed to the person we seen on our TV screens.
Whenever you're in Kenmare they say 'you never see Pat Spillane about' or 'you never see Pat Spillane socialising' - people would have this idea of Pat Spillane, out socialising, a man of the people, but in fact, what everyone says is he is a 'very shy man'", Brolly said on The Free State podcast.
"If he does come into town, he gets the wee snug at the back of Crawley's with maybe a few friends, where no one can see him, and it is very striking I believe that the real Pat Spillane is different than the Pat Spillane we see publicly."
New episode: The surprising truth about Pat Spillane, part 1.
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— Joe Brolly (@JoeBrolly1993) August 6, 2024
Unlike their many encounters in the RTÉ studios, Spillane actually agreed with his former colleague and admitted that the persona he cultivated on The Sunday Game projected an exaggerated version of himself to the public.
The one thing that pissed me off about my appearances on The Sunday Game, and if you talk in terms of 'talking time' I suppose we talk four or four and half hours a year.
"That's about the actual amount of talking time we talk in the 10 or 12 episodes.
"It was getting to me that my Sunday Game persona was defining me as a person, and I was saying to myself, I am not that person.
"People don't know me, I'm a different person, I'm a quiet person, I just socialise with my family, I'm not into going to the opening of envelopes, I'm not into publicity, I like to go for my swims in the summer in the sea, I like to walk in the forest, and this book (his latest autobiography) was about what I am really like.
"I'm a family man, I'm a proud family man, proud of Templenoe, proud Kerryman, proud of being from Kerry, and I'm not the fella on The Sunday Game."
Well regardless of how Spillane lived his life away from the cameras, we the public, certainly got plenty of entertainment watching him verbally jostle his Derry friend on a Sunday evening, and it's good to see that the dynamic duo are still in touch today.
