Charlie Bird: IRA contact, ‘Orange sympathiser’—and still a bit of a mystery

When he’s out with friends Charlie Bird is haunted by the knowledge that he is living on borrowed time. With a terminal diagnosis of motor neuron disease that will also eventually deprive him of the power of speech, the former RTÉ journalist lives each day knowing the world will soon be turning without him. “I’m sitting here having a pint,” he says. “I may not be here this time next year. That’s how hard it is.”

His is a devastating reckoning with mortality. But Bird is reluctant to be painted as a quietly struggling hero, and Charlie Bird: Loud and Clear (RTÉ One, Monday, 9.35pm) is unflinching about the reality of terminal illness. “Charlie, you’re so brave,” he says, repeating a platitude with which he is often presented. He shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ve been brave.”

Loud and Clear has a feature-length running time of 90 minutes. That seems excessive yet is perhaps appropriate given that its subject is a journalist who gave everything to his work and never had any truck with half-measures. And it is impossible not to be struck with admiration as the film concludes with Bird’s recent climb of Croagh Patrick – a feat that inspired many others to likewise put on their mountaineering boots for charity.

Still, this isn’t a flawless character study, and its attempts to marry the day-to-day struggles of Bird and his wife, Claire Mould, with a retrospective of the 72-year-old’s life and times don’t always succeed—at times it feels as if two very different documentaries have been welded together, the fault lines clearly visible.

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At the Love Ulster march, rioting thugs targeted Bird because of his supposed Orange sympathies. His ‘Orangeness’ must have been a surprise to the IRA army council, which clearly felt it could talk to him as a reporter

It is fascinating to look back at Bird’s career, which intersected with such bombshells in Irish history as the Stardust fire and the Love Ulster parade. Alas, segments about the development of the speech-translation technology that have allowed Bird to continue to “talk” are considerably less essential. How strange to go from questions of life and death to discussions of speech-recognition software, especially as practically every person in Ireland has seen Bird on television using his iPad to communicate. We already know how the story ends.

[ Charlie Bird: ‘My voice will go first. And my voice has been me’ ]

Charlie Bird: Loud and Clear is nonetheless full of absorbing insights. We learn how Bird became a trusted media contact of the Provisional IRA. And how he and George Lee courageously took on powerful forces to report on the National Irish Bank offshore-account scandal. And we revisit the horror of the Love Ulster march, where rioting thugs in Dublin targeted Bird because of his supposed “Orange” sympathies. (His “Orangeness” must have been a surprise to the IRA army council, which clearly felt it could talk to him as a reporter.)

Bird as a person remains something of a mystery, although he is obviously passionate about the causes that have touched him. He talks about his pride in supporting the marriage-equality referendum, and we see him overcome failing speech to address the families of those who died in the Stardust fire.

Over its 90 minutes the film is ultimately less a profile in courage than a philosophical inquiry. Knowing the end is near, how would any of us conduct ourselves? Claire Mould says it hasn’t always been easy. “We’ll have our days when I’ll be crying in one room and Charlie will have his tears” in another, she says. But, as Croagh Patrick reminds us, Bird is still here and still making a difference. And so a documentary about death is ultimately distinguished by the fact that it is so full of life.