*Marty Morrissey. Photograph: Paschal Brooks
Popular Clare broadcaster, Marty Morrissey has spoken about his fear of swimming and an incident which left him with temporary amnesia.
By Tadhg Holland
Speaking on ‘The Laughs Of Your Life’ podcast, Morrissey revealed to host Doireann Garrihy that shooting an episode of ‘Marty and Bernard’s Big Adventure’ in 2018 ended with him being “rushed to the hospital”.
Marty recalled, “The second part of [‘Marty and Bernard’s Big Adventure’] was to test ourselves out against the elements. Could we survive in the wild west? We were in training, we did all sorts of things, we were thought how to survive, how to light a fire with timber etc but they knew the one fear I have despite being from West Clare is a fear of water, I can’t swim.”
Morrissey described how he was taken to Wicklow to shoot and episode of ‘Marty and Bernard’s Big Adventure’, “We arrived in some part of Wicklow and when we arrived in Wicklow they put masks on over our eyes and next thing I remember standing somewhere in a field beside Bernard and some guy from the army recruitment roaring. He’d come right up to your ear [and say] ‘Are you ready to do this’.
“Next thing they threw a bucket of water at us and next thing we were in the lake. So, after a while they took me out and we were in a timber kind of hut and they provided us meals but apparently Bernard said, ‘there is something wrong with him’. So, they looked at me and said what do you think of that and what do you think of that and I said did we do that, did we do that,” RTÉ’s GAA correspondent added.
“They brought me to the doctor in Ashford and from there I was rushed to the hospital, out to the beacon and they tested me out and they told me that I had temporary global amnesia”. The Mullagh man said the condition was caused by the sudden shock of the water although he didn’t say that it had any long-term effects.
Last year, Marty became one of the first RTÉ broadcasters to present a programme from a shed in West Clare. ‘Marty In The Shed’ was a virtual chat-show for the RTÉ Player which was shot by Ennis cameraman Paschal Brooks in the garden shed’ in the West Clare home of Morrissey’s mother Peggy.
Also on the podcast Marty discussed his love for the GAA, growing up in the Bronx and his teenage years in West Clare.
