Pete McCarthy
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
broadcaster and successful travel writer, noted for his books McCarthy's Bar and The Road to McCarthy.
Biography
Peter Charles McCarthy Robinson was born on 9 November 1951 in WarringtonWarrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
in the north-west of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
His mother moved to England from her native Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
during the Second World War to work as a nurse. It was during this time she met her future husband, at a dance. Peter was the eldest of four children, educated at West Park Grammar School (now De La Salle School), St Helens
St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...
by the Christian Brothers
Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools
The Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools is a Roman Catholic religious teaching congregation, founded in France by Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle and now based in Rome...
. Peter later described this experience as "corporal punishment and awakening sexuality" which he compared with the experience of Stephen Dedalus in the book "a mixture of hellfire and brimstone". He also described the Christian Brothers' education methods as "Carrot and Stick without the carrot".
As a child, he travelled by cattle boat from Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
to spend the first 15 school holidays of his life in Drimoleague
Drimoleague
Drimoleague is a village on the R586 regional road at its junction with the R593 in County Cork, Ireland. It lies roughly halfway between the towns of Dunmanway and Bantry...
in West Cork
West Cork
West Cork refers to a geographical area in south-west Ireland, lying within Ireland's largest county, County Cork. Traditionally a popular tourist destination, the area is seen as being distinct from the more populated northern or eastern parts of the county, as well as the more urban area of...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. He stayed there with relatives on a farm called Butlersgift and used to bring two things back to England: A box of shamrocks
Shamrocks
Shamrocks is a solitaire game akin to La Belle Lucie. The object is the same as the latter: move the cards into the foundations.-Rules:The game is layout out as in La Belle Lucie: seventeen piles of three cards are placed on the table with one card counting as an eighteenth. Any card that can be...
for St. Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day is a religious holiday celebrated internationally on 17 March. It commemorates Saint Patrick , the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of :Ireland, and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion , the Eastern...
and a turkey from the farm for Christmas. He later said that he had been led to believe that “God himself was Irish and I live in a wicked, pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
country”.
These childhood sojourns seem to be the reasons for Peter's intimate connection to Ireland, later on in his life. After reading James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Portrait of the Artist at the age of 14, Peter decided to become a writer. He attended Leicester University, where he studied literature before aspiring to a career in comedy. Striving for this goal, he co-founded Cliffhanger Theatre in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
.
After discovering another actor by the name of Peter Robinson he started to use his mother’s maiden name McCarthy to avoid confusion. In the 1980s he began writing television scripts and gags for the comedians Mel Smith
Mel Smith
Melvin Kenneth "Mel" Smith is an English comedian, writer, film director, producer, and actor. He is most famous for his work on the sketch comedy shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones along with his comedy partner Griff Rhys Jones.- Early life :Smith's father, Kenneth, was born...
and Griff Rhys Jones
Griff Rhys Jones
Griffith "Griff" Rhys Jones is a Welsh comedian, writer, actor, television presenter and personality. Jones came to national attention in the early 1980s for his work in the BBC television comedy sketch shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones along with his comedy partner Mel Smith...
. He was also a compere for the Comedy Store in London. Together with the Liverpool poet Roger McGough
Roger McGough
Roger Joseph McGough CBE is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly...
he performed in a two-man comedy show.
His first significant TV experience was in 1984 when he co-wrote and starred in the show They Came From Somewhere Else
They Came From Somewhere Else
They Came From Somewhere Else is a British sitcom that was broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 1984. It pastiches numerous horror films including Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now and Carrie....
. He then made travel films before he won the Critic's Award for best Comedy in 1990 with his piece The Hangover Show. The show was also nominated for a Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
In the early to mid nineties Pete presented a Brighton based programme for Meridian Broadcasting
Meridian Broadcasting
Meridian Broadcasting is the holder of the ITV franchise for the South and South East of England. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited....
called "The pier" which was a mix of what's on guides and local Brighton area listings in theatre and arts.
In late 1990, as a result of his success with The Hangover Show, Peter was offered an own television travel programme called Travelog on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. It was an alternative travel programme which had little in common with the traditional travel show format. It was a "marvellous experience" for Peter who said about this time: "We travelled to Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
and Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
, Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
and Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
; stood on the edge of volcanoes, had lunch with heroes of the Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
resistance, and got caught up in a military coup in Vanuatu
Vanuatu
Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...
". This statement emphasizes his passion to travel, get to know other cultures and people and undergo adventures.
For seven years he perambulated the world and in 1995 starred in the television programme Desperately Seeking Something followed by Country Tracks in 1998. In the same year he presented Breakaway
Breakaway (radio programme)
Breakaway was BBC radio's first regular consumer travel programme, conceived by producer Roger Macdonald. It was launched on 29 September 1979 and ran live for an hour at 0900 every Saturday morning for more than a decade, with two regular presenters, first Barry Norman and later Bernard Falk...
and X Marks the Spot for Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
. During those years he also directed the broadcasts Country Tracks and Meridian Television for BBC 2 and was also appeared on radio programmes, including Loose Ends
Loose Ends (radio)
Loose Ends is a British radio programme originally broadcast on Saturday mornings, and then transmitted early Saturday evenings from 1998 by BBC Radio 4. It was hosted by Ned Sherrin until he became ill in late 2006 with a reported throat infection, and later throat cancer...
, Just a Minute
Just a Minute
Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The Radio 4 programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003....
and The News Quiz
The News Quiz
The News Quiz is a topical panel game broadcast on British radio BBC Radio 4.-History:It was first broadcast in 1977 with Barry Norman as chairman. Subsequently it was chaired by Simon Hoggart, Barry Took , and then again by Simon Hoggart until March 2006. Hoggart was replaced by Sandi Toksvig in...
.
In March 1998, McCarthy and the publishing house Hodder and Stoughton joined together in a project in which Peter explored Ireland over a six-month period by travelling from the south to the north-west of the country and recorded his journey. The outcome of the exercise was McCarthy's Bar, his first book which sold over a million copies.
In 2002, The Road to McCarthy followed. Peter McCarthy wrote his books with pen and paper and upon answering a question that asked if he was a technophobe replied: "Yes big time. I've got a kettle and a fridge, but I don't own a computer, a word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
or even a typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
." Peter, his wife Irene and their three daughters moved from Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
to a village in the South Downs
South Downs
The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose...
in East Sussex
East Sussex
East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...
.
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. However, the diagnosis
Medical diagnosis
Medical diagnosis refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identify a possible disease or disorder , and to the opinion reached by this process...
of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in February 2004 changed this. Peter McCarthy died at the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton on 6 October 2004.
The Brighton & Hove bus company named one of its fleet after him in September 2006 - 913 Scania Omnidekka.
Radio credits
Radio shows he presented:- BreakawayBreakaway (radio programme)Breakaway was BBC radio's first regular consumer travel programme, conceived by producer Roger Macdonald. It was launched on 29 September 1979 and ran live for an hour at 0900 every Saturday morning for more than a decade, with two regular presenters, first Barry Norman and later Bernard Falk...
- First Impressions
- X Marks the Spot
- American Beauty
- Cajun Country
Radio shows he regularly starred in:
- Loose EndsLoose Ends (radio)Loose Ends is a British radio programme originally broadcast on Saturday mornings, and then transmitted early Saturday evenings from 1998 by BBC Radio 4. It was hosted by Ned Sherrin until he became ill in late 2006 with a reported throat infection, and later throat cancer...
- Just a MinuteJust a MinuteJust a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The Radio 4 programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003....
- The News QuizThe News QuizThe News Quiz is a topical panel game broadcast on British radio BBC Radio 4.-History:It was first broadcast in 1977 with Barry Norman as chairman. Subsequently it was chaired by Simon Hoggart, Barry Took , and then again by Simon Hoggart until March 2006. Hoggart was replaced by Sandi Toksvig in...
Television credits
He presented:- Travelog
- Country Tracks
- The Pier
- Desperately Seeking SomethingDesperately Seeking SomethingDesperately Seeking Something is a British television series first broadcast on 6 November 1995, presented by travel writer and presenter Pete McCarthy. In it, McCarthy looked at various spiritual practices from across the globe, and meeting their practitioners. It ran for three series...