Passing of broadcasting legend who brought joy to all who knew him

It’s hard to believe that Colm Murray is dead – because if ever a man epitomised what he himself would call the joie de vivre, it was the broadcaster from Moate who could light up a room with just a smile of those twinkling eyes.

It has been said since Tuesday that it was fitting Colm died during his beloved Galway Races – and it was – but the reality was that Colm loved any race meeting.

And if he was synonymous in the public eye for his colourful reports from Cheltenham, it was around Kilbeggan, a stone’s throw from his native Moate and on the course where he once announced the prize winners, where he felt most at home.

His Galway connections weren’t just about the races, because he was a very proud graduate of UCG and was honoured when the College presented him with Alumni Award for his services to sport in 2011.

By then he was already in a wheelchair and that was hard for him to take. But he spoke – with growing difficulty – with everyone who came to congratulate him on his award. And because his generosity and good humour easily outweighed his obvious pain, that meant he spoke with almost everyone in the massive Bailey Allen Hall.

Less than a year earlier – indeed exactly four years earlier, to the day of his death – that Colm last held court at the Galway Races, seated in the whole of his health in the lobby of Park House Hotel like a magnet to all who wanted to just bask in his humour and tall tales.

Who was to know that within a year he would have been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease – a cruel illness for anyone to bear but impossible for a man who radiated energy and inquisitiveness, a man who woke up in the morning ready to embrace the day and enjoy what highs it gave him.

We were privileged to sit with him that night because it’s a memory of a man in the prime of his life, greeting old friends like the Shark Hanlon or even the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern with the same engagement as he did with the dozens of ordinary punters who sidled up to him for a tip.

The former Galway football and three-in-a-row star Brian Geraghty was also in the company that night, and it was as close as the rest of us will be to a Wimbledon final to see two of the country’s finest storytellers batting tales back and over the coffee table into the wee small hours.

For more of Dave O’Connell’s tribute to Colm Murray see this week’s Tribune