On Wednesday evening 20th October 2021 , the Togher Historical Association met up with Sports Broadcaster Trevor Welch and his brother Noel Welch to uncover their family history in Togher going right back to the early 1960s and right up to the present. The Blog would like to sincerely thank both brothers for taking time out to share their stories and memories of Togher over the last 60 years and for highlighting the massive pool of local talent which has represented Togher on the International stage over the years! This meeting also saw the debut of the Historical Association's banner stand.
The Welch family story begins in the 1950s when Noel Welch snr. married Eileen Hayes in 1955. Previous to that Eileen lived with her siblings above Cudmore's on the corner of Winthrop Street and Patrick Street. Eileen was born in 1935 and remembers playing on Patrick's Street with her friends. She also recalls being able to see right into the Lee Cinema from their upstairs home. Noel Welch recounted : " It really was a case of all picture and no sound! They could plainly see every movie that played there but obviously couldn't hear the sound. " Trevor Welch stated : " They were the last of the families to live in the City Centre. " Eileen's family later relocated to Belgrave Place. Noel Welch snr. was born in Ballinlough in 1934. He worked for the Cork Examiner with his eldest son Noel joining the Echo many years later.
The Welchs first settled in Mayfield before eventually moving to Rockgrove Tce on the Lower Road. The fledgling family initially consisted of Noel and his two sisters Janet and Valerie. Noel : " It had a small front garden with a swing in it. " In his youth Noel would develop tonsillitis and recalls a traumatic experience in the Eye ,Ear & Throat hospital , sharing a room with patients with eye diseases and recalling the painful extraction of his tonsils. However all was to change when his Father came to visit him and announced that the family were moving to a brand new house in Togher. No.4 Edward Walsh Road was part of the new housing scheme then underway on former farmland in Togher at the time. They would name the house Rockgrove in honour of their old home on the Lower Road.
Noel , Sharon , Janet , Eileen & Trevor.
The family would soon expand with Trevor being the first to be born in Togher in 1965. Four more sisters would complete the family - Sharon , Hazel , Avril and Eileen. All children attended St. Mary's of the Isle and Sullivan's Quay a.k.a. Sullys ( a family tradition in education ) before the boys moved to Deer Park secondary school with the girls attending Maria Assumpta secondary school in Ballyphehane. Trevor : " I was being coaxed to go to Scoil Stiofain Naofa by my friends because apparently they had a great soccer team , but I followed in the footsteps of my father and uncles. "
Noel relates that directly across from their home was a telephone box and this was used by locals to contact their children playing out in the area. The boys had the number of the box memorized and handed out to the neighbours who would then ring the box if they were looking for their children. Noel added that passersby would invariably answer the phone if it rang and the caller was usually a parent inquiring as to the whereabouts of their kids. It was essentially a precursor to a private mobile phone! Noel also added that later on in life they would ring the box and hopefully when somebody answered it , they would cheekily ask them to call a family member from No.4 in the process using it as a private phone to contact home!
Noel moved out of the family home when he was 12 to live with his Grandmother on Wellington Road and mentions that most of his friends are actually from the Coburg Street / Wellington Road area. However he maintained strong links to Togher. Previous to moving out and starting work , Noel remembers playing soccer on the streets and being close friends with Michael , son of the shop-owners Kellehers , now the Post Office. They would play games including Subbuteo and almost never watched T.V.
Both Noel and Trevor recall that after school , it was a case of getting the homework done as fast as possible before heading out to playing 7 a side with other local boys. It was like a whistle going off which saw the houses literally empty of boys to form small teams up and down the road. The fact that there was very little traffic facilitated the safe passage of play for all concerned.
Trevor : " There were loads of young fellas my own age and we would play gate to gate soccer ; street leagues etc , until last light or last goal as we termed it. I was in love with sport and soccer in particular. I remember bringing the ball to bed with me and my Mother clattering me around the ears to take the ball off me. I can still feel the ringing in my ears! "
Trevor: " I always say , where you grew up shapes you. We're very lucky in Togher , with the Barrs on our doorstep. Sport was a lifeline for many including me. I played with Togher Rovers for a season. Togher produced some great sportsmen ; Brian Carey , Denis Irwin and Rob Heffernan to name but a few and of course the wonderful singer Sinead Lohan from Greenwood Estate. Sport and music were my two great loves. As kids , the lads from Edward Walsh Road would meet up with Patrick O'Donoghue Place and Marieville and play matches over by the old V.G. Shopping Centre. Edward Walsh Road were seen as the team to beat. I played with Kilreen Celtic U10's when I was only 8! We even traveled to London and Manchester for games. Donal Kelleher was the coach and he's still involved to this day. Another pastime was going out the roads to slog apples and listening to Larry Gogan's Top 40 on the radio over by the Lough. " Trevor and Noel both related how they worked , like many others in Togher , for Dawson's Newsagents delivering the papers around the area.
Noel : " My Father had an aviary in a shed in our back garden where he bred canaries and finches. He was always proud of the fact that people would come from as far away as Gurranabraher to purchase the birds. He was a member of the Cork Cagebirds Society with the birdshows being hosted in Sullivan's Quay. He won many times with the winner having a rosette attached to their cages. Later on my Father became a judge himself. "
Trevor : " As a child I used to go into the alleyway by our house with a ruler and do mock sports commentaries. The acoustics were very good in there! 1977 would have been my first mock commentary. The match was Manchester United vs Liverpool and ironically I would go on to actually commentate on a Man Utd vs Liverpool match in a professional capacity many years later! "
1978 was to be the turning point in the Welch boys lives , first with Noel and later with Trevor. At the time Noel was working in the Echo when he came across an ad which was to transform his life. However the owners of the paper , the Crosby family , frowned upon the then newly emerging Pirate Radio stations. To combat this the budding D.J.s used cover names to hide their own names. Invariably many changed their accents as well to camouflage their true identities. Noel wanted something to reflect his own name and looked for something " Welsh sounding " ; Jones and Evans went onto the shortlist ( including Noel Edmonds ), with the result that he became Noel Evans. Within a couple of days of submitting his audition tape in March he was on air on C.B.C ( Cork Broadcasting Company ) , just one of a plethora of unofficial radio stations coming on air at the time. They initially began broadcasting from a flat across from the Country Club in Montenotte but thereafter moved to several other venues over the course of several months. Trevor says : " I remember telling mates at school in Deer Park that Noel Evans on the radio was my brother. Of course nobody believed me! " Noel would compile playlists and voiceovers at home and it was there that Trevor caught the bug. Trevor : " It was 1983 , I remember Noel with his Ford Capri and playing at Discos in the Ardmanning Pub and I thought this was all magical. My first love was to be a professional footballer but Music was my second love. "
Noel would help Trevor to do a tape for Micky Daly ( his father Michael being one of the founders of Togher A.C. ) who lived in the timber cottage next to the Deanrock Bar ( the house now long gone and replaced by the motorway ). The name of the radio station run by Micky Daly was Radio Caroline. Trevor recalls how he used to listen to it on his radio and was amazed to find out that the station was based in Togher in a caravan! Trevor cycled down to the cottage and handed in the tape and told to come back in a week for approval. With that he was accepted and asked if he could start the following Saturday! He created a new show called " Hit Or Miss " in which he would predict a records popularity or decline. Mrs. Daly would drop by the caravan with custard creams and tea. Trevor mentions Paul Byrne , P.J. Coogan and others as having their start in the caravan. He also recalls a fellow Togher man - Ken Tobin - as having his apprenticeship there as well. One amazing story which Trevor recalls involved the brother of famous U.K. based D.J. Kid Jensen whose brother Scott Jensen was starting soon at the Caravan. The problem was that Trevor was using the alias of Scott Jensen! About a year in to his time at Radio Caroline , Trevor heard of the relaunch of South Coast Radio by fellow Togher man Michael O'Brien. Most of the D.J.s at Radio Caroline had already jumped ship to the new station. Trevor felt honour bound to Micky Daly but soon gathered up the courage to inform his boss that he was leaving too. So it was that by 1985 Trevor was now with South Coast Radio. At this point , Trevor recalled even pre-Radio Caroline days in Togher and mentioned how the Quilligan family in Togher Square had a radio station in their back yard circa 1981!
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However all good things must come to an end and so it was with Pirate Radio effectively ending in 1989. 26 years later in 2015 Trevor and Noel would document Pirate Radio days in their book - The Jolly Roger which covered the history of the pirate stations in Cork from their inception to their eventual demise. Togher Historical Association were invited to the book launch which can be viewed by clicking the link here
It was about this time at the close of the 1980s that Noel Welch became tied in with the Togher Community Association and was hired to do a lot of their M.C. work in the Ardmanning with John Russell and Tom O'Sullivan. Tom O'Sullivan had previously worked with Noel on the printing in The Echo. Noel would go on to compere at most of the Togher Community Roses as well as host the Glamorous Grandmothers and Karaoke competitions. He also reflected on the Ardmanning as a fantastic venue with the Colonel's Lounge and the Lake Room. Noel thinks that the owner Seamus O'Brien who later sold the Ardmanning moved to England where he had other businesses. By the early 1990s Noel was still working in The Echo , where his Father and Uncle Tony also worked , his father and Grandfather having previously worked for Guy's Printing ( now Waterstones ).
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Trevor next related how his tenure at South Coast Radio lasted from 1985 to 1988. However a new medium arrived in Cork City which attracted all the local talent - Cork Multi Channel T.V. Paul Byrne had informed Trevor that they were looking for a Sports Presenter. Micky Mac held the interview with Trevor who had long hair at the time. A condition of procuring the job was that the long hair had to go! So it was that Trevor was with Cork Multi Channel from 1988 to 1998. Trevor recalls the sheer output from a shoestring budget where he went on to interview 14 World Champions from many different sports. He covered all the League of Ireland games including interviewing Steve Collins and Jack Charlton. Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly and Steve Davis were just some of his famous interviews. Trevor's stint at Cork Multi Channel as their Sports Anchor saw him involved in compiling the running order , writing scripts and even the ads. He mentions that it was a great grounding for him as a broadcaster. One of his many memories from his time there was going out to Russia in 1989 to commentate on Cork City's first away match. He was literally only in the door as he says himself. Trevor recalls how he persuaded the station owner that Cork Multi Channel should be up there with the bigger Stations such as RTE. He then went off to Russia with the owners 2 sons who were also cameramen. His last job with Cork Multi Channel was covering the Tour de France before leaving for TV3 in 1998. His previous experience had stood to him and he became Sports Anchor for TV3 , Ireland's first independent T.V. station. In 2017 , Richard Branson bought TV3 and the following year rebranded the station as Virgin Media 1 . 2 and 3. Trevor currently works freelance and continues to cover sport for the major Irish T.V. stations.
Togher Historical Association
Togher Historical Association
Trevor : " I don't think Togher gets the credit it deserves. Its huge when it comes to Sports and Music. There's a lot of talent here. " Noel mentioned how his son David even though he didn't live in Togher played with Everton for many years maintaining the link with the families home turf. Trevor recalled how the family home was full of music and records , with their Mother singing as well as their next door neighbour Paul O'Leary ( his son played with the Barrs ) who was a professional singer and had released traditional music albums. He repeated how sport and music was all around him in Togher and how this helped shape his life and career. The interview finished and Noel and Trevor departed to visit their Mother at No. 4 Edward Walsh Road.
