Cork woman recalls stories of babysitters, beers and broken knees as Choral Fest marks its 70th
A 164-page programme is available on the website corkchoral.ie, which outlines the dozens of events, concerts, and competitions which are set to take place in venues all around the city.
However, it wasn't always like this.
Margot Nagle has been volunteering with the festival since 1962. The 83-year-old says it has taken some time for the event to become the polished international spectacle it is today.
'It's professional now,' Margot tells me, as the city prepares for its latest edition this coming weekend. 'The early days were very basic, sure, we were all learning, but they were good fun days too.
'I'm in the Ballincollig choir and we've been to festivals and they're good, but not a patch on our one down here. It's the friendships that you make there, but as well as that, it's the organisation, which really is top class.
'My father used to take me to the festival because he had a friend involved in it at the time, and I got absolutely hooked on it.' Ballincollig-native Nagle explains, on the eve of the festival. 'I joined a choir called 'The Cork City Choral Society' and we travelled abroad in '64, and because I had school French and German, I did the announcements on stage for the concerts that we used to give.'
'When we came back, Kevin Breen, who's Ger's father (current Chairman of the Festival's Board of Directors) rang me and said, 'we need you at the Choral festival.'
And despite starting off as a programme seller at the festival, word quite literally went around about Margot's polyglot abilities, which led to an abrupt and unexpected promotion.
'Kevin took the programmes out of my hand, gave them to someone else and said, 'I need Margot on stage'.
'That was the start of it!'
From on stage, Margot found her niche behind the curtain as the stage manager, organising choirs, trophies, helping the MC and putting out last-minute fires during the festival-highlight competitions, which took place at Cork's City Hall.
As you can imagine, things didn't always go to plan.
ADVERTISEMENT
'One year I fell going into the hall and had a bad pain in my knee, but I carried on anyway and got through the night. The next morning, I went to the hospital where they took a scan, only to tell me that I had broken my knee, and apparently, I was in shock, that's why I didn't feel the pain. I was just going mad as I was missing the rest of it!
'In those days, there were no mobile phones, no internet, and choirs used to practice in the Model School (now Cork District Court) across the way from City Hall. You'd be taking your life in your hands standing on the road and getting yourself and the choirs across and into the venue!
'One of the conductors refused to go on stage one year because the hem of her dress had come down, so I happened to have a pack of 'for-all-happenables' on the side of the stage, and there was a needle and thread! I told Dan Donovan, who was announcing on the night, to keep going on for another five minutes, while I tacked up the hem of her dress, before she finally went on!
'At one point, I was missing a male voice choir, only to finally find them in a pub. I quite literally walked them straight from the pub onto the stage! Another time I couldn't get a babysitter for my youngest baby, so I put him in a cot down the side of the stage for one of the programme sellers to mind him for the night!
'Later on, there would be a conductor who performed with her baby stuck on her back, so you could say I was ahead of my time on that one!'
As the old adage goes, the show had to go on, no matter whether they were missing talent, volunteers, or even the prizes themselves.
'Another year, the trophies didn't come back on time,' Margot recalls, 'so we had to borrow some school rugby cup trophies to have something on the night! The choirs were presented with them, and then they were given straight back to us off-stage to make sure they weren't missing for the following year's school rugby cup finals!'
Despite the chaos, Nagle says there's nowhere else she'd have rather been for the past 60 years, in the thick of a community which she says is full of friendly and helpful people. Trips around Europe and Ireland have ignited friendships that endure to this day, and get re-sparked every April, when choirs from all around descend on Cork.
However, this year will be bittersweet for Margot, who lost her husband Gus a few weeks ago following a long battle with Parkinson's Disease, but memories of years of him joining her volunteering for her passion will no doubt come flooding back this May Bank Holiday weekend.
'Choirs are very friendly with each other; they have a great affinity with one another. I'm just looking forward to meeting the friends that I've made over the years.
'One of the choirs is the Portadown Male Voice Choir who we made great friends with, and we visited them a few years ago for their 60th anniversary. A few of them rang me the other day because they had heard about Gus, and they wanted to sympathise.
'Gus used help out in the festival club afterwards. He couldn't help out in the last few years, but I used to come home and fill him in with what was happening.
'Gussy was tone deaf; he couldn't sing at all, but he still loved it!'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Irish Sun
5 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Moment Prince Harry practices his German as he shares video message to mark country's first Veteran's Day
PRINCE Harry practised his German as he shared a video message to mark the country's first ever Veteran's Day. The Duke of Sussex said it was a "profound privilege" to deliver the message on the "sacred day". 3 Prince Harry practised his German in a video message 3 The Duke of Sussex served two tours of Afghanistan Credit: PA 3 Prince Harry in his younger days during a parade at Sandhurst Credit: AFP Harry started his speech in German, greeting members of the country with their native tongue by saying "Guten Tag Deutschland!" He continued: "My last visit to your remarkable country was to Düsseldorf two years ago for the Invictus Games, and it remains etched in my memory. "The warmth, the enthusiasm, and the unwavering support shown by the German people for our global community of wounded service personnel was truly humbling. You certainly delivered on your promise to create a home for respect. "That spirit of camaraderie, forged on the sports field, mirrors the unbreakable bond that connects veterans of all nations. We understand each other, regardless of flag or uniform, bound by shared experiences and an enduring commitment to service. "Veterans are more than warriors—they are leaders. Living testaments to resilience and moral courage, they understand that loyalty must never lie with power alone, but with the people. With truth." During the video, Harry wore numerous ceremonial medals that he was awarded in the past. This included the Afghan campaign medal, golden jubilee medal, diamond jubilee medal and platinum jubilee medal. Harry continued in his speech: "As someone who has worn the uniform and stood shoulder to shoulder with brothers-and sisters-in-arms from across the world - including many of you - I know that the weight of service is not carried lightly. Most read in Royals "We serve not to glorify war, but to protect peace. Not to follow a single voice, but to uphold a collective oath—to country, to people, and to the principles that bind us together as free nations. "Germany has shown the world how memory, accountability, and unity can be turned into strength. In these turbulent times, your role in safeguarding peace and stability in Europe has never been more critical. "To the brave men and women of the Bundeswehr - a heartfelt thank you for your steadfast service to your country, to your people and to one another. Today is also a celebration of you, the values you stand for, the oath you took and the great country you stand to protect. "Today, let us renew our commitment—together—to protect the freedoms that define who we are, to serve each other for peace, for dignity and for the enduring promise of democracy. "Vielen dank und einen schonen tag." It comes just 24 hours after the Royals all came out in formal attire for Trooping the Colour. Wills wore the Full Ceremonial Guard Order of the Welsh Guards yesterday during the parade. Prince William saluted while on horseback, alongside Kate, meanwhile, looked elegant in an aquamarine Catherine Walker coatdress with ivory lapels and cuffs. Read more on the Irish Sun Both King Charles and Prince William were spotted wearing a black armband as they made their way down The Mall. Those at the parade also held a minute's silence following the devastating crash. Prince Harry's Army career Prince Harry entered RMAS in May 2005 to begin 44 weeks of Officer Cadet training, this was after passing his Regular Commissions Board (RCB), the qualification necessary to train at Sandhurst, in September 2004. In January 2006, Clarence House announced he was to join the Blues and Royals, after which he was commissioned as an Army officer on 12 April that year. The Duke of Sussex served in the Army for ten years, undertaking two tours of Afghanistan. The father of two rose to the rank of Captain at the peak of his military career which began in 2004. During his time serving, he qualified as an Apache Aircraft Commander. In his memoir Spare he revealed he flew six missions during his second tour of duty which resulted in "the taking of human lives" of which he was neither proud nor ashamed. His decision to leave the Army was confirmed in March 2015. Prince Harry ended his military career at the rank of captain in June 2015, following a secondment to the Australian military. General Sir Nicholas Carter, the then-Chief of the General Staff, said that Prince Harry had "achieved much in his 10 years as a soldier".
Irish Examiner
6 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Auf wiedersehen, Thomas Müller, Germany's dream maker who found goals in space
It's 17 years since Thomas Müller made his debut for Bayern. Since then he has played 751 games for the club, scoring 248 goals, while also scoring 45 goals in 131 games for Germany. He has won 13 Bundesliga titles, two Champions Leagues and a World Cup. He will retire at the end of the Club World Cup after a career played entirely at the highest level and yet still nobody has been able to quite work out what he is. Is he a centre-forward? Is he a false 9? Is he a wide forward, a second striker, an attacking midfielder? Is he all of those things, none of those things or some of those things some of the time? Louis van Gaal loved him; Pep Guardiola never seemed quite so sure. Müller is not especially quick, not especially dominant in the air and does not beat players with close technical skill, but he is obviously a player of the highest level. Then there's his puzzling goals record: how did a player who averaged roughly a goal every three games managed not only to win the Golden Boot at the 2010 World Cup but also the Silver Boot at the following tournament? (Even odder is that the five goals he scored in South Africa were his only international goals that year.) The best explanation of Müller perhaps came from his own mouth. 'I am a Raumdeuter,' he said in 2011 – an interpreter of space. He has that capacity a great goalscorer, a Gerd Müller or a Gary Lineker, has to anticipate where the ball will drop, but he is not a poacher. He has the ability of a Luka Modric or a Xavi to find space in a hectic midfield, but he is not a playmaker. Raumdeuter has become such an accepted phrase that it is a role that can be assigned to forwards on the video game Football Manager. It is not entirely clear whether Müller was making a joke when he said it. Müller's football may be hard to identify, but it is nothing to his sense of humour. When he claimed that Robert Lewandowski's nickname was 'Robert Lewangoalski', before pausing, nodding and opening his eyes wider as though imploring people to laugh, it initially seemed he was making an inexplicably bad joke. Then the thought occurred that he perhaps knew that and the joke was actually how inane is a lot of football's banter culture. Thomas Muller (C) of the FC Bayern celebrates with teammates during the official championships celebration. Pic:At that moment, the entire notion of the press conference seemed in danger of imploding under the weight of its own futility. This was Eric Morecambe, it was Larry David, it was Stewart Lee, a ludic recklessness with form that not only managed to be funny by not being funny, but interrogated the entire notion of funny. It is the same with his coinage of Raumdeuter, which is itself a pun, albeit a rather better one that Goalandowski. Traumdeuter is German for an interpreter of dreams, a term popularised by Sigmund Freud. Traum is derived from the Old Icelandic draumr via the Middle High German troum and initially meant phantom or illusion. The English 'dream', which emerged in the 12th century, shares the same root. Deuter comes originally from proto-Indo-European tē̌u-, which meant something like 'swell'; it's also the root of words such as thumb, thigh and thousand. More appositely, it is the origin of þeuðō, an early Germanic term meaning a lot of people, that came to be used to mean tribe. A couple of thousand years ago, if you spoke the demotic language as opposed to Latin, you were in effect said to be speaking þiudiskaz – that is, þeuðō-ish – which over time evolved to become Deutsch. Deuten became a verb meaning to make clear for the mass of the people. That sense remains in deutlich – clearly, significantly – or eindeutig – clearly, obviously; and, to a lesser extent in bedeuten – to mean. Deuten itself is slightly more sophisticated than ziegen – to show – but not as scientific as interpretieren or analysieren: to interpret, not in the sense of translating, but of explaining. With that context, Müller's apparently unremarkable statement that he is a Raumdeuter can be seen not only as a description of what he is, but of what he is not. He is not a player who deals in phantoms, illusions and dreams; he is a pragmatist. He sees space – better than almost anybody else of his generation – and through his movement, his assists and his goals he explains it to the mass of the people: those watching it in the stands or on television who do not have his extraordinary grasp of the shape and dynamics of the game. Perhaps there is even a sense in that second syllable that the role of the Raumdeuter is characteristically German, that it stems from the peculiarly German way of seeing the game that meant that between 1970 and 2000, there was an acceptance that football was about the inter-movement of players, unencumbered by the impetus to press that dominated in the rest of northern Europe. It is probably no coincidence that the modern notion of the libero was created by Franz Beckenbauer, whose game, no less than Müller's, relied on the interpretation of space, just at the other end of the field. Müller, in his own way, was just as central to Germany's fourth World Cup success as Beckenbauer was to its second. In those Jogi Löw sides of 2010 and 2014, he was the attacking brain of the side, the player who ensured the counterattacks were devastating. After finding space in a crowd box to head the first goal in the semi-final in 2014, it was Müller, revelling in the chaos of the Brazilian meltdown, who orchestrated the 7-1. Müller retires as the joint-most successful German player in terms of trophies won, although he would edge ahead of Toni Kroos were Bayern to lift the Club World Cup. But more than that, Müller defined not only a position but an entire, and idiosyncratically German, way of thinking about the game. He is the embodiment of the process that brought the World Cup. Guardian
Irish Daily Mirror
15 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Ian Bailey's ex-partner shares she is battling 'incurable illness'
The ex-partner of Ian Bailey has revealed she is battling an 'incurable illness' and says she would like to go to scatter his ashes with his sisters 'to say goodbye'. Jules Thomas was in a relationship with Mr Bailey – who was accused of killing French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier on December 23, 1996 – for more than 30 years before splitting with him in 2021. She revealed she has been battling an 'incurable illness' since 2021, which she said she was diagnosed with soon after Netflix released its 'biased' and 'disgusting' documentary, Sophie: A Murder in West Cork. The Welsh-born artist told us the stress of the unsolved murder case had taken a serious toll on her body. Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, she revealed: 'My consultant asked, 'were you under much stress?' I said, 'unbelievable stress.' 'It's not public knowledge but my daughters know. It was an unbelievable amount of stress. I began to feel unwell around the time the Netflix documentary came out. My immune system became very low. I was picking up every cold and flu.' She credits daily floor exercises she learned during her modern dance classes in boarding school to keep her body flexible and also gardening daily. Ms Thomas admitted: 'I'm feeling fine. I tire easily. I've a big garden. I do it on my own. I've an acre of grass to cut, I've about 10,000 plants in pots. I've a big front garden full of veg. There are ponds to clean.' In 1996, the bludgeoned body of Ms Toscan du Plantier was found outside her home in a remote part of West Cork. Mr Bailey was accused of her murder but was never charged with her killing. Ms Thomas believes she should never have been subjected to such stress over the murder, which she adamantly denies having any involvement in or knowledge of. She also backed Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan's claim in his new movie, Re-Creation, that Gardaí never had a 'shred of evidence' on Mr Bailey, saying authorities wrongfully arrested the pair. Starring Colm Meaney, Aidan Gilles and Vicky Krieps, Re-Creation – which premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival – imagines what could have unfolded if the unresolved murder had gone before a jury in Ireland. Speaking to Newstalk Breakfast on Tuesday, Mr Sheridan said: 'A man who probably was 100% innocent has been castigated through life; he lived a horrible life and died a horrible death and has a horrible name. 'I don't think he killed her, and there's not a shred of evidence to say he did.' He was on two occasions detained by Gardaí for questioning in relation to the murder but was never charged. Mr Bailey – who always denied any involvement in her murder – was convicted in absentia after a trial in France in 2015. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Ms Thomas said of the case: 'I should never have been subjected to that level of stress, when there was never a shred of evidence. There were two wrongful arrests. 'They had not a shred of evidence that we had anything to do with that woman. I never saw her, I never knew her. I knew of her from the people in the area. 'We knew of her but that was only because Ian worked up with [one of]the neighbours. It's a very remote track. You wouldn't know anyone unless you lived up there.' The unsolved murder was subject to many documentaries, including Netflix's Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, which aired in 2021. Earlier this year, Ms Thomas revealed she was suing Netflix and production company Lightbox Media over their 2021 documentary. She alleges filming for the production took place at her home without her permission, while also alleging that it contains falsehoods and made her a social pariah in the community she lives in West Cork. Both parties, represented by Matheson, are fully defending the claims in the case. Speaking about the Netflix documentary, Ms Thomas fumed to the Sunday Mirror: 'That shocking documentary they did was so biased. I thought it was disgusting.' Earlier this year, it was revealed Mr Bailey's sister, Kay Reynolds, would scatter her dead brother's ashes in a place he loved in West Cork. Ms Thomas also said she would've gone along with his sister to help scatter his ashes to say goodbye to the late UK journalist. And while Ms Reynolds hasn't contacted her, she said: 'She wants to keep it low key as possible.. but I would go and say goodbye.' Ms Thomas said Mr Bailey drank and took drugs to 'block out the hell he was living' after being accused of the murder. In January 2024, Mr Bailey collapsed and died from a suspected heart attack aged 66. She added: 'He had a big group of friends in Bantry. He apparently resorted to cocaine in the end because the drink wasn't doing anything. 'He needed to block out the hell he was living with so that is what he resorted to apparently.' Speaking about her own relationship with him, the 75-year-old said she couldn't live with him anymore after he would incessantly talk about the case all day. She said: 'It was ghastly what he went through but I couldn't live with him anymore. 'He never shut up about it, he went on and on and on, morning, noon and night. I couldn't sleep then. 'Before going to bed, he'd be on about, 'Oh the French are coming to get me in the middle of the night'. It went on and on and on. It was a nightmare.' It emerged Mr Bailey had been 'seriously violent' towards his Welsh-born artist girlfriend three times, which saw her also take out a protection order against him. Ms Thomas said she would regularly be stared at by people in the Schull Market on Sundays where she would sell her paintings. She said the case hindered her from earning a decent living as people were afraid to approach her. She added: 'I think it put an awful lot of people near me because they believed what the guards were saying. 'I got horrible stares at the market for years from people from Dublin or wherever in the country. The locals were lovely.'
