When John Doyle was born in a remote part of Tipperary the Catholic church was all-powerful in Ireland, suspicious of the outside world and enjoining its citizenry to piety. And then in 1961, television arrived, bringing Westerns, hilarious American sitcoms like "I Love Lucy", advertisements for gleaming cars and barbecues. Soon Gay Byrne's "Late Late Show" was hosting outspoken discussions on sex and religion and even, unthinkably, criticism of the church. Suddenly, the outside world, with its glamour, its violence, its fun, laughter and liberation, had come to Ireland. Then when Doyle and his family moved nearer the border with Northern Ireland they could pick up the BBC, the broadcasting institution of what he and his fellow Irish had always thought of as the hateful English oppressors - but who now, he discovered, were responsible for such revelatory programmes as Monty Python, and brought live football with the peerless George Best. This is a touching story of how TV caused nothing less than a social revolution, and enabled one man to enter the modern world.
