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TV review: TV’s life lesson - never, ever give up

Patricia, Mary and Colleen McGuinness recall the miraculous summer of 1985. Picture by RTE
Patricia, Mary and Colleen McGuinness recall the miraculous summer of 1985. Picture by RTE Patricia, Mary and Colleen McGuinness recall the miraculous summer of 1985. Picture by RTE

Moving Statues - The Summer of 1985, RTE 1, Monday at 9.35pm

I remember the moving statues phenomenon well.

Overlooking Garryowen green in Limerick city was a Marian shrine of a type common across the Republic - a life-size plaster statue set in its own small garden tended by locals.

One fine summer's evening I ran around the corner expecting to join a football match on the green when I was stopped in my tracks.

Thousands were on their knees praying to the statue. St John's Cathedral was but a stone's throw away but I don't think I'd ever seen such a crowd there.

Moving Statues was a homage to those innocent days of 1985 when a religious fervour swept Europe's most religious country.

It was a strangely southern fervour though. The furthest north any of the 30 or so moving statues got was Sligo, which was odd given that Northern Ireland was in desperate need of some hope at the time and recession and high unemployment was cited as a reason for the apparitions in the south.

The town most associated with that summer will always be Ballinaspittle in Co Cork, the scene of the first moving statue and the largest crowds.

The high grotto on the Kinsale Road outside Ballinaspittle attracted thousands every night and soon an industry developed around it.

Buses ran daily from Dublin and Cork County Council built makeshift toilets and installed phone boxes for the pilgrims.

One fast food operator told us how he parked up his truck one night and didn't move for 16 weeks.

Local councillors even applied for a £650,000 grant to improve the access road.

However, as quick as it started, in September 1985 the crowds drifted away.

One of the additional curiosities of the time was the attitude of the Church, with a bishop describing the whole phenomenon as "an illusion" as if instructing his flock to return to formal churches where he could promise real miracles.

Moving Statues did an excellent job of finding many of the believers, including three cousins who saw an apparition in Sligo that summer.

Patricia, Mary and Colleen McGuinness were young girls out walking when Our Lady appeared over the hedgerow.

"Mary just held my hand and I looked up into the sky and to the right of me I seen a vision of Our Lady," said Colleen.

"It was like she was just floating just above the ditch", she told us as she stood on the same spot in the road.

"Our lady's face appeared in the moon, I can see it very very vividly. She mimed faith and hope and you could see her lips moving from it."

****

The Masters Golf, BBC 1, Sunday at 1.55pm

There was another religious experience this week when Tiger Woods rose from the sporting dead.

But this was no apparition. We witnessed it on the BBC with the great Peter Alliss providing the commentary.

Since the humiliation of the 2009 sexual revelations and marriage break-up, the 43-year-old has had four back operations, at least two knee operations and just 18 months ago things seemed at their nadir when police released a picture of him after he was arrested for driving under the influence of drugs.

Two years ago after needing a nerve blocker just to sit down at the champions dinner at Augusta he confided to another champion that he was finished.

The easy road then for a man with a spinal fusion and 14 major championships was to retire and enjoy his money.

Instead we must celebrate the indomitable human spirit of a flawed genius and the lesson he teaches us all. Never, ever give up.