The days of endless Mayo dinner dances and the Press Ball
By Tom Gillespie
BACK in the 1960s dinner dances were all the rage and the most prestigious among them would have been the new year’s eve Mayo County Hospital dress ball, which was held annually in the Traveller’s Friend (TF) Hotel in Castlebar.
Other big occasions would have been the Castlebar Bacon Company, the Sacred Heart Home, the fire service, and hat factory dinner dances, and also the hunt ball.
Paddy Jennings' TF and Luke and Tom McHugh’s Welcome Inn Hotel were the host venues. Mrs. Una Lee’s Breaffy House Hotel came into the picture later that decade when all the local GAA clubs started to hold dinner dances.
Outside of the County Hospital function, the West of Ireland Branch of the National Union of Journalists Press Ball was always a crowd puller. Pictured here are a group of Mayo journalists at the Press Ball in the TF in 1965. At back, from left, are Denis Daly, Damien McHugh, Sean Staunton, Terry Reilly, Frank Courell, David Halloran, Mick O'Connell, Vincent Wherley, Liam Molloy, Jim McGuire, John McHale and Tom Courell. At front are Bernie Gillespie, Tony Lavelle, Martin Curry and Gerry Bracken.
All were employed in either The Western People, The Mayo News or The Connaught Telegraph.
I was still a student in St. Gerald’s College then and did not join the staff of The Connaught Telegraph until August 1968.
That year I attended my first Press Ball in the TF, complete with dress suit and dickie bow, when then Taoiseach Jack Lynch was the guest of honour. It was, of course, an all-night affair and I recall walking my girlfriend (now wife of 53 years) home and we met all the good souls going to 8 a.m. Mass.
My uncle, Bernie Gillespie, in the Connaught and news editor John McHale were the chief organisers, something I was to undertake in 1992 when the last Press Ball was held in Castlebar, the venue being Breaffy House.
Bernie was one of the founding members of the NUJ in the west of Ireland. Initially it was the Mayo branch and then it incorporated Galway and had members in The Connacht Tribune, Tuam Herald, Galway Advertiser and Údaras na Gaeltachta, to become the West of Ireland branch.
The support for the Press Balls from the commercial sector was immense and the selection of spot prizes reflected that, and coloured paper hats were distributed like confetti.
In ’68 one of the novelties, which would be politically unacceptable today, was the crowning of a ‘Miss Print’.
The Press Ball moved to Galway for a few years and reverted to Mayo for the final sitting in 1992.
During the 1970s dinner dances were the social outings and as a young reporter we would have to cover them, often three on the one night - in the TF, Breaffy House and the Welcome Inn. These were mainly GAA club functions and the mandatory turkey and ham was standard.
In Luke and Tom McHugh’s Welcome Inn Hotel, under the watchful eye of Miss Foody, the cuisine was legendary. The starter was soup and the waiting staff patrolled the hall with large jugs of extra soup, and mounds of mash potato were carried on trays and scooped onto plates as the hungry guests tackled into the turkey before extra helpings were again offered.
The three-in-one-night functions presented its difficulties as you could only eat one meal and it was difficult to explain to the organisers of the second and third dinner dance that you were well fed and full-up.
Three of us - Tom Courell, Western People, Christy Loftus, Mayo News, and myself, Connaught Telegraph - hopped between the TF, Welcome Inn and Breaffy House to cover the events.
Usually you were presented with two complimentary tickets by the organisers and sometimes you could be out five nights in the week at these events.
October to the beginning of Lent was the dinner dance season and it was a boom time for the hotels as well as the local bands who provided the music after the meal.
For the after dinner speeches, we journalists came into our own and reports and pictures from photographers Derek Mandel, Liam Lyons, Frank Dolan and Tom Campbell would appear in the three local papers the following week.
In those days there were no mobile phones with cameras so the photographers did a steady business supplying prints to the guests.
On the odd occasion these photos could cause romantic bust-ups as Miss A could be pictured at a function with Mr. B when in fact she was going out with Mr. C.
I recall Frank Dolan and I being challenged in Padraig Flynn’s Sunflower Lounge by a lady after such an event and our defence was ‘well, didn’t you stand in for the picture’.