Board but also a drama enthusiast, an interest that proved hereditary. A fan of Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy, young Eamonn Andrews was drawn to the gentle-giant characters of American cinema despite the fact that he was painfully shy as a child; according to his biographer Tom Brennand, ‘He was born to blush, to be embarrassed, to be pathologically shy, and he grew up almost too timid to speak to anyone.’ In fact, bullying became such a problem for the tall, slightly odd-looking boy at Dublin’s Synge Street School that he took up boxing. This was a clever move for two reasons. For starters, he was never bullied again, and secondly, although he didn’t realize it at the time, it would help to launch his media career.
A working-class lad, Eamonn attended elocution classes to make him sound less rough around the edges and started to get occasional work as a boxing commentator on Irish radio. His love of boxing and an interest in journalism dovetailed neatly in 1944 when he began commentating on and competing in the amateur boxing championships. The ambitious sportsman jumped straight from the commentator’s box into the ring before going on to win his final fight, becoming junior Irish middleweight champion in 1944.
By this time, Andrews was hungry for the limelight and wanted to broaden his horizons. To this end, he started to bombard the BBC. ‘A constant stream of letters poured across the Irish Sea from the Andrews household to Broadcasting House,’ he recalled. ‘Nearly all were answered politely, but all said the same thing – “Sorry, but … ”’ Attempts to catch the attention of BBC bosses proved fruitless until 1950 when he was asked to host Ignorance is Bliss, a comedy quiz on BBC radio. Five years after the end of the Second World War, the Beeb were looking for accents that weren’t as plummy as those that had previously characterized the station. Eamonn Andrews epitomized this new ‘sound’. They also liked the way he was perceived by listeners (and later viewers): ‘He sells an ordinariness. The British public quite like that, they like to think they could do what you can do if they like you.’ He was Everyman: a genial Irish Everyman with a broad grin.
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