UFOs, magic priests, and the gems of the RTÉ archive

Opera-singing dogs, weather-forecasting goats, the seventh son of a seventh son and a man who believes he will die within the week if the local fairy tree falls. All of this and more can be seen in a new collection of videos from the RTÉ archives which will be available online from today.

Archive curator Liam Wylie has assembled 15 videos from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which the broadcaster is publishing online in advance of Unesco World Day for Audiovisual Heritage this Thursday. The resulting collection, titled Weird and Wonderful, draws from the dustier corners of the archive to deliver some absolute gems, like the priest who balances his niece on a sword as part of his magic routine and the inventor who has devised a wearable contraption for lollipop wardens.

“We’ve done a lot of 1916 stuff this year, and a lot of that was quite formal,” says Wylie. “This time we wanted to do something that’s a bit more quirky but that still has value.” In fact, it’s often the less obviously historic parts of any archive that can end up shining more of a light on the past.

Knack for the offbeat

Many of the clips were originally the sort of stories that appear as the “and finally” items at the end of news bulletins. But Wylie says there were always some people in RTÉ who had a knack for the offbeat. Broadcaster Cathal O’Shannon in particular had a sense of humour which lent itself to the offbeat. In one clip he interrogates passers-by in Phibsboro on whether they’d be willing to buy horsemeat from their local butcher.

In another, he interviews the people who believe they’ve seen a UFO hovering over Mullinahone in Co Tipperary.

“I love the one in Ballinalsoe with the lollipop warden,” says Wylie. “Here’s a guy who really believes he can make this work – but it looks crazy to us.”

As curator, it's Wylie's job to give people an idea of the treasures of the archive through its website and through its Twitterand Facebookfeeds. He says he is always surprised by what works online, but that people are particularly interested in footage of their own local area. The task of keeping the material in the best possible condition is never-ending, with footage being stored on a range of different formats, many of them now obsolete.

“The beauty of it is that this stuff doesn’t just have to sit on a shelf any more,” he says. “The danger is that people might then presume it’s safe.”

The Weird and Wonderful collection can be found here.