Mr John Cowley, the actor known to a generation of RTE viewers as the farmer Tom Riordan, has died aged 74. Mr Cowley, who was also well known for his stage work, was a founder-member of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports.
Born in Navan, Co Meath, in September 1923, he attended national school until he was 13, when he had to leave to help his father run the family farm.
His farming background provided valuable experience when it came to his best-known role as head of the eponymous family in the rural soap opera The Riordans, which was one of RTE's most popular television programmes ever, running from 1964 to 1979.
In 1967 his performance in the role won him the TV Actor of the Year award.
Before that series he was already an established stage actor, having joined the Dublin Globe Theatre company in 1956. He later moved to the Abbey, and toured Australia and Europe in The Playboy of the Western World.
He was due to start rehearsals soon with the Druid Theatre company. Mr Cowley was described last night by the television writer Wesley Burrows as the best actor he ever knew. The actor Joe Lynch, of RTE's Glenroe, said he was "the epitome of the Irish country gentleman".
His written works included short poems and a play, A Fool and his Money. His recreations included swimming, hurling, football, boxing and Irish history, especially the 1798 period.
He once said that his ambition was to see hare coursing abolished, and his activities as an antiblood sports campaigner had made him unpopular in rural Ireland. He once lay out in a wood all night in wait for someone tearing his posters down, he recalled in an interview.
He married the actress Annie D'Alton, who played Minnie Brennan in The Riordans, in 1953 - two years after her first husband, the dramatist Louis D'Alton, had died.
Annie D'Alton died in Dublin in March 1983.
