Denis Tuohy (born 2 April 1937,

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is #Descriptions, variously described as ...

) is a television broadcaster, newsreader and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and actor. Tuohy attended

Queen's University, Belfast , mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back? , top_free_label = , top_free = , top_free_label1 = , top_free1 = , top_free_label2 = , top_free2 = , established = , closed = , type = Public research university , parent = ...

, where he learned to debate and acquired an interest in acting. In 1960, he appeared in '' Over the Bridge'', a play written by

Sam Thompson Samuel Luther "Big Sam" Thompson (March 5, 1860 – November 7, 1922) was an American professional baseball player from 1884 to 1898 and with a brief comeback in 1906. At , the Indiana native was one of the larger players of his day and was known ...

and directed by Jimmy Ellis. Later that year, Tuohy became the first

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

broadcaster for

BBC Northern Ireland BBC Northern Ireland ( ga, BBC Thuaisceart Éireann; Ulster-Scots: ''BBC Norlin Airlan'') is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Northern Ireland. It is widely available across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of I ...

. Tuohy moved to London in 1964 to work for the new

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...

. At the channel's launch that April, he was scheduled to be the first face on air. However, there was a power failure on the opening night, and newsreader Gerald Priestland was briefly seen before transmission was aborted and the official launch postponed until the day after. The opening broadcast began with a shot of a burning candle and Tuohy then blowing it out. Tuohy participated in several of the BBC's current affairs programmes of the 1970s, including '' Tonight'' and the long-running ''

Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...

'', and, after moving to

Thames Television Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broa ...

, he was a reporter and presenter for '' This Week'' (and ''TV Eye'', 1978–1986). He interviewed Margaret Thatcher in the leadup to the

1979 United Kingdom general election The 1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, ousted the incumbent Labour government of James Callaghan with ...

. Communication specialist Geoffrey Beattie analysed the interview extensively in a work on patterns of interruption in conversation. During the 1990s, he was a newscaster for ITN, usually anchoring overnight bulletins and the '' ITV Morning News'', and also worked on several documentaries. On returning to live in Ireland in 2001 Tuohy took up acting again, playing roles in RTE's ''

Fair City ''Fair City'' is an Irish television soap opera which has been broadcast on RTÉ One since 1989. Produced by the public service broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), it first aired on Monday, 18 September 1989. It has won several aw ...

'', '' The Clinic'', and ''

Fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioa ...

''. and BBC NI's "Betrayal of Trust." He also wrote a memoir, ''Wide-Eyed in Medialand: A Broadcaster's Journey''.''Wide-eyed in Medialand: A broadcaster's journey'', by Denis Tuohy, Blackstaff (2005) As a broadcaster he has written and presented over twenty documentaries for UTV particularly The Troubles I've Seen. He has made many contributions to BBC Radio Ulster's Thought for the Day. A collection of them, Streets and Secret Places, was published in 2021.

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* 1937 births Living people BBC newsreaders and journalists ITN newsreaders and journalists Mass media people from Belfast 20th-century male actors from Northern Ireland 21st-century male actors from Northern Ireland {{BBC-tv-bio-stub