Patrick Kielty thought he was being summoned to his headteacher’s office for a telling off when he was told his father had been murdered in the Troubles.
The TV star’s father Jack, who worked as a building contractor, was shot by members of the UFF in 1988 aged 44 after refusing to pay protection money.
Patrick recalls in a new BBC documentary series, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland: “I remember going to school and like lots of other kids who were 16, putting up your posters for Comic Relief.
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“And being called to the headmaster’s office and thinking ‘I didn’t ask permission to put these posters up, here we go’.
“The headmaster said, ‘I think you need to sit down’. There was a slow motion but very quick exchange. He said ‘your father’s been shot’. I said ‘is he dead?’ and he said ‘yes’.”
Patrick, 52, and his family only found out later why Jack, a prominent Catholic and chair of the Gaelic football club, had been targeted.
“Rather than pay protection money to loyalist paramilitaries he decided to go to the police,” he said.
Patrick and his older brother John, who was 18, were pallbearers at the funeral. Now married to fellow TV star Cat Deeley, Patrick says he wanted to become a successful comedian to make his late father proud.
He says: “I wanted to live my life in a way that he would be happy with how things have turned out.”
His early material was often about the Troubles, and he wore a balaclava on stage. As he forged his career, he performed for both Catholic and Protestant audiences.
He says: “I played clubs on each side of the peace wall – they sometimes laughed in different places, there was no doubt about that.”
Patrick, who was last week confirmed as new host of the Ireland’s iconic Late Late Show, wept when he heard that the Good Friday Agreement had been signed in 1998.
“I remember going to my dressing room and I was crying but I didn’t want anyone else to know,” he explains. “I was crying because of what was lost.”
He says attitudes changed after the massacres of 1993, which started with an IRA bombing of Belfast’s Shankill Road sparking retribution killings of other innocents in bars and in their homes across the next seven days.
He says: “I think that week helped to force a change. Sometimes you need to stare into the abyss to realise that this can’t go on.”
- Once Upon a Time In Northern Ireland starts on BBC2 at 9pm tonight with all episodes on BBC iPlayer.
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