Voices of Boyle

Send us Fan Mail Ep 97--- Ruth Regan joins Florence to talk about growing up on Handley Avenue, getting a degree at 39, and the stories she has dug out of old Roscommon newspapers. In this episode: Calling to Francie Geelan’s house to find out when the disco was on Bugsy Malone, the first film when the cinema reopened in 1977 Bosco the German Wizard pulling a dozen eggs out of an empty bag at the...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 96--- Tommy King grew up in a house with a shop in the front room, where neighbours knocked at eleven at night for a drop of milk. In 1984 he started as an apprentice butcher with Stanley Taylor on £30.30 a week, and on his first morning he had his arm down a pickle barrel, numb to the shoulder. He talks about twenty years behind the counter, Thursday darts nights in Boyle&apos...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 95--- 3,207 signatures in four days. That is what a table on The Crescent and an online petition gathered in support of Aldi's plans for the old Candon's site on Patrick Street, while the planning appeal against it waits on a decision. Jane Suffin, who started the petition, and former postmaster Paul Forde sit down with Florence and Carlo, who were on the team with th...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 94--- Andrea Cosgrave set up a travel page to document a family trip to Iceland. The trip never happened. It was the Saint Patrick's weekend that the country shut down, and she was left with an empty account and a folder of older photographs.  She started posting them anyway. Six years and somewhere past twenty countries later, she talks to Florence about spreadsheets, Tha...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 93--- Historian and author Paul Connolly joins Carlo for what turned into a proper local history lesson. It starts with a ruin across the road from his national school in Mount Talbot, and a teacher named Sonny Cronin who had his pupils naming spring flowers in Latin and Irish decades before anyone used the word biodiversity. It goes on through sixteen years of senior hurling,...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 92--- This week, Carlo chats with Nicola Wynne, who grew up on the Carrick Road and went on to live a life you would struggle to believe. She spent five and a half years with the United Nations in former Yugoslavia during the war. She was also based in New York on September 11th 2001. She built a 20-year career in real estate in New Jersey. And when she lost her father and her...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 91--- Carlo and Florence sit down with Vincent Beirne, originally from Plunkett Avenue in Boyle, now living in the west of Ireland, for a wide-ranging conversation about life, loss, healing and the path he has taken since losing his father.  Vincent talks about growing up in Boyle, his father's profound influence on his life, losing a property at 21 through adverse possess...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 90--- Carlo and Florence sit down with Dolores Sheerin, a Termon woman with a life full of stories. From working as a telephonist in Galway in the late 1970s, where she answered a bomb threat during the Troubles and climbed onto the roof of the telephone exchange to watch Pope John Paul II bless them from his helicopter, to raising three sons in Boyle, joining the Moylurg Write...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 89--- Carlo sits down with David McGee, a young man from Boyle who has quietly built one of the most niche and impressive YouTube channels in Ireland.  Blue Star Line, his channel dedicated to historically accurate 3D ship animations, has over 127,000 subscribers and a single video with close to 7 million views. David talks about growing up beside the boys school in Boyle, his...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 88--- Carlo sits down with Mairead Cogan, the youngest of six children raised on a farm in the Curlew Mountains, who went on to play GAA, break her leg and ankle in 2019, discover a passion for coaching, and found her own fitness business, Supple Fitness.  But this episode is about more than fitness. Mairead also talks about two volunteer trips to Africa with Plant the Planet G...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 87--- In towns like Boyle, a post office was never just a place to buy stamps or send parcels. It was where news arrived before phones ever rang, where pensions were collected with a handshake and a chat, and where generations crossed the same threshold week after week. The red brick building on Shop Street stood quietly at the centre of it all, watching the town change while s...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 86--- Maria Liddy's story begins in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, where her parents ran a restaurant in Dalkey while the family lived up in the mountains. When Maria was 8, they made the leap to Boyle, taking on the Lakeshore Restaurant at Lough Key Forest Park. It was only two and a half hours away, but it felt like a different world. Growing up with 800 acres as your back gar...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 85--- David Cryan grew up on a farm in Cloonloo, in a household where after-school hours meant feeding cattle, mucking out sheds and drinking raw milk straight from the cow. He went to St. Mary's secondary school in Boyle, mitched exactly once and got caught, and remembers the morning assemblies with Father Lavender or Father Early before everyone headed off to class. From...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 84--- Florence sits down with Georgette, a Somerset-born creative who has been living just outside Boyle for the past ten years. Georgette grew up in the English countryside, left home at 17, worked in Egypt as a teenager, and spent years moving between cities before eventually landing in rural Wales and then Roscommon.  Now she works part time at Leitrim Design House and has r...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 83--- A lovely double episode this week as Carlo and Florence sit down with Colin, a Boyle native from Termon Road, and his partner Aethel, who grew up on a farm in Galway, spent ten years living across four American states, and eventually found her way to Boyle almost by accident.  Together they cover childhood memories of Boyle in the 1990s, from the Round Balls and Hares and...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 82---  Carlo sits down with Martha Higgins, a writer from Keash, Co. Sligo, who has just published her debut novel Hiding from the Heart. Martha grew up on a small farm in the 1960s, went to secondary school in Boyle, and has lived a wide and varied life since, including two years in South Africa during the transition from apartheid.  In this conversation she talks about farm l...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 81--- Florence sits down with Dorothy Shannon, the woman behind King House Tea Rooms in Boyle, just as the cafe approaches its tenth anniversary.  Dorothy grew up on a farm in Ardcarne near Cootehall, went to secondary school in Carrick-on-Shannon, and spent years working in catering and hospitality across England, Ireland and beyond before a friend mentioned there was a restau...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 80--- Carlo and Florence sit down with Anna Marie Jehorek, a travel blogger, author and Irish dancer from North Carolina, whose connection to Boyle stretches back to 1983 when she first visited with her mother to meet a great uncle she had never known. That first trip became a lifelong love. Anna Marie has written two novels set in and around Boyle and Lough Key, runs the trave...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 79--- Paul recently completed an epic endurance swim....the full length of the River Shannon, clocking in at a staggering 230km over just eight days! In this conversation, Paul chats with me and about how he prepared for the challenge, the training and sacrifices along the way, and what it really took (both physically and mentally) to push himself mile after mile in the open wa...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 78--- We’re excited to welcome Angela Chilton to Voices of Boyle! In this episode, Angela shares her inspiring journey from growing up in the north of England to finding home in the Boyle countryside. We chat about her family adventures, what drew her to Ireland, and how a chance meeting led to the creation of Knockvicar Alpaca Farm….now home to a thriving herd of fifty alpacas...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 77--- For episode 77 we have Sean Nicholson for a chat that’s heartfelt and full of laughs. Sean takes us back to his childhood at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, growing up in a house steeped in music, stories, and a fair bit of mischief.  From there, the conversation meanders through rambling houses, lively sessions, and unforgettable characters, before following Sean to Lo...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 76--- Welcome to episode 76 of the Voices of Boyle. I'm delighted to be joined by Seamie Carr for this one...a true Boyle native whose stories will transport you straight back to the town’s lively days of the 1980s and 90s. From flying down hills on car bonnets and staging epic war games in the Pleasure Grounds, to marbles, conkers, and Halloween penny bangers...Seamie pai...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 75--- From East End London to Ballyfarnon and Boyle, this one is packed with memories, a bit of mischief and making things happen. 📌 Joe chats about: • Born in England → moved to Ballyfarnon in 1994 • National school days  • Starting in St. Mary’s in 1998, later Abbey Community College • Teenage discos, selling cans on the bus, and early entrepreneurship • MBNA in Carrick from...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 74--- From London life to Boyle local, Kathleen and her partner, Andy, built one of Ireland’s most unique children’s clothing brands, “Slugs & Snails” from their kitchen table. In this episode, we chat about: ✨ The rise of Slugs & Snails and the unisex tights revolution 🇮🇪 Surviving Brexit, COVID, and building a brand from rural Ireland 🏡 What “home” really means afte...

Send us Fan Mail Ep 73--- This week, Carlo sits down with filmmaker and creative storyteller, Ciaran Casey. From a childhood in Sligo and Manchester, to making music videos in Boyle, and then filming a wild month long documentary road trip across the USA, Ciaran’s life is anything but typical! In this conversation, you’ll hear: 👉 How a Nokia phone and a passion for storytelling sparked his love f...