Patricia Cahill was one of my favourite singers . Her first appearance in public was in Dublin’s Theater Royal at the age of seventeen. . Patricia Cahill “Sings for you”, her first commercial recording was recorded in Dublin and then reissued in the United States under the title “Danny Boy”.
She appeared frequently on Irish television in the late 1960s and early 1970s, frequently with theater star Maureen Potter. Her song I Stand Still placed second in the Irish National Final for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965. She appeared on the Val Doonican Show on November 18, 1970, and she was a regular on BBC Television’s Songs of Praise, hosted by Robert Dougal. During the early 1970s, Cahill appeared on RTÉ TV’s A Handful of Songs, which was broadcast across the then-ITV network. Until his death in 2013, Cahill was married to Ciaran O’Carroll. She lived in Marbella, Spain, until her death on May 11, 2022, at the age of 80
Irish Times obituary in 2022:
Born: March 3rd, 1942
Died: May 11th, 2022
Singer Patricia Cahill, who was a household name in entertainment in the 1960s and 1970s, has died aged 80. She will always be associated with her Moonlight and Roses duet with Maureen Potter, but she moved effortlessly between light opera, musicals, stage shows and pantomime, and also presented her own show on RTÉ. She had a loyal following abroad where she was billed as the Irish Nightingale.
She was the youngest of five children, born to Daniel and Mary Cahill in Ranelagh. They moved to Mourne Road in Drimnagh where she attended primary school at Our Lady of Good Counsel, before becoming a boarder at St Mary’s College in Arklow. Both schools were run by the Sisters of Mercy and she had very happy memories of her schooldays. “I owe so much to these nuns,” she told RTÉ presenter Mary Kennedy in an interview for the Nationwide show in 2016. “When they discovered I had a voice, they did everything to help me.”
Her first memory of singing in public was when she was 10 and she sang Once I Had a Secret Love at her dance class. When she was 12, the organist and composer Daniel McNulty heard her singing at a wedding and told her mother that she should have her voice trained. She started to take lessons with him and soon she was starring in Monday night shows in Our Lady’s Hall in Drimnagh.
After she left school, she went for an audition at Dublin’s Theatre Royal, hoping to get a week’s work before she took up a job with the ESB on Fleet Street. Instead, she was offered the chance to work on a variety show with comedian Jack Cruise, earning £10 a week.
The job offer changed the course of her life. She quickly became a regular fixture on playbills all over the country, but always credited the Theatre Royal with preparing her for a life on stage. Other venues did not faze her because she had performed in a theatre that could hold 4,000 people. She recalled that the stage was so big that a carriage and two ponies were able to do a full circle of the stage with ease during a production of Cinderella.
Conor Doyle, Theatre Royal historian, said Cahill rose to fame in a very gentle way. “She was such a lovely lady. She was not brash. She never came across as a showbiz person, but she was a superstar.”
Doyle’s godparents were the Gaiety director Ursula Doyle and her husband Jimmy O’Dea; when his parents went shopping in Dublin, they would leave him at the theatre where he chatted to Cahill.
Ursula Doyle paired her with Maureen Potter for what would become an iconic performance – the Moonlight and Roses duet. She played the part of a young girl going for an audition at a theatre where Potter was the cleaner.
She recalled the “thunderous” applause when they first performed it. “It was a reaction from an audience that I had never experienced… it was so spontaneous.”
Expressing her sadness at the death of the singer, Mary Kennedy said as a child growing up in the 1960s in Dublin, “the highlights of our year were the Gaiety panto and Gaels of Laughter, where Patricia and Maureen Potter enthralled us”.
Cahill became a regular guest on light entertainment television programmes, including The Late Late Show. Her work on the Dublin stage drew the attention of Avoca Records which released her first album, Ireland’s Patricia Cahill Sings for You, in the late 1960s. It was renamed Danny Boy when it was reissued in the United States. She later signed with the Decca label, and many more albums followed with Decca and other labels. Collaborations included an album with The Bachelors and a duets album with Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar, recorded live at Wigmore Hall.
She had many loyal followers in Britain and performed in venues such as the Albert Hall, Victoria Palace and Blackpool’s Opera House, as well as on the BBC’s Val Doonican Show and Songs of Praise. One performance at the London Palladium in 1973 was particularly memorable. The Sunday night show was being broadcast live but dramatically went off the air after Cahill’s performance due to an IRA bomb scare.
Her regular appearances on television led to her own RTÉ show in 1977 – Patricia – which featured different guests every week. It was produced by John McColgan, long before he would become a household name with Tyrone Productions and Riverdance. He recalled that Cahill was a very big name in Ireland at that time. He encouraged her to introduce more contemporary music into her repertoire, including Janis Ian’s At Seventeen, which would become one of her favourite songs. RTÉ also released an album of songs from the series which sold very well. “It was a pleasure to work with her and we worked very well together,” he said. “She was just a lovely, gentle woman.”
Other work included her own annual season in the Savoy Hotel in London, as well as cabaret performances in landmark hotels such as the Mandarin in Hong Kong, and the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
A chance meeting in Switzer’s department store on Grafton Street in 1967 led to the luckiest day in her life, she once said. That was where she met a talented young pianist, Ciarán O’Carroll. He proposed to her on their second date, and they eventually married two years later. He became her manager, and friends said they were devoted to each other. The couple had their first child, Daniel, in London and they later settled in Elviria, in the south of Spain, where their daughter Madeleine was born.
They were married for 44 years before he died from motor neurone disease in 2013. The loss of her soulmate took a toll on her, as she explained in the Nationwide interview three years later. “I don’t think I’ve had a real sense of happiness since Ciarán died,” she said. “We were always happy, laughing and joking… I’m not unhappy… I’ve got my two lovely children who are great friends and great company… but I’ll always miss him until the day I die.”
Nevertheless, she made the most of the intervening years, spending time with her family and friends, returning to Dublin when she could, and retaining a strong interest in politics and current affairs.
She died in Marbella, after a short illness.
Patricia Cahill is survived by her son Daniel, daughter Madeleine and extended family.
Irish Independent obituary:
Obituary: Patricia Cahill, accomplished singer who enjoyed deserved fame on stage and television
Ciara Dwyer
Sun 3 Jul 2022 at 02:30
Patricia Cahill, the well-loved Irish singer, died in Marbella, Spain, on May 11 after a short illness. She was 80. Known as “the Irish Nightingale”, she enthralled audiences for years with her sweet voice and beauty. She had a very pleasant, gentle demeanour on stage and people warmed to her.
Her last professional appearance was in the Gaiety Theatre in 1999. She sang in a tribute night for Maureen Potter, organised by Riverdance producer John McColgan. As she walked on stage, elegant as ever with her brunette hair still shoulder-length, she was in fine musical form. There was great affection for her.
For many years, she had starred with Potter as a principal boy in the pantomimes and in the Gaiety’s summer variety show — Gaels of Laughter — which included their famous “moonlight and roses” sketch.
“We rehearsed that item in the ladies’ loo of the dress circle in the Gaiety, just looking in the mirror and doing our own little dance,” she told Mary Kennedy on RTÉ’s Nationwide. “Nobody saw us rehearsing. When we opened with it on opening night, the applause was thunderous. The audience just loved it. It was a reaction from an audience that I had never experienced. It was so spontaneous. There was something about it. It brought people back to a certain time in their lives.”
She credited Maureen for her encouragement. “I came to the Gaiety from the Olympia and she said, ‘This is where you belong.’ It was a lovely welcome for me. She was a great example for anybody who worked in the theatre. She was a huge star but you never would think that talking to her. When she was off the stage, she was off the stage. It was a different life.”
Cahill had the same modest manner. Her career soared to great heights, but her ego never followed.
Patricia Cahill was a big star. She performed in Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, had residencies at the Savoy Hotel and the Waldorf Astoria and she featured in Leonard Sachs’s hugely popular The Good Old Days. In 1973, she sang ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ live at Sunday Night at the Palladium in London. After her song, the show was stopped and the building evacuated. The police had been told of an IRA bomb scare.
“She was a classy broad,” John McColgan says. “I was a fan before I worked with her. She was an intelligent woman with a great sense of humour and a terrific voice.”
He made two TV series of Patricia, his first light entertainment show for RTÉ. They recorded an album with musical director Noel Kelehan and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Patricia had been singing Irish songs such as ‘Danny Boy’ and seeing her versatility, John suggested she do some modern popular songs — like ‘Evergreen’and ones by The Carpenters. It worked.
Born in Ranelagh, Dublin, to Daniel and Mary Cahill, Patricia was the youngest of five children. The family moved to Mourne Road and all of Patricia’s childhood memories were from Drimnagh. She sang in the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel from an early age and was a regular mass-goer.
“I owe so much to the Sisters of Mercy nuns,” she said. “When they discovered I had a voice, they did everything to help me.”
She became a boarder in St Mary’s College in Arklow, Co Wicklow, run by the same order, and her singing flourished. She took lessons with Daniel McNulty, and then starred in Monday night shows in Our Lady’s Hall, Drimnagh. On leaving school, she was all set to start work in the ESB office in Fleet Street in the city, but she decided to do one of the weekly open auditions at the Theatre Royal first.
“If you were successful, you got a week in the Theatre Royal. That was all I wanted to do. So I went in with my mother and sang ‘The Fairy Tree’,” she said. The manager, Phil O’Donoghue, thought it was great but not quite suitable for the Theatre Royal. He asked her to learn ‘This Is My Beloved’ from Kismet instead.
A few days later, she received a telegram. She was to call the Theatre Royal. Jack Cruise was looking for a girl singer and she was asked if she would like to join him for his big show. “I had never heard of Jack Cruise and he had never heard me sing. It started off my ambition to sing for one week and it started a lifetime of singing.”
It was her first job and she was getting £10 a week. Years later, she did sing ‘The Fairy Tree’ there and got a great response. Her time at the Theatre Royal was the best training ever. After the audience of 4,000 people there, nothing could daunt her.
She met Ciarán O’Carroll, an architect and talented pianist, and they fell in love. She described their wedding day as the luckiest day of her life. He became her manager and often performed with her. Years later, they went to live in the south of Spain. They had two children, Daniel and Madeleine.
“He was a lovely guy, full of the joys of spring. We didn’t just love each other, we were in love with each other all our lives. I used to say, ‘I am so happy, something is bound to happen’ and it didn’t for 44 years and suddenly it did when he got motor neurone disease.” He died in 2013.
Patricia was a down-to-earth person but very private. She enjoyed her life in Spain. She spoke Spanish and took part in the life there, enjoying the weekly markets. She still kept in touch with Ireland.
In 2015, Drimnagh Residents’ Association celebrated their 80th anniversary and they presented her with a plaque in honour of her achievements in Our Lady’s Hall. “It all started here,” Patricia said. “I had the most wonderful career. I couldn’t have wished for more
