O'REILLY BACK IN TOWN

The piece below is from The Irish Times.

Sir Anthony O'Reilly, ever before he was titled, was a brilliant speaker. O'Reilly in his day, and maybe even still, is one of the greatest of public speakers.

A number of years ago he launched a book of a Dominican Sister, who worked with young people with disabilities.

He arrived significantly late for the event but less than a minute into his talk he had his audience in the palm of his hand. He was funny, sharp, simply brilliant.

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“You win and you lose, and if you don’t know how to lose you don’t know how to live,” said Tony O’Reilly in an address to friends and former team-mates at a gathering at the Old Belvedere Rugby Club in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, on Saturday afternoon for the opening of a new function room named in his honour.

The 81-year-old, on a rare trip home to Ireland from France, where he now lives, was in fine spirits and good health as he regaled club members with tales from his rugby-playing past.

They laughed as he shared an experience he had as he lined up to play for Ireland against Wales in an international more than 50 years ago. When an opponent gestured towards him in the tunnel before the match a team-mate asked who he was.

“He used to be Tony O’Reilly,” came the response, a withering reference to his failing prowess on the rugby pitch.

Fast forward five decades and Tony O’Reilly isn’t Tony O’Reilly any more. He is Sir Anthony O’Reilly, and on his first trip to Ireland in more than four years.

At the event, he did not address the controversy currently swirling around Independent News and Media (INM), of which he was once the majority shareholder, but his son Gavin, who resigned as chief executive of INM in 2012, told The Irish Times that his father had been keeping abreast of the developments in recent weeks.