Madam, - Might I be permitted to add a few words to your obituary of John O'Callaghan (The Irish Times, April 14th)?
John's coverage of Northern Ireland affairs was always penetrating and analytical. I believe he was one of the most articulate, if less celebrated, of the journalists who covered Northern Ireland in the 1970s. He was also a deeply courteous and gentle man.
When I joined RTÉ as a reporter in 1974 he was already an established authority and would quickly follow Liam Hourican as Northern Correspondent. I learned a lot from him as a broadcaster and journalist. He was a patient and wise adviser and teacher and a great companion.
Some mistook his distaste for overblown convention as eccentricity. On one occasion he insisted on driving the director-general and chairman of RTÉ from Belfast to a function in Coleraine in his very battered motor car. O'Callaghan was, as always, dressed in his anorak and cap.
His only jacket that I knew of, dress shirt (and I use the term loosely) and tie hung behind his office door, to be donned just for the few minutes he would appear in front of cameras.
He emerged from a lift early one morning having been stuck between the 10th and 11th floors for 12 hours in the empty building. His response had been to use his tape recorder as a pillow and go to sleep.
When some British soldiers were found south of the Border in the early 1970s he opined on the News at Six Thirty that it was unacceptable to have these people wandering around the area with a map "like a group of boy scouts". I believe the scouts' association made a complaint.
By the time he was London correspondent I was his counterpart in Belfast and would regularly go to London to attend House of Commons debates. He introduced me to the Commons work, again with the patience and courtesy I had come to expect. My only difficulty was that he would insist on walking from the RTÉ offices in New Bond Street to Westminster and back.
Many of those who worked with and for him will remember him with deep affection and respect. - Yours, etc,
JIM DOUGAL, Former Northern Editor, RTÉ, Belfast.