Driven by a determination to be ‘useful’, the much-admired journalist wrote a glorious last chapter to his life
Charlie Bird, flanked in the photograph by Ryan Tubridy and Daniel O'Donnell, climbed Croagh Patrick in 2022 to raise funds for the Irish Motor Neuron Disease Association and Pieta, Ireland’s national suicide prevention charity. Photograph: Michael Mc Laughlin/Photo: RollingNews.ie
Every campaign needs a slogan. Charlie’s was “the hand of friendship”. For most, it would have sounded trite. With him, it never did. Following his diagnosis, which shattered him for a time, he applied himself with relentless energy to “being useful”, as he once put it in a call before disease robbed him of his voice and it was replaced by an electronic version of himself.He had not begun thinking the Croagh Patrick climb would raise so much. But there was a competitive streak at his heart.
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