Ruth Dudley Edwards: ​Henry Kelly was not just a gameshow host, he had depth, courage and conscience

​We had been contemporaries in the mid-1960s in University College Dublin, centred for most purposes around the Literary and Historical Debating Society on a Saturday night.

His varied career as a journalist would include stints as a serious RTE and BBC reporter as well as later a famous game show host fondly remembered by generations of student who skived off every lunchtime to watch Going for Gold.

But at this time he was the northern editor of the Irish Times.

I had moved to London and worked as a bureaucrat in telecommunications in the Post Office.

I was in Belfast for the christening of the eldest daughter of another UCD contemporary, Liam Hourican, then RTE northern correspondent.

It was what would be the worst year of the Troubles: the following day would see the atrocious bombing of the Abercorn Bar on a Saturday afternoon, leaving two dead and 70 injured, several of whom were badly mutilated.

I had rarely been to Belfast and had had no grasp of the hell these two young men had been pitchforked into. Both had seen appalling and terrifying sights and been threatened with death on a regular basis.

The previous day Liam had been kidnapped by the IRA and warned he was to be shot as a spy: he was saved only because among the phone numbers in his pocket was that of a senior IRA figure who ordered his release.

That did not blight Liam’s determination to have a party for his daughter, featuring brave professional contacts, including the late Gerry Fitt of the SDLP, who would later have to endure regularly mobs of IRA supporters trying to burn his family out of their house.

I was the only person there sober enough to drive who was prepared to ferry people home. Unlike most of them, I neither understood how how risky it was nor knew my way around.

Out of decency and friendship, Henry insisted on being my navigator, several times for pleading with me to drive through red lights in dodgy areas.

For entirely understandable reasons both my extravagant and generous life-enhancing friends took to the fleshpots when they ended their time in Northern Ireland, though they never lost their passionate interest in the province and desire for an end to violence.

Liam became a successful Eurocrat who adored good food and travel: Henry a hugely popular broadcaster who loved horses, gambling and sport.

What makes me proudest of both my friends in retrospect was that their experiences in Northern Ireland had awoken no Irish Catholic tribalis.

Til the day they died (Liam in 1993 and Henry last week), their minds stayed open and they hated sectarianism of any kind.

Henry’s daughter reported that his passion for current affairs was still driving him right up to his death.

“There’s an awful lot less to me than meets the eye”, he used to say disarmingly when asked why he had switched from political journalism to game shows.

No, Henry. There was much more.

Like Liam, you had depth, courage and conscience.

We could do with more like you.