It’s a disgrace to class entertainers as non-essential given our role during Troubles says Clubsound’s George Jones

He said: “Years ago showbands like ourselves were definitely essential, as was everyone in the entertainment game. Just to get people out of the darkness, somewhere where they could sit and they didn’t care who was sitting beside them. They were only focused on the stage.”

That shared space was shattered on March 4, 1972 when the Abercorn, where Clubsound were the resident house band, was bombed, killed two young women and leaving hundreds injured.

George said: “Immediately after a bomb went off they used to interrupt television programmes – ‘this is an important message for the keyholder of the premises’.

“The night of the Abercorn bomb I tried to phone Hilary before she would see it on TV to tell her I was okay. The only thing left in the foyer was the rafters. I remember standing at the call box, on the phone to her, looking down the rafters to the restaurant where the bodies were.”

After the bomb the band decided to leave NI: “We went to South Africa for our family’s sakes, to start a new life. It didn’t work out. We were there about a year. We went from Troubles in our own country to be stuck right in the middle of apartheid – from the frying pan into the fire.”

Although not directly impacted by the 1998 Omagh bomb, as a broadcaster George had an important role to play in the immediate aftermath.

He said: “The hardest week in my life in broadcasting was the week of the Omagh bomb.

“Radio Ulster won a Sony award for how they handled it, but the truth is we didn’t know how to handle it, it was instinct.

“I opened up with Nanci Griffith ‘From A Distance’ – by the time it was nearly over I was crying. I had to pull myself together and put on another song. People starting coming in with suggestions for songs, then we opened the lines and acted as a conduit allowing people to pass on their messages to the people of Omagh.

“When I finished at five o’clock you could have wrung me out.”

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