A picture of success

You have a great love of photography, Robert. It's not just something that you did because you are an estate agent and have to take photographs of properties. You have it as a hobby, I am told.

I do. I have an eye for a photograph I think.

How long ago did you start taking photographs?

Well, I would have started when I was 15.

Right! Was that at school?

No it was after school. In those days you left school at 15.

Right...so did you have a Senior Cert to do?

No I went straight into primary school and from there I went straight into a studio called Leslie Stewart.

Was that a photography studio?

Hmmm.

Would you have taken press photographs at that age?

No I was taking what was called 'professional' photographs.

Portraits and stuff?

Portraits, aye and weddings.

Even at 15 you were doing weddings?

Well, at that age I was in training and I was at that until I did my professional then between five and seven years and then I went into the press for five years.

So who did you take photographs for?

The Sentinel!

Oh right!

I was the first photographer for the Sentinel when they restructured themselves when they were bought over by Morton. When they were bought over by Morton they advertised for a photographer and I got the first job.

Was that back in the days when the paper was still on the Strand Road?

No. It was on Pump Street.

Whereabouts?

It was in where your man has the gallery, what's his name...the Gordon Gallery. It was in there and from there they bought the premises on the Strand Road, which was a three-storey building. On the ground floor they had the office, on the first floor Sidney Buchanan they had the editor and the upper floor they had the other people like Davey Roddick, Jim Lindsay - you know Jim Lindsay?

I do.

Jim Lindsay and a fellow called Donaghy, Jim Donaghy and myself, and we restructured the Sentinel to a new format, which the Journal is doing at the moment.

Right. What was it like being a photographer back in those days? That was pre-Troubles days wasn't it?

It was pre-Troubles days. Every morning we would come in. Davey Roddick would sit with us and say 'Right boys, what stories have you for me today? What's controversial? What's moving? What's happening?' Then, in the mornings you would ring the Fire Service and the Police. They were the two calls - and the hospital - for anything happening overnight and then you did the same in the afternoon and at 4pm they would start getting all the stuff ready for to send to Dublin, and to Belfast and to London.

What day was the publication day back then?

Oh, it was still on a Wednesday. But what happened was this, all the boys were 'corrs' - correspondents for the News Letter, correspondents for the Irish News, and there was a group of them in Derry. It's very interesting, there was a group of them and all the press boys, Tom Cassidy, another fellow called Doherty, Sidney Buchanan and all the papers, it didn't matter what paper it was, it was 'I'll look after it today, you do it tomorrow' and the same stuff went out to all the papers from one man. But it was very interesting how that happened, you know?

When did you stop being a press photographer?

That continued on right up to maybe 1967/1968/1969. But then I had a mixture of professional and newspaper, because I was with the professional first and then I moved into another temporary job and then I came back into professional, and then I applied for the Sentinel job and I was exactly five years with the Sentinel and then Tommy McCarter, who took over Leslie Stewart's studios invited me back again into the professional field from the newspaper.

Right. I know you also at one stage managed a ballroom in the city.

I managed what was known as the Embassy Court Building and the building included offices and shops and an entertainment centre.

And you managed all of that?

Aye, the building, on behalf of the company which was called the Foyle Development Corporation.

You must have had some fantastic dances back then...

It was very good now...Save the Children Ball, charity balls, Irish nights, they had a mixture of ballroom dancing, which was social dancing...discos two nights a week. We were the first to start a disco in Northern Ireland.

Did you ever have the roller discos in there. Do you remember the craze in the 1980s for the roller discos?

We did roller skating. We have photos of the girls, the team of girls that was in roller skating. We went over to London and bought over 200 pairs of skates and brought them back and we had the roller skating.

Did you rent out the pairs of roller skates?

No they got a pair whenever they came in when they paid their way in.

Can you remember any big incidents at the ballroom?

We had a regular 'Miss Ireland' there. We had a regular 'Miss Derry', we had a regular 'Best Hairstyle'.

Best hairstyle?

Yeah, hairstyle, and we also had the 'Smartest Girl in Town', which was very regular. Every week so many girls were picked and after so many weeks the winning girl was selected. There were TV personalities coming from Belfast to do the final selection and judging and all that. Things like that were going on all the time. Then When Navy was coming in, in the early days, They had special nights when the boats arrived in Derry and it was open to them to come in a do their dancing and entertainment.

The scene back then was obviously very different to what it is now...

It was the best scene ever because there was no drink and then the law changed. The pubs were open until 10.30pm and from then they started to come into the ballroom. By the time they left the ballroom they were sober going out and you had the best scene. It is only when drink came on the scene within the premises that you found it created more problems than enough. Drink, to me, has caused the damage to the dance scene, entertainment and people meeting people.

What do you think of the impact that cheap drink in supermarkets is having on the pub scene.

It is changing the whole culture again. The old entertainment scene was the best scene ever. I remember Bishop Daly coming down to discos to see how the kids were behaving themselves. We had discos two nights a week and the first double-deck disco was designed by us with two decks and a mixer. Now you can buy them off the shelf but back in those days you had to make up our own decks and train people up. We had Jimmy Saville in Derry, and we had Pete Murray...

Did Jimmy Saville turn up in his gold tracksuit?

(laughs) Allan Freeman was in Derry - all the top DJs of the time were in Derry. All the top DJs were brought over to Belfast and brought down to Derry and were left back again the next morning. Then you had the big bad scene as well - Dave, Dee...

Beaky, Mick and Titch, so or something like that...

Yes, all those big groups. People have been on at me to write a book about those days, but I am too busy at the moment.