O'Brien, Thomas (‘Tommy') (1905–88), broadcaster and journalist, was born 20 July 1905 on Wolfe Tone St., Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, one of six sons and two daughters of Martin O'Brien, clerk in a dry-goods store, and Bridget O'Brien (née Moroney), who served ninepenny meals to countrymen in town on business. Both parents were from Co. Waterford farming families dispossessed during the land war. He was educated at Clonmel CBS, at St Mary's High School, and on scholarship at Ring College, Co. Waterford. Active in Na Fianna Éireann, although his brothers all attended UCC, he left school at 15 and served as dispatch rider in the 3rd Tipperary Brigade, IRA, associating with Dan Breen (qv), Seán Treacy (qv), and Séamus Robinson (qv). After the treaty he commenced a career in journalism as reporter on the Clonmel Chronicle, supplemented by work as a court stenographer. On the Chronicle's demise in the 1930s he joined another Clonmel paper, the Nationalist, first as reporter, then as editor, in which capacity he wrote theatre and music reviews, piquant commentary on public issues, and wry observations of local town life under the pen name ‘Scrutator’. O'Brien's enduring passion for grand opera was initiated by attending local productions by touring companies. Spending the lion's share of his wages on gramophone equipment and records, from 1925 until the outbreak of war in 1939 he passed his annual holidays in London attending the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, hearing all the great singers of the era.
In 1951 he presented a short series of programmes on Radio Éireann entitled ‘Covent Garden memories’, which proved an unexpected success. The following year he resigned his newspaper editorship to devote himself to broadcasting and freelance journalism, mostly on musical subjects. His weekly programme, ‘Tommy O'Brien and his records’, expanded in 1968 as ‘Your choice and mine’, continuing until his final illness in 1987, became Ireland's longest running radio programme, and its presenter a well-loved national personality. With his trademark salutation ‘Good evenin’ listeners', O'Brien was remarkable for a relaxed, chatty, demotic style of presentation, delivered in a broad south Tipperary accent, for his total lack of pretension, encyclopaedic knowledge of operatic and orchestral music, and infectious enthusiasm for his subject. Commanding a huge audience on both sides of the Irish Sea, by stripping the material of its elitism he propagated an interest in classical music among people otherwise indifferent or even hostile to the genre. Amassing a unique collection of over 7,000 records – some extremely rare and often on loan to the RTÉ and BBC record libraries – in his bungalow home, ‘Mountain View’, on a hillside overlooking Clonmel, he maintained a ‘music room’, where he would listen to his recordings, alone or with invited guests, for hours daily and long into the nights. Preparing the format and scripts of each of his broadcasts, he travelled weekly to Dublin for live presentation, and after 1968 fortnightly for pre-recording. He gave regular ‘record recitals’ in venues throughout Ireland and occasionally in Britain; two compilation albums of his favourite recordings were released in 1986 and 1987. Engagingly loquacious, an enthralling raconteur, O'Brien was blunt and forthright in his judgments of people and performances. An independent, eccentric spirit, for whom aesthetic appreciation counted much more than personal ambition or material acquisition, he had both the fortune and talent to earn a living by sharing his passion with a multitude.
An adept billiards player, he won the Éire championship (1937), and was twice All-Ireland champion (1940–41). Also an enthusiastic hillwalker, he possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the Comeragh mountains. Although he never married, he had a long mutual attachment with Margaret (‘Mog’) Condon of Clonmel, an accomplished amateur painter, pianist, soprano, and conversationalist, until her death about 1960. In poor health after suffering a series of strokes, he died in Melview nursing home, Clonmel, on 24 February 1988, and was buried in St Patrick's cemetery to the strains of his favourite piece of music, Mozart's violin sonata in B.