Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An Irish-born philanthropist who runs a foundation in Vietnam for street children and has helped over 60,000.
On the island
Eight records
Most of my life has been that way. I've had to take one day at a time. ... And I actually put it on at six o'clock every morning. That's to tell me Today is another day.
It brings back memories of my father, my father when he was a young man. ... and when I remember his trilby hat and his nice suit and his nice shoes that were polished and close memories of family and going for walks
By the Light of the Silvery Moon
was everything that I wish my mother could have had. ... I love Dorothy. I wanted Doris Day to be my mum when my mum died.
It reminds me of when I would put my brother on my knee. ... And I would put my arms around him and try to sing him to sleep, and I did it for my little baby sisters. I was trying to give them love.
reminds me of the little girl that used to play the organ in the cinema.
This Is My LifeFavourite
When I was in a mental hospital I had a nervous breakdown. ... I couldn't be changed and the r record that kept me going through all of it was This Is My Life.
I had a dream in nineteen seventy one. And that dream. It took me the other side of the world to have the children of Vietnam.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Berndt Glemse, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Jerzy Maksymiuk
the last record now it's about uh it's the Irish uh National Symphony Orchestra. Three or four of them came to Vietnam um to see me. ... They they said they were going to do a benefit concert for the Christina Noble Children's Foundation.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:27Tell me about that dream [you had back in 1971] first.
It was a dream, but it was ri it was so real. There were children running, a lot of children, with two in particular up the front, and ... I tried to catch her hand to stop them falling into the ground that was opening up and behind them there was uh smoke, lots of smoke, red, black, and beyond the smoke was Vietnam.
Presenter asks
9:26Tell me about the first ten years of your life before your mother died. How poor was poor?
Poverty was like you might eat three days a week. Four days a week. And That that was brilliant. The worst thing was Um my father's drunkenness, his alcoholism. ... my mother's face my mother was a really good woman she was a lady, you know, a real lady. ... She tried to give us a sort of peek at what the possibilities were beyond. That that p life of absolute, abject poverty and sickness.
Presenter asks
11:59Did all of those dreams come to an end then when your mother died?
When mum died, most of them came to an end. Uh it was never the same. ... Because mum had tuberculosis. I think the the the my mother's death itself was very traumatic because I was present at my mother's death.
The keepsakes
The book
I think I'd like the book Kells because I'd like to understand a bit my about my Irish heritage, my background.
The luxury
a photograph of a cottage in Ireland
I'd take a photograph of a cottage in Ireland with me and I'd pin it on the tree, a little cottage with a little bit of land, where I could pull flowers, and I would bring my brothers and sisters back.
Presenter asks
15:47Was there nobody you could turn to? Were there no relatives or authorities in Dublin who could help the hungry and the neglected? What about the Church?
Couldn't turn to the church because We are I I we f we were nobody, really. We were living in filth and dirt, uh scabies, fleas, ringworm, dermatitis on the eyelids and the hands.
Presenter asks
22:27Why didn't you leave [your violent husband]? Why did you stay for thirteen years and keep on taking it?
I'd nowhere to go. I had really nowhere to go. I had no family where I could really go to. I could I had nowhere to go, and I was so scared they took my children away.
Presenter asks
29:01Do you still have your faith? Is it still there?
I love God. I'm I'm I I have such a great relationship with our Lord. ... And I would say that through our Lord we have achieved what could have been probably deemed as the impossible.
“You know, not a lot of difference between an Irish gutter and a Vietnamese gutter. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. Every child has the same Needs.”
“I died in earth. I lost everything. I lost my roots, my country. as well as my child.”
“I never had a toy when I was small.”
“I don't want to be uh a kind of uh movie star image played about me. I'm a very simple woman and down to earth person. So there has to be substance so that it will benefit the children worldwide and it will benefit People like me who thought they were nobody, nobody's child.”