With the arrival of spring, Mr O and Ignatius debate the best ways to get fresh air

With the arrival of spring, Mr O and Ignatius debate the best ways to get fresh air.

Set in a railway station signal box, the older and wiser station master, Mr O (Jimmy O’Dea), and his younger assistant Ignatius (David Kelly) discuss life.

Feeling a touch of spring in the air Mr O remembers the days of his more athletic youth when he would cycle to the Sally Gap in the Wicklow mountains. Ignatius respectfully questions the value of such an energy expending exercise,

I’d think twice about chancing it in the motor car, sure there’s nothing up there.

Mr O disagrees,

The finest fresh air in Ireland is up the Sally Gap.

Ignatius would rather take his fresh air in Dún Laoghaire but admits he does not enjoy being out in the open.

The conversation meanders to how Irish mammies worry about their men folk breathing in the filthy, foul air in pubs. The duo ponders how to get around this risky form of drinking. Mr O reveals the solution Irish mammies have found to this problem. They send their men to racecourse bars because they can drink in,

A beautiful, beautiful atmosphere, air.

Ignatius is glad that the only pub in Ireland is not on the top of Dublin’s Three Rock Mountain because,

You’d need an awful lot of stamina to get a pint.

‘O’Dea’s Your Man’ was a series of fifteen-minute conversations scripted by Myles na gCopaleen (the pen name of Brian O’Nolan, also known as Flann O’Brien).

This episode of ‘O’Dea’s Your Man: False Colours’ was broadcast on 2 February 1964. The producer and director is James Plunkett.