For Culture Night 2026, guest editors D.A.D.D.Y. invited their Extra Ordinary star Maeve Higgins to revisit a choice moment from the RTÉ Archives…
Many years ago, myself and my sister Lilly were part of the best TV show ever made in Ireland, and possibly in the world. It’s called Fancy Vittles and you can find it on the dark web.
The editor, Ian Cudmore, and myself watched loads of RTE archival footage for it. The clip that stays with me is from 1968, where a man named Tim Hayes gets buried alive in Cobh.
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Watch, via RTÉ Archives: Bill O’Herlihy talks to Tim Hayes
A show called Newsbeat captures the moment he is dug back up having successfully broken the record for time spent buried alive.
We watched this short piece repeatedly because it’s both funny and melancholy – an irresistible combination – you can watch it in full here.
The footage is impossibly different to anything filmed today; black and white, odd angles, awkward cuts. There is a strange loop of audio that doesn’t quite match what we see. There are thousands of people gazing with excitement at a pipe sticking out of the ground.
Tim Hayes speaks to the press from the grave
Hayes’s mother Marguerite speaks directly into the camera, she is emotional, almost melodramatic. The journalist, Bill O’Herlihy, adopts a jaunty tone, one that jars with the dark undertones of such a happening.
After more than three days and nights underground, O’Herlihy asks Hayes what he had been thinking about most. Lying in his coffin in an Aran jumper and sunglasses, he replies; “When I was away at sea, about my schooldays, and about friends that was dead.”
His words are plain-spoken but enigmatic, hinting at some metaphysical depth he’s trying to reach by burrowing into the ground itself. I get it. We all need a break, and I don’t mean a trip to Portugal or a couples massage. Everything happens so fast and all the time, how can we process our experience when it just keeps happening?
Maeve Higgins
I’d like to know more about Hayes’s buried thoughts. What happened to you at sea? Why? Your dead friends, who were they and what does it mean to love someone who’s no longer here? Mainly, I hope he found some understanding for himself during his entombment. It’s natural to long for that kind of silence – not death, but not quite life. I wonder where he went as he lay there, so still and alone with just his memories and thoughts. Did he put together a story for himself that allowed him to make sense of his life so far? I hope so.
Without that story it’s very difficult to keep going, especially above ground.