Gr\u00e1inne U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa, the former presenter of the popular 1970s and 1980s children\u2019s show Bosco, has died at the age of 72.<\/p>\n
The mother of two of Carrigacurra, Valleymount, Co Wicklow, died on Saturday in the \u201cwonderful care\u201d of staff at Tallaght University Hospital in Dublin.<\/p>\n
As well as her time on Bosco, U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa presented with Se\u00e1n B\u00e1n Breathnach on the Irish language show SBB Ina Shu\u00ed.<\/p>\n
A death notice on RIP.ie reads that U\u00ed Mhaitiu is survived by her husband S\u00e9amas, her son Connla, daughter Aoife, sisters Br\u00edd and Aislinn, brother Cill\u00edn, grand-daughters Bl\u00e1ith\u00edn and Sadhbh, son-in-law Jarlath and a wide circle of friends. Her funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date.<\/p>\n
Many adults who were fans of the show as children paid tribute in the condolences section. One message read: \u201cFond memories of Gr\u00e1inne in Bosco with her cheery & vibrant presence. Such an 80’s icon for us primary school children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another said that they \u201cgrew up in a much safer place through the sharing of her gifts to both educate and entertain us\u201d whilst another person said that they found her \u201cenergy and enthusiasm uplifting\u201d when they watched the programme as a child.<\/p>\n
Bosco was produced by RT\u00c9 from 1979 to 1987. It ran on repeats on the channel well in to the 1990s.<\/p>\n
The roster of presenters included Marian Richardson, David Byrne, the late Frank Twomey, Jonathan Ryan, Mary Garrioch, Paul Burton and the late Philip F Tyler.<\/p>\n
When actor Frank Twomey died in 2023 mourners at his funeral in Cork were told that presenting on Bosco was a \u201cdeceptively simple role\u201d as it involved making children believe that you were a \u201cfriend to the red haired puppet\u201d rather than someone working on a TV show.<\/p>\n
In 2019, upon her retirement from a prolific broadcasting and producing life at RT\u00c9, former Bosco presenter, Marian Richardson, said that she was still approached in shops by people in their 40s and 50s who asked if she was \u201cthe girl from Bosco.\u201d<\/p>\n
She recalled interviewing the late former taoiseach Albert Reynolds for a news programme and having to re-shoot it after kids started shouting \u2018Howya Bosco.\u2019<\/p>\n
She told the Irish Independent that \u201cAlbert really enjoyed that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gr\u00e1inne U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa, the former presenter of the popular 1970s and 1980s children\u2019s show Bosco, has died at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-431689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}