McClintock: The Forgotten Explorer, a new one-hour radio documentary from Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 11am on Monday August 2nd 2021 on LMFM (www.lmfm.ie).

2019 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Francis Leopold McClintock, a Dundalk native and someone whose name should be as well-known as Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean as one of the greatest Arctic Explorers of our time, but who has unfortunately largely been forgotten in his home town.

Francis Leopold McClintock was born in 1819 at Seatown Terrace, Dundalk, Co. Louth.  The eldest son of fourteen children, he was always an avid explorer and is rumoured to have spent as much time as possible out in the wilds of the Cooley Mountains, roaming the land as a child, always looking for his next big adventure.  

With little formal education, he entered the Royal Navy as a gentleman volunteer in 1831, just before his 12th birthday.  While in the Navy, he rose through the ranks and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1845.  

This was a time of immense Arctic Exploration by the British Navy, in the search of the elusive North West passage that would allow for safe and easy movement of both merchant and navy ships to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean.  

The ill-fated Franklin expedition in 1845, where two ships and 129 men were lost, was a huge blow to British Arctic Exploration and in 1857, McClintock re-tread the route of the expedition and in the steps of another Scottish Explorer, John Rae, to confirm their fate that their ships became lodged in ice, causing the men to abandon them and begin to trek across the icy conditions, without correct equipment, food or water, until all finally perished.  McClintock’s expedition not only allowed for closure of the Franklin narrative but also to finally map out the so-long sought after North West passage.

Not only was McClintock a master explorer, he also pioneered new methods of polar travelling, preparation and packing styles, using sleds for ease on the body over hundreds of miles.  Between 1852 and 1854, it is said that McClintock travelled 1,400 miles by sled and discovered 800 miles of previously unknown coastline along the Arctic Circle.

He also amassed a vast collection of zoological and fossil specimens, many of which were new to science. Today the largest collection of these specimens is held in the Natural History Museum in Dublin.  

Retiring from the army in 1884, he died in 1907 and is buried in the UK, while in his birthplace in Dundalk in Co. Louth, all that remained for many years to mark his memory was a small plaque on the wall of the house where he was born in Seatown Place, which has now been removed, and an exhibition in the local museum. 

Over 200 years after his birth, this one-hour radio documentary places the name of Sir Francis Leopold McClintock in the same realm as Shackleton and Crean for those in his home town of Dundalk, Co. Louth and its wider environs.

The documentary was funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee.

McClintock: The Forgotten Explorer

‘740 & Counting: Collette O’Hagan, Marathon Woman’, a new one-hour radio documentary from Little Road Productions Ltd., was broadcast at 12noon on Monday Oct 26th 2020 at LMFM and has been nominated for an IMRO Radio Award in the Regional Sports Category.

Since October 2017, Collette O’Hagan from Dundalk has held the title of becoming the first woman in Ireland to complete 500 marathons. 3 years later in October 2020, she has now hit an amazing total of 740 marathons!

The mother of five, grandmother and foster parent of over eighty children was encouraged by her husband Larry to take up running at the age of 40, after she had been hospitalised due to illness.  She admitted that she initially hated it but persevered and ended up getting the ‘bug’ to keep on running. 

Collette went on to complete her first race, the Women’s Mini Marathon in 1990. That year Collette also completed the Dublin Marathon for the first time. Over the past 30 years, Collette has now completed an astonishing 740 marathons all over the world, including the ‘Big Five’ of New York, London, Chicago, Berlin and Boston, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. 

Despite her 740 marathons, Collette has only ever been injured once when she suffered a stress fracture in her foot, but that didn’t stop her from running and in August 2015 she completed the Quad Marathon in Donegal while wearing a protective boot.

She believes that you are ‘never too old to start’ and that that running keeps her mentally strong, gives her a goal and helps keep her motivated in life.  She also decided to help set up a marathon in her hometown and was one of the main organisers of the first marathon in Dundalk which took place in September 2016. 

As if running marathons and ultra-marathons didn’t take up enough of her time, Collette has also fostered over eighty children as well as raising five children of her own. She has also raised money for charity, including an orphanage in Romania.  Collette first came in contact with the Aurelia Trust, an Irish charity that helps children in Romanian orphanages at a conference about fostering in 1994. Shortly after that, Colette travelled to Romania to help the children at the Negru Voda Orphanage.  The North Louth Hospice is also a charity very close to her heart for whom she often fundraises.

This one-hour radio documentary explores the powerful motivations behind the woman who says that ‘you’re never too old to start’, and who is an inspiration to us all for so many reasons.

740 & Counting: Collette O’Hagan, Marathon Woman

Nellie Cashman: Goldhunter, a new one-hour radio documentary from Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 6pm on Monday January 3rd 2022 on C103. 

This one-hour radio documentary explores the life of Nellie Cashman (1845-1925), Nurse, Restaurateur, Businesswoman, Philanthropist and Gold Hunter - a woman that has only recently been commemorated in her home town of Midleton in Cork, yet is celebrated in North America and Canada, as one of only 4 women ever indicted into the Alaskan Mining Hall of Fame as the ‘Gold Rush Queen’. 

Nellie Cashman was a true pioneer, an adventurous soul with a philanthropic spirit.  Born near Cobh, Co Cork in 1845 to parents Patrick and Fannie Cashman, her father died at 5 and shortly after, the remainder of the family emigrated to the USA.  They settled in Boston for a time, eventually moving to San Francisco in the 1860s. Cashman soon after travelled to a silver-mining district called Pioche, Nevada, where she set up a boarding house in 1872.  It was also in Pioche that she became involved in the local church, a passion that Cashman nurtured her whole life.

The following year she joined a team of prospectors heading to the Cassiar District in British Columbia – considered a very dangerous trip for a woman at the time.   However, Nellie showed that she was not to be discounted when in the winter of 1873, she led a rescue mission of six men to a mining camp in the district that had a dangerous shortage of supplies.  Risking her own life to do so, the team struggled in dense snow for nearly 3 months, reportedly surviving avalanches to get to the camp.

Spending some time in the 1880s in Tombstone, Arizona, where she knew Wyatt Earp and has had her character written into both tv series and films about the Wild West, she became a local personality while running a supply store, boarding house and restaurant. Following the death of her sister and her husband, she became guardian to her 5 nieces & nephews, while still managing to fit it some prospecting gold tours around the Arizona region during that decade.  

Her final two decades were spent in Alaska from the 1900s onwards, where she kept hunting for gold and precious metals well into her 70s.  It is said that Cashman was exceptional when you consider that a mere 1% of miners in the Yukon at the turn of the century were female.

In 1944 the US Postal Service honoured her with her own stamp, while a restaurant named after her still exists today in Tombstone.  She has also been inducted into the Alaskan Mining Hall of Fame, along with only four other women out of approximately 100 names.

And yet, it took until 2015 for Nellie to be remembered in her own home town of Midleton in Cork, when a monument was finally unveiled in her name.

This one-hour radio documentary seeks to remember the life of Nellie Cashman with her descendant Jim O’Fallon in the USA and Joe McCarthy the East Cork Municipal District Officer, along with through interviews with those who have spent time researching into her remarkable life and seeking to commemorate her memory, including Jane Haigh & Claire Ruldolf Murphy, based in Alaska and authors of ‘Gold Rush Women’.  Not only will the narrative of Nellie Cashman be recounted in this case, but the historical background to the Gold Rush will be addressed, as will the often overlooked involvement of women in the prospecting movement.

In this way, this one-hour radio documentary seeks to rebuild the story of ‘Nellie Cashman: Gold Hunter’ for a modern audience and ensure that she is finally remembered in her home town, county and country.  

The documentary was funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee.

Nellie Cashman: Goldhunter Promo

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee

Frank Greally: Running Full Circle, a new radio documentary from Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 9am on Sunday August 28th 2022 on Midwest Radio. 

At an initial glance Frank Greally is simply inspirational.  Now 71 years old, he held the 10,000 metre National Junior Record in Athletics for nearly 52 years, competed internationally for Ireland, was the founder of the Irish Runner magazine and its editor for 37 years, is the Athletics Ireland Ambassador for The Daily Mile, is the founder of the Remembrance Run that takes place in Dublin every November, has written two books and is also a songwriter.  However, behind all these accolades is the story of a struggle against depression and alcoholism and how running and now walking have been his redemption.  In this one-hour radio documentary, we find out more about the man behind these many achievements and why he feels the need to show his gratitude for a life of more ups than downs.

Frank Greally: Running Full Circle Radio Documentary Promo

Whatever Happened to Gertrude Page?
A 1-hour radio documentary for LMFM Radio

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee

Whatever Happened to Gertrude Page?, a new radio documentary by Chris Nikkel for Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 12noon on Monday October 31st 2022 on LMFM Radio. 

Gertrude Page has been called the Maeve Binchy of her day. She’s also been called, ‘the Kipling of Rhodesia’, the country she lived out the last two decades of her life. Her 20 books sold 2.5 million copies worldwide, making her a household name in Britain and Ireland, and as far away as New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Her most famous novel, Paddy the Next Best Thing, set in her favourite village of Omeath, in Co Louth, sold more than 300,000 copies. 

So popular was Gertrude Page, that when she died in 1922, the play-adaptation of Paddy the Next Best Thing was on a record-breaking run at the Savoy, in London—the following year the Irish story hit the silver screen as a British-made silent film, and then was subsequently remade as a Hollywood blockbuster starting Janet Graynor and heartthrob Warner Baxter. Few writers could top the success of Gertrude Page in the early 20th Century. The question is: Whatever happened to Gertrude Page?

Whatever Happened to Gertrude Page?  - promo

Born in Meath, Made in Hollywood
A 1-hour radio documentary for LMFM Radio 

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee

Born in Meath, Made in Hollywood, a new radio documentary by Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 12noon on Monday December 26th 2022 on LMFM Radio. 

Only 13 actors of Irish descent boast stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and very few realise that 3 of those were brothers (Owen, Matt and Tom Moore) who hailed from Fordstown, Co. Meath and who were stalwarts of the early Hollywood film industry, between them boasting over 600 Hollywood film credits.  This one-hour radio documentary retells the story of the journey of the Moore Brothers from a small boreen in Co. Meath to Hollywood film stars, along with their contribution to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Promo BornInMeath

Louth’s Hidden Musical Gem 
A 1-hour radio documentary for LMFM Radio

Funded by Coimisiún na Meán with the Television Licence Fee

Louth’s Hidden Musical Gem, a new radio documentary by Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 12noon on Tuesday December 26th 2023 on LMFM Radio. 

Standing tall in the choir loft of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dundalk since 1900, the pipe organ created by the world-renowned Henry Willis and Sons pipe organ builders in the UK has had many musicians and composers caress its keys since Henry Lucas Balfour, organist at the Royal Albert Hall in London first ‘opened’ the organ on July 1st 1900, with a recital of classical music.  In this one-hour radio documentary, we chart the history of the organ through multiple parallel narratives, looking at those who made it and have taken care of it for so many years, along with some of the personal stories of the many organists who have played it over the last 122 years, many of whom are household names in the musical world, such as Michael Van Dessel.  

Featuring an interview on location with the current organist, Brendan McCourt, along with interviews with Brian McIvor, audiovisual producer & broadcaster, Annalisa Monticelli, Programme Director & Répétiteur at Dundalk IT, Brian Walsh, Curator, Louth County Museum and Anne Ward, Former County Librarian & Choir Member, along with archive material, the documentary attempts to uncover the history of Louth’s Hidden Musical Gem for all the world to hear.


The documentary was funded by Coimisiún na Meán with the Television Licence Fee

Louth’s Hidden Musical Gem Promo

This one-hour radio documentary offers a posthumous voice to a group of women who lived as outcasts in 19th century Ireland – the wrens.  Focussing on the wrens of the Curragh, the documentary explores how these women came to live on the margins of society as a phenomenon emanating from the Great Hunger.  Destitute, starving and considered the lowest of the low, they were shunned by society, the workhouse and the church.  Over 150 years on, ‘The Curragh Wrens’ revisits the story of a group of women who until now, were destined to be forgotten.

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee

To be broadcast on KFM Radio on Thursday October 15th at 7pm and Saturday October 17th at 11am.

The Curragh Wrens

Little Road Productions Ltd.

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