Tommie Gorman has spoken about how working during his cancer treatment helped him stay alive.
He is retiring as RTE’s Northern Editor after 41 years.
Tommie was diagnosed with cancer in the ’90s and RTE viewers praised his candid interview with Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late show on Friday night.
He still has a liver with “with lots of cancer” in it after being diagnosed twenty years ago.
The Sligo native said: "With my illness I have a liver with lots of cancer on it, it's still there, I still get treatment and I take an injection every month.”
He found working in RTE through his battle was “a wonderful distraction.”
Tommie added: “I think it gave me a sense of purpose, it gave me a sense of dignity, it gave me a reason.
"The fact that work provided me with the distraction helped me to stay alive. That's one of the questions I ask myself, about what happens when that goes.
"I don't know what I'm going to do... you know the Joni Mitchell line 'let the wind carry me' I'm just going to see.
"There are people who stay involved in some way, there are others who walk away."
Fantastic interview with Tommie Gorman on the #LateLate tonight. A true broadcasting legend.
Viewers praised him, one said: "Fantastic interview with Tommie Gorman on the #LateLate tonight. A true broadcasting legend."
Another said: "Superb interview on the @RTELateLateShow with Tommie Gorman. Insightful, articulate, considered. I feel like Tommie might have some other interesting chapter ahead of him. He should do!"
The experienced and popular journalist reported on many seismic events in the North, including the Troubles and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
He was also famously the first person to interview Roy Keane after his sensational departure from Saipan prior to the 2002 World Cup.
Gorman told The Late Late Show last night: “My mother and father drove me up in 1980, I just love this place. I have had a fantastic time. It has gone by too fast. It has gone by in a flash.
“I’m also very conscious that I’m getting older and if you are to be in any way true to how generous people in here have been to me, you have to acknowledge there’s another generation coming up.
“Vincent Kearney is going to replace me in Belfast. He’s a smashing fella and there’s going to be a structure there, somebody will get Vincent’s current job.”
Gorman, who was asked about whether he believes a border poll is likely, said: “The biggest achievement of the last 20 or 30 years in this country is that we stopped the killing.
“There’s not a day in Northern Ireland when you would be working that you wouldn’t come across somebody who has the scars of that time. [John] Hume’s vision won out, live and let live, try and get on together.
“I think it’s inevitable, the Scots have the Assembly elections coming up in May, we will see what they do. I think it’s inevitable that debate is going to take place.”
Managing director of RTE News and Current Affairs Jon Williams said: “For 41 years, from Brussels to Belfast, via Sligo and Saipan, Tommie Gorman has been the beating heart of RTE News.
“He has earned the trust of audiences North and South – and of all sides in Northern Ireland – telling their story, sharing his insights
and championing RTE’s role as an all-island news organisation.”
