Fintan O’Toole: Tony O’Reilly’s secret past shaped his need to play the life of an Ascendancy landlord

It’s hard to avoid the belief that something of his origins must have been present in what O’Reilly becameKeeping things under wraps was an impulse developed early: Tony O'Reilly and his wife Chryss at Leopardstown in 2001. Photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie, became a marketing genius when he put a gold wrapper on a slab of old Ireland, creating the Kerrygold brand that still glitters on the shelves of the world’s supermarkets.

It was not until 1987 that the legal concept of illegitimacy was removed from the law. Well past the age of 50, O’Reilly, as well as being the richest man in Ireland, was also secretly a second-class Irishman.Tony O’Reilly’s secret past shaped his need to play the life of an Ascendancy landlordTony O’Reilly: President leads tributes to businessman who ‘touched so many aspects of Irish life’

This is perhaps why he was, in the end, a failure as a media owner. His interest in newspapers was primarily in the prestige and power he could get from owning them.

In March 1987, O’Reilly handed over a piece of England to Margaret Thatcher. Having bought Cape Cornwall, a mile of English coastline, he presented it to the then prime minister at a public ceremony. It was a bizarre act of ingratiation. The rugby writer Terry Maclean, covering the Lions rugby tour of New Zealand in 1959, noted O’Reilly’s attitude to those English members of the side who came from upper-class backgrounds.

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