“SEEING the ring in your ear reminds me of Denny Cordell.”

During a break in proceedings, Robert Hall is making coffee in the kitchen. His wife Lucinda is just off the phone.

“Denny was an amazing character. We were great friends. He produced songs for Procol Harum A Whiter Shade Of Pale, Moody Blues Go Now, Joe Cocker A Little Help From My Friends. He discovered Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries. He trained a champion two-year-old. It was extraordinary really.

“He lived down at Corries outside Bagenalstown. Tommy Treacy was the apprentice. Squibs, which is what we called Niall McCullagh, he was an apprentice.

“They were amazing days. I used to give Marianne Faithfull a lift down. We had these dinner parties and you would never know who you would meet.”

The Group 3 Denny Cordell Lavarack Stakes is named after the Argentinian-born force of nature, sponsored by family and friends to be held at Gowran Park, where Cordell-Lavarack, to give him his full name, saddled his first winner.

Auricular jewellery and a passion for music and racing are about all this writer shares with the famed high achiever but during an hour and a half of chat that flies by, it becomes obvious that this former business colleague is just one of a stellar cast that have been involved in Robert Hall’s life.

He has finished a near 38-year relationship with RTÉ and we won’t see him on our screens anymore but that only scratched the surface of his involvement in racing anyway.

He completed the Irish National Stud manager’s course and worked in Fasig Tipton before running a stud in Kentucky and attending the Rapid School of Auctioneering in Indiana, where he learned to sell tobacco, among other products.

He was the man on the gavel when Des McDonogh bought future two-time Champion Hurdle hero Monksfield at Goffs and remained a guest auctioneer until the merger with DBS. He spent three years with John Magnier at Castlehyde Stud, established a number of businesses, was a bloodstock agent with the BBA (“I didn’t like spending other people’s money”), bred racehorses and also co-produced the TV coverage he was fronting for a number of years.

A man like that has no time for the pipe and slippers.

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It is eight days after his final broadcast. He hadn’t time to overthink its significance until the final, moving tribute.

“I hadn’t seen it. It was absolutely beautiful. Very poignant that it was put together by Conor O’Hehir because his grandfather Michael would have been an inspiration in my early years. I thought he did it very, very well. All the things people said.

“But I was ready to go and I am glad it happened. It couldn’t have been on a better stage. It really couldn’t. I have had a charmed life and RTÉ have been incredibly good to me.”

It started with the radio commentary of Dara Monarch’s 2000 Guineas triumph at the Curragh in 1982. And while he might have gone on marginally longer if RTÉ had wanted, Hall ready to move on.

“They have a guy in there, who is staff, and a good fella; Hugh Cahill. Why shouldn’t he want to go for it? Perfectly fair. I am happy with everything and they are happy too.

“I am going to be 66 in May. If I had stayed longer, I would have asked to stay until the end of June. It would have suited them for me to go in December.

“It was great that I got three more days and everyone was happy.”

Ending with relationships intact was important.

“There was a guy called Tim O’Connor, who was the head of sport when I started. He backed me because I was slightly different with my accent. It was brave of him.”

He was born in Ireland to Michael and Rosemary. Hall Snr was a captain in the British Army that had fought in Italy and Egypt during World War II.

When he returned, England was on its knees so he crossed the Irish Sea to start anew.

“He didn’t like the war. He got out as soon as he could. I never really talked to him about it. One story from El Alamein which is wonderful was when they were all sitting in their tanks and warming up their engines, and he got a bash on the turret and he opened it up and who was it? Bloody Montgomery!

“He says to him, ‘Michael, best of luck.’ Then he says, ‘Remind me who is next door here?’ He went all along the tanks. He hadn’t a clue who they were but made sure he had each man’s name. It was brilliant leadership.

“Dad would have been very well qualified horse-wise. He rode well. He was on the grand jury of the World Championships judging the dressage. He knew his horses. They came over in 1948, I came along in 1954.”

Hall Snr ran a stud before joining Goffs in the Ballsbridge days and becoming manager.

“As a child I would look at boys playing in the street and they had hurleys in their hands. I was a Protestant. I went to a Protestant school called Headfort.

“There were people like our family there, and they had either come over in the war or after. I hate that expression West Brit, I think it is very unkind. I love being Irish. I am terribly Irish, I don’t sound it, but I am mad about the country.

“Headfort was a school that was preparing boys for schools in England, Eton and Harrow and Rugby. But the headmaster said to my mom and dad, ‘Don’t send him to England.’ I was reading The Irish Field then. Other boys were in Look And Learn, or Beano or whatever. I was mad on horses. There would have been no point. Wasn’t that a wonderful bit of advice?

“I went to St Columbas, which was near Rathfarnham. I used to skive off to Punchestown or Leopardstown whenever I could. I had a very understanding housemaster who realised I wasn’t going to trouble the academics.”

He was already in thrall to the dulcet tones of Peter O’Sullevan and Michael O’Hehir so his parents “championed” his interest in horses and racing.

“I had got excited about commentary since the age of about six. I used to deliver my conversation in commentary. I was a bit of a pain! It really did fascinate me. I wrote to all of the hunt secretaries.

I asked could I be their point-to-point commentator. County Clare Foxhounds came back and said come on down. They had two point-to-points, Dromoland Castle and Scarriff. I went down there and it was a huge learning curve.

“I used to go up on the hoist with the parish priest beside me and my knees wobbling. The priest knew everything. He would say, ‘He is only going to jump four’, ‘He will be pulled up after a circuit’, ‘He missed a bit of work during the week.’”

Robert with Ted and Colin Keane at Galway / Healy Racing

Early age

One suspects that his experience as an auctioneer was helpful. Hall’s father put him on the rostrum from an early age and he sold Monksfield in his very first session.

“Monksfield came in with a reserve of £800. He was a two-year-old. He was small and scrawny. And, I sold him for £740 or £760. We only had one man and I consulted the vendor when I had nobody else. He said ‘Sell him if you can.’ And so I sold him to this guy on crutches who was Des McDonogh.

“I worked initially in the pedigree department and I went back to America and came back and went back and came back, between America and Goffs. That was my life until 1980, when I got married to my first wife, Yvonne O’Brien, a daughter of Phonsie O’Brien’s.”

So that period in Fermoy followed, and then Tim O’Connor came calling. After his initial spell on radio, TV followed as Tony Sweeney began to cut back on his duties. And before he knew it, he was presenting. He felt comfortable and particularly enjoyed the control that producing the coverage with John Fairley gave him later on.

The punter

“We were able to make programmes the way we wanted them. And, I loved features. I have always been a champion of a programme for the people rather than the punter.

“It doesn’t really matter to me whether the favourite goes off at 7/4 to 13/8. It can’t be ignored.

The punter is a massive contributor and he expects to be informed. You have got to have your betting coverage slick, good and entertaining. Brian Gleeson does a cracking job and Tom Lee, wonderful.

“(But) gambling is a huge issue. We have got to make inroads on that. It is very easy to do. We have just got to curb the in-your-face advertising. People will always gamble. But we need to tread very carefully.”

And of course, there was the to-and-fro with Ted. Contrary to what you might think, he didn’t dread what might next come out of Walsh’s mouth. He relished the outspokenness. Mostly.

“I would say my prayers and say, ‘Please God let there not be a stewards’ inquiry!’ But I love his opinion, and he requires that space. He gives me space but we just developed a rapport. People seemed to like it.

“We would have known each other before we came together and the funny thing is one of our ponies that we got as children came up from a guy called Ned Hannigan. We collected her from Ted’s. She was a little pony called Ruby and she was named after Ted’s father. That was the first time I was in Ted’s house. I wouldn’t have been more than six or seven.

“We go back that far.

“Then together on the telly, we did hit it off. Ted has incredible passion. And we are all suckers for passion. You get passionate about whatever your interest is in life. He absolutely adores racing and is hugely knowledgeable. Wonderful sense of humour; terribly kind man.”

Robert interviews a younger Ruby Walsh in 2006 \Healy Racing.

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Even as he became known to us all as a television presenter, Hall had many other irons in the fire. He teamed up with the aforementioned Cordell-Lavarack to establish Stablemate Racing Club.

“It was at the time when premium rate telephone numbers came into the UK. They were coming here and we reckoned that we could get a number of horses together, put them in training, and train them on the proceeds of the telephone line.

“We had horses with seven different trainers. Willie (Mullins) had just started. He was riding at the same time. Noel Meade, Arthur Moore, Denny himself, Michael Cunningham, Dermot Weld… We invited the public to join but there were over 800 people. We had to form a PLC called Stablemate. We had an enormous amount of fun. Every horse won bar one.”

It was just one of those quirks that one of those, Gilt Dimension, ridden to win a charity race by Hall, was sired by none other than Dara Monarch.

With his knowledge of pedigrees and experience of stud work on both sides of the Atlantic, it was only a matter of time before he began breeding. With a keen sense of timing, he bought Sea Port from Major John de Burgh in 1994.

She had foaled Indigenous the previous year and he would go on to be a Hong Kong star, winning 15 races, including four local Group 1s and accumulating £3.3 million in prize money.

“It was great for me because Indigenous was by Marju who was only five miles up the road.

“I kept sending the mare back to Marju and kept getting colt foals who were nice looking. I got an enormous amount of money, €300,000-plus for one of them. She was a money-making machine.”

Sea Port is now buried out in the front paddock but Hall intends to return to breeding soon. While “I am always on the lookout”, how Shorter Skirt fares this summer could prove telling. He bought the four-year-old filly in partnership with his dear friend Mary Davison, who died recently, and is in training with her nephew Jack. It would be something else if she were to prove a success on the track. That would cement her future in Hillview.

On an altruistic note, Hall was involved in the establishment of a new horse welfare centre at Castlerea Prison, to double as a rehabilitation programme for the inmates. It came about as a result of an idea by another long-time friend Jonathan Irwin.

“This was something Jonathan had been championing for a long time. He had written to successive Ministers for Justice. Frances Fitzgerald liked the idea and took it to the Irish Prison Service. They decided to give it a go. It is something that has worked in America and Australia. Never been tried in the EU to the level we are doing it.

“The idea is we run these modules and we will take eight or 10 prisoners at a time. The modules will last for 10 weeks. We can probably get the guts of 50 prisoners qualified in horse management or give them a knowledge. The horse has wonderful healing powers in so many aspects. I wanted to be a part of it.”

So no, this is not someone who is retiring, whatever about not presenting on RTÉ again.

“It is important to do something else. When I was down in Castlehyde I started a little company called Race Cuttings. This was the days before the internet. I would track American horses and then I used to do a page and photocopy it.

“It looked really, really nice. All the progeny of these studs in America. They would subscribe for the year. That was innovative in its time.

“So I will look around and mull over ideas. I want to stay involved. I have always loved horses and loved racing and there are so many ways to be involved. It’s been great so far and RTÉ was tremendous but it is not an end.

“Just a chapter closing.”

“Weight carrying has gone now. It is not a factor. When you look at something like the Clarence House 30 years ago, Desert Orchid gave Panto Prince 32lbs. Vodkatini was third. It was the most pulsating finish. 30 years on you had Altior starting 1/10 and beating two horses. We all clapped him from the last but it wasn’t competition. We want excitement and that is where racing is falling down. We are falling down on excitement.

“I’d recommend that outside of Punchestown and Leopardstown at Christmas or Dublin Racing Festival, many of our graded races could be limited handicaps while retaining their pattern status. The result must be that the races become more competitive – and more interesting.

“The John Durkan Chase in December was actually well subscribed (nine runners) but no-one came to see it. The seven top-rated were separated by 13lbs. Imagine a limited handicap with a weight range of 14lbs. Fascinating! Such top-end races would swell fields, make racing more interesting, spread the wealth, while excluding no-one and reinvigorate betting – no more long odds-on shots being allowed a solo.

“We should eliminate listed-status races in flat racing. This can only be achieved with tripartite co-operation (Ireland/UK/France) – basically, the European Pattern Race Committee. I feel that the pattern’s intended purpose – to identify brilliance in the racehorse – would be better served without Formula Four racing, to use motor racing parlance.

“In Ireland alone, there were 55 listed races run last year for an accumulated value of nearly €3 million. and if this money was rerouted to limited Premier Handicaps – within age parameters – it would make for a more vibrant landscape as well as spreading the wealth and invigorating the betting ring.

“By eliminating these races across Ireland, UK and France it would give blacktype considerably more meaning and it would make Group 3 and 2 races more competitive.”