Pat Ingoldsby facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Pat Ingoldsby
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Wax figure of Ingoldsby in the National Wax Museum of Ireland
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| Born | Patrick D. Ingoldsby 25 August 1942 Malahide, Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 1 March 2025 (aged 82) Clontarf, Dublin |
| Occupation | Television host, columnist, poet |
| Language | English, Irish |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Period | 1977–2025 |
| Relatives | Maeve Ingoldsby (cousin) |
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Patrick D. Ingoldsby (25 August 1942 – 1 March 2025) was an Irish poet and television presenter. He hosted children's television shows, wrote plays for the stage and for radio, published books of short stories and was a newspaper columnist. From the mid-1990s, he withdrew from the mass media and was most widely known for his collections of poetry, and his selling of them on the streets of Dublin (usually on Westmoreland Street or College Green).
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Background
Ingoldsby was born in Malahide, Dublin, Ireland on 25 August 1942. He survived childhood polio, and suffered its after-effects throughout his life. On 1 March 2025, it was announced that he had died at the age of 82.
Work
In the 1980s, Ingoldsby hosted RTÉ children's television shows named Pat's Hat, Pat's Chat, and Pat's Pals. In the early 1990s, he had a column in the Evening Press (a now-defunct national Irish newspaper). These columns were later collected in The Peculiar Sensation of Being Irish. Ingoldsby was a fluent Irish speaker and included a few poems written in Irish in each book of poetry. He lived in Clontarf, in Dublin, Ireland. Sometime in the mid-1990s, he withdrew from TV, radio and theatre, instead devoting his efforts to poetry. He nevertheless remained part of Ireland's arts scene, sometimes opening art exhibitions, introducing then-new musicians such as David Gray or launching other people's books. He self-published through Willow Publications, which he set up and named after one of his pet cats (who later died). Some of his books, since 1998, carried a note that they are protected by the "Bratislava Accord 1993, section 2 cre/009 manifest-minsk", the terms of which allegedly protect his book's content from being included in "school textbooks", "examinations", "elocution classes" and "anything with the word 'Arts' in it".
In March 2022, the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) hosted a video installation to mark the release of Ingoldsby's latest anthology, In Dublin They Really Tell You Things — Pat Ingoldsby, Selected Poems 1986 — 2021.
Influences
Most of Ingoldsby's poems were about his personal experiences, observations of life in Dublin, or mildly surreal humorous possibilities. Observations of Dublin are mostly humorous conversations overheard on the bus, or the characters he saw and talked to while selling his books on the streets. His cousin Maeve Ingoldsby was a playwright. Pat retired from selling his books on the streets of Dublin in 2015.
Filmography
- The Peculiar Sensation of Being Pat Ingoldsby, a 2022 documentary by film director Seamus Murphy on the life and works of Pat Ingoldsby (produced by Broadstone Films, Dublin).
