‘I could be in a bar and some drunk would come up to me and say, ‘Are you the fella who rode her mother?'

"I looked at myself as the grey in Ted's black and white," Robert Hall says of his on-screen relationship with Ted Walsh. It was an unlikely marriage, proof that opposites do attract, as they effortlessly intertwined to bring a warm, fuzzy feeling to living rooms up and down Ireland for the best part of four decades. They were Irish racing's Morecambe and Wise, according to the husky tones of Tony O'Hehir, RTE's racing commentator for most of those 40 years. 

"Ted doesn't do almost, or quite, or perhaps, or maybe," Hall adds with a soft smile. "Don't forget, in those early days cameras used to get waterlogged and you would be down to just one camera at various stages, so a lot of the time it would be a case of getting Ted to talk and, of course, there was no one better than Ted at talking."

Ted is to talking what Michael Flatley is to dancing. He waltzes through words like they are not even there. He never stutters or takes a false step. He always owns what he is saying, whether the sentence is right or wrong. You might not always agree with what he is saying, but you can't help but admire the conviction with which he says it.