Hannah Quinn may now be best known as an Ifta award-winning director on the Netflix historical drama series, Vikings: Valhalla. A lesser-known fact, however, is that she also served as one of the inspirations for Bosco, the small red-haired puppet who was a much-loved staple of RTE’s preschool children’s programming from 1979 to 1987.
It was Quinn’s mother, Helen, who developed the character, along with the series producer Joe O’Donnell, who was head of young people’s television at RTE at the time. They had considered the names Pongo and Miko before settling on her suggestion of Bosco.
The puppet wore a green-and-white-striped shirt, chosen by Helen, who also wrote scripts for the show. “This was because Hannah loved everything green and white when she was small, such as peas and mash, pistachio ice cream and cucumber,” Helen says.
Hannah, 48, is the second eldest of Helen’s four children with her former husband, the film-maker Bob Quinn. They’re all close, and Helen and Hannah say their relationship has never been better. “We get on like a house on fire,” Hannah says.
When Hannah learnt to fly a plane, five years ago, her mother was the first person to go up in the air with her. “Helen is the only one who will come up with me willingly,” Hannah says. “She loves it.”
Advertisement
Hannah subsequently bought a little two-seater Cessna 150, which she keeps at Newcastle airfield. She sometimes phones her mother to come outside and wave up at her when she’s flying overhead. She even borrowed a bigger plane to drop her children to college when they missed their bus.
“Hannah is a brilliant pilot, as she is with everything she puts her mind to,” Helen says. “She is also such a genuine and generous person.”
Hannah was born in Connemara, where her parents had moved from London, after they were married in 1970. They ran a film company called Cinegael based in the old knitting factory in Carraroe, and among its productions was the 1978 film Poitín, which starred Cyril Cusack, Niall Toibin and Donal McCann.
The family quickly grew as Robert, Hannah, Toner and Bairbre arrived, but the marriage was rather tempestuous and they split up in 1982. Hannah was born in 1973. Her mother recalls her being very maternal, helping to take care of Toner and Bairbre when they came along.
“She was a gorgeous girl and when she sat on her bunk bed reading, it always looked like a scene straight out of Alice in Wonderland,” Helen says.
Advertisement
Having grown up with colourful parents, it was no surprise that three of the Quinn children went on to forge creative careers. Robert and Hannah are acclaimed directors, while Toner is a lecturer at National University of Ireland, Galway and editor of The Journal of Music. Bairbre is a film production accountant.
“Our childhood was bonkers,” Hannah says. “Our parents travelled between Dublin and Connemara for work, and Helen would pack up our VW bus with all of us in the back. She didn’t want to leave the twin-tub washing machine behind so she put it in the back, and it fell over on me at one point. The bourbon biscuits were brought out, so I was grand, and off we went again.”
The biscuits were a treat, because the Quinns were keen on the children eating healthy food. The free-spirited couple were also against organised religion, so the Quinn children weren’t christened.
“They were full of love for us,” Hannah says. “Helen was a lot of fun and great craic, and while we had to be well behaved, our parents weren’t strict. They made us call them Bob and Helen from the beginning.”
The family later lived at various addresses in Dublin, where the children would be enrolled in local schools for short spells, which was possible at the time. “We were going to all of these Catholic schools and getting in trouble f or not being Catholic,” Hannah explains. “We ended up at Bray School Project, which was great because it was nondenominational and we were accepted as the weirdos who didn’t have a religion.”
Advertisement
When Bob and Helen separated, she moved to Bray and the children spent holidays at their father’s house in Connemara. He also came to Bray on Sundays to take them out. Hannah admires her mother’s strength and resourcefulness, knowing it wasn’t easy for her, essentially, to be a single mum and raise four children.
Helen’s own parents, Fred and Mary Richardson, used to take the children to Mass whenever they stayed with them. She jokes that her parents probably got them secretly christened. The Dubliner has four siblings, including her younger sister, the presenter and producer Marian Richardson, who retired from RTE in 2019. She got on very well with her own mother, “although I wasn’t her favourite child”.
Now 76, Helen has had a colourful career, which as well as Bosco has included writing episodes of Wanderly Wagon, and working as a scriptwriter on The Live Mike with Mike Murphy. She spent three years as a transatlantic air hostess with Aer Lingus prior to marrying Bob, but had to give it up due to the marriage bar in Irish law at the time. She also worked as a freelance journalist before getting a staff job in The Irish Press group. She was writing the Dubliner’s Diary in the Evening Press until it closed in 1995.
After a year spent in Paris aged 18, Hannah worked at the Galway Film Centre, and then returned to Dublin to take care of Helen when she was recovering from a hysterectomy. While she was there, her mother suggested bringing her CV to Ardmore Studios in Bray to see if she could get a job, and she landed herself a trainee position. This led to a job as a production runner, and Hannah steadily progressed through the ranks. She has done everything from low-budget independent productions to blockbusters, as well as television shows, documentaries and commercials.
Hannah was hired as the third assistant director on a three-week shoot in the 1990s with an international film crew who also worked with Ridley Scott. Six months later they phoned and asked her to work on the film Gladiator, which was released in 2000.
Advertisement
Hannah went to England, Malta and Morocco for six months as the second of two assistant directors (known as the second second AD), with her five-month-old son, Oisín, and her cinematographer partner — now husband — Tim Fleming in tow.
She also worked on the 2001 film Black Hawk Down in Rabat, Morocco, and Tim did some work on it as a focus puller. “Helen came out for two weeks to mind Oisín for me, and then she brought him back to Ireland, as Tim had gone to work in Cuba,” Hannah says. “My stepson Eoghan was with us too as he was in transition year in school. It felt normal to me to follow the work, because Helen and Bob had moved around so much.”
Oisín, now 23, is travelling at present. Hannah and Tim also have another son, Jacob, who is 18 and studying for his Leaving Cert. Tim has two children from a previous relationship; Eoghan, now 35, and Aoife, 42. Aoife has two children, making Hannah a stepgranny.
“Tim is 16 years older than me, but Bob was ten years older than Helen so that was normal to me,” shrugs Hannah. “We have had two major break-ups but it has all worked out fine. He’s a really good man and he adores me and we’re a very good team.”
Helen has ten grandchildren, ranging in age from 23 down to 14. Perhaps unsurprisingly several have been involved in productions already as young actors. “Helen is the best granny,” says Hannah, who has a clear memory of her mum turning up with six-week-old Jacob at a two-day shoot she was working on so that she could feed him.
Advertisement
Hannah’s career has soared and she has directed episodes of EastEnders (BBC) and Blood (Virgin Media), as well as The Stranger and Fate: The Winx Saga for Netflix. She is now working on series three of Vikings: Valhalla as well as a six-part series called North Sea Connection for RTE. She loved working on Disney’s Disenchanted as the second unit director last year. “Hannah winning the Ifta was the icing on the cake for me as she has really blossomed,” Helen says. “It’s harder for women to get on in film and she has just taken off. She’s wonderful.”
Helen lives by the seafront in Bray with her husband, Patrick Rice, whom she met in 1992, and their cockapoo Beanie. Rice is a former Aer Lingus accountant, and the couple lived in the Seychelles for a spell, when he worked with Air Seychelles and she freelanced at the radio station Paradise FM, reading the news in English. Rice has four children and two grandchildren.
“Helen is a great feeder, which is a brilliant way of bringing people together,” Hannah says. “We have all lived in her house at some point and she’s the most amazing mum and granny to all of us. She gave me the guts to try things out and work out the steps to get where I wanted, because she is so smart and she’s right all of the time, which used to drive me mad when I was younger. Her courage and bravery has been a real inspiration to me.”
