Comedian Patrick Kielty has opened up about his experience of his father being shot and killed when he was just a teenager.
The Northern Irish star was a guest on The Tommy Tiernan show on RTE One on Saturday night where he revealed he thought he had coped with the tragedy but in reality, he hadn't.
He was only 16 when his dad Jack Kielty was shot dead in his home village of Dundrum by loyalist paramilitaries in January 1988.
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Speaking to host Tiernan, Kielty said: "I think I thought that I was dealing with it, and I genuinely thought that I had.
"I think that when you're 16, and you're running out at Croke Park with your brother who is 17, and you've men in changing rooms telling you that you are men, you kind of think you're fully formed.
"Down minors won the All-Ireland in '87 and we got presented with our medals just before Christmas in '87 and my da was shot at the end of January.
"And so you were living in a society and you were part of a community that was telling you that you know, 'you boys have to look after your mother', you know and you are men. We had a younger brother, you know, he was 11."
He continued: "Whenever he was killed, it wasn't normal. I know that now. But up there at that time, it wasn't special Tommy, you know.
"And the one thing I didn't want to do was I didn't want to make a big deal of that. If you're standing on a stage in front of people who potentially have been through a hell of a lot worse than you've been through, and some of the stuff that was going on up there, was worse than what I went through."
Asked by host Tiernan, 'Is that possible?' [that others went through worse than he did], Kielty replied: "I think it is. I think people that buried children."
To which Tiernan said: "But you were a child?" as the Co Down man answered, "I didn't know I was."
Other guests on Saturday night’s show included Karol & Gina Daly, AKA The Daly Dish, who are the authors of three best-selling cookbooks,and the world’s first double-arm transplant recipient Felix Gretarsson.
The Tommy Tiernan Show airs Saturday nights on RTE One from 9.40pm.
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