Telling an old friend about this thread on Percy French came up trumps, he managed to locate the RTE programme , which was shown in the 1980s.
I really enjoyed looking again at a gem of a programme,the Video may have been a bit grainy, as in the 1980s RTE reception was poor up here in the north, but the singing by Brendan O`Dowda and the stories by Percy French`s two daughters Ettie and Joan made up for that.
Etttie`s brilliant reciting of Carmody`s Mare and the various stories concerning her father were fascinating.
Percy`s Abdul Abulbul Ameer was composed in 1876 when French was a student in Trinity College Dublin, not knowing anything about copyright the song was pilfered by Frank Crumit, old Ettie wasn`t too pleased with the boul Frank.
French used the tune of "Carrighdoon" for "The Mountains of Mourne" which he composed in London.
Percy also had much tradgey in his life his first wife Ethel; Amitage Moore whom he married in Dublin in 1890 died a year later in shortly after the birth of her first child a girl who also died two weeks after her mother.
According to French`s two daughters he sufffered badly and his hair had turned to white within a month, they also stated that the lovely song "The woods of Gortnamona", was written by French during his mourning at Gortnamona, where he and Ethel had spent some time while Percy carried on his other great love landscape painting, the music for the song was later written by Phil Green whose orchestra always accompianed Brendan O`Dowda.
There may be a slight chance that the Programme can still be obtained at RTE, it would be worth a try as any music lover would relish this. Ard Mhacha.