First, I'd like to thank everyone for being here today.

I know my Dad would appreciate it. It was always one of his favourite things to be surrounded by his friends and family. Having his loved ones around him was always a source of great joy to Dad.

That was what he loved so much of the big family holidays to The Burren in County Clare. We started going there regularly when I was young and Dad seemed to make it his mission to fill the space with family. When we filled the 7-bed mobile home with 13 people it made for some slightly uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, particularly for the youngest members of the family, and seating was at a premium, but that was one of Dad's favourite holidays - having as much of his family around him at one time as possible even if it meant some creaking at the seams. That's just what Dad loved and he regularly joined family trips to Fanore and Ballyvaughan right up until just before he became ill. 

And as with family, so with friends. Dad's love of having friendship also led to the rugby holidays in Paris and Rome for the Six Nations, the sailing weekends, the lunches and the dinners with friends and colleagues and former colleagues. Any time I met up with Dad he had stories about the most recent event he'd been doing with his friends. To be honest, I feel I lead a quiet life in comparison.

In many ways the last year's lockdown would have been terrible for Dad - no pubs, no bars, no restaurants, no travel, no … physical access to friends or family for any reason. And, of course, Zoom would not be Dad's biggest friend. i can't imagine what Dad would have thought to be told that he couldn't do any of these things for months on end. I suspect he would not have been willingly submissive to lockdown's requirements. But then Dad was never one for someone else's rules…

Many people here today will know Dad from the tennis court. It was certainly a big part of his life, he was formerly president of Bective tennis and continued playing tennis in his adopted home in Spain, and he made many friends through tennis. From my own perspective, when I was younger, we used to await with baited breath the outcome of the annual Christmas turkey competition.

Dad loved his tennis, he loved to play it, loved to watch it. I went to see the US Open with my Dad in 1996. We saw a quarter final game, Pete Sampras versus Alex Corretja, an epic battle that went to a 9-7 tie break in the fifth set. I read in a newspaper the next day that it was a game like no other, an iconic, even legendary Sampras performance. Dad loved it. Not least because we'd only got on-the-day tickets for the afternoon, we didn't know who we'd be able to see, and if the match hadn't stretched on unexpectedly it would have been over before we arrived, but we got to see that particular match. That's the kind of thing that always seemed to be possible when my Dad was around - anything could happen, all you needed was to make the effort. 

Of course, what I actually think of most about Dad and tennis was constantly finding Dad's tennis bag in his car. It seemed to live on the back seat - “just throw it to one side”, he'd say. Along with his latest shopping, library books, the dry cleaning, and endless pieces of paper - jobbie lists, shopping lists, telephone lists. Despite having a mobile phone that could store numbers before most people had phones, despite having a smartphone that could store thousands of numbers, Dad insisted on keeping all his numbers on a ratty piece of paper, slowly yellowing over time, which was always found jammed somewhere in his car - on the passenger seat, in the back seat, under a library book, stuck behind his tennis bag.

Dad's car was an extension of his self really. He loved cars, and he loved his car, so much so that I define periods in his life by the car he owned at the time - my earliest memories are of the Fiat years, and they were followed by the Nissan years, the Toyota years, and so on.

As children my brother and I always knew how important the car was to Dad. It was regularly washed and hoovered at the weekend, a job which we sometimes found ourselves reluctantly recruited into. The car had to be kept in immaculate condition. If we got ice cream cones on a summers day, and Dad loved an ice cream cone, they were never allowed inside the car. After Christmas when we had to dispose of the Christmas tree. Nick and I would be stationed in the passenger seat and rear passenger seat respectively and instructed to hold onto the Christmas tree outside the window while we drove to the tree disposal centre. There was no way Dad was going to have all those brown pine needles shedding in his pristine car. I imagine the health & safety world would have something to say about that sort of thing today, but we got away with it back then. 

Dad kept his cars well, but he worked them hard as well. He drove everywhere, whether it was down to the shops for a pint of milk or a holiday trip across the breadth of Europe. Every aspect of my Dad's life was mediated by his car. He drove everywhere, and he drove fast. I sometimes think he had a competition with his sister Breda to see how much trouble each of them could get into, and out of, as a result of driving over the speed limit.

And as he drove, so he lived - foot down, full tilt, full speed ahead.

I'm sure everyone knows how much food was one of my Dad's other great loves and another central part of his life. Not only was he a fan of restaurants, and having other people cook for him, he found joy in cooking for others. I think, to be honest, Dad liked the spectacle of cooking as much as he did the food that resulted (although he definitely enjoyed the food). But spectacle was always a big part of Dad's cooking. As a chef, he was the sort of chef who liked to use every item in the kitchen, leaving the kitchen looking like a bomb had hit it. But there's no denying that his passion and enthusiasm came through in the meals he created, although you had to be careful about the alcoholic content of his fruit salad.

In later life, Dad was diagnosed as suffering from Coeliac disease. This life-changing event did very little to curb Dad's passion for food or drink - he merely channelled his energies into the foods and drinks which he could digest and, to be honest, I think he took a kind of delight in explaining to waiters that he was coeliac and ensuring he got the special treatment in the kitchen that he always knew he deserved. This was especially true in non-English speaking countries where he got to practice his own version of whatever the language was. Somehow despite butchering every language he always made himself understood.

Dad knew how special he was. Not in a grand, overblown, self-important sense, but in the simple understanding that we're all special, individual people who need to be treated individually. Dad loved groups of people, but he'd only accept being a member on his own individual terms. 

I was always amazed at how easily Dad made friends with people, sometimes in surprising ways. One time, in Rome, after a rugby game, we were in a tiny, basement bar near the stadium when Dad overheard a group of Irish supporters with northern accents. We couldn't quite tell exactly where they were coming from, so he made the unilateral decision to sing “The Sash” - largely just to see how they'd react. Luckily they saw the funny side and good banter resulted.

It took me a long time to realise that this was how Dad worked his friendships. When I was very young I used to think that he just liked a good argument, and perhaps there was some truth in that. But at a deeper level he actually liked to say or do things just to see how people reacted. And somehow, he'd always away with it. I believe the plan to go into a ManU pub in Manchester wearing a City shirt was foiled by Nicholas and possibly would have been his undoing. But equally he was known to deliberately wear an antagonistic shirt or colour on various match days (football or rugby, it didn't matter), not so much because he supported the team but to elicit a reaction from the people around him.

For all the stories and laughter, Dad could be a serious and sincere person. He was committed to the people who mattered to him and the subjects which mattered to him. He was very well read and he was always able to surprise me with random nuggets of information on topics of interest to him or books that he'd read. I was always surprised by how much he'd read.

In about 2004 Dad started talking to me about his grandfather, my great-grandfather, Edward McDowell who had fought in the first world war. We dug into the history of Edward McDowell. I'm not sure we really ever got answers which satisfied my Dad fully, but it did allow me to organise a trip to Ypres in Belgium - Dad, Nick, Mum and myself -  touring around some of the memorials where we believe my great grandfather served during those years. In working with Dad on that, and travelling with him. In all of that I got a glimpse of just how much it meant to him - both historically and from a family perspective. I used to tease him about his love of the History channel, and their fascination with the World Wars, and he was always took that teasing with very good nature, but I know how much that part of history meant to him and how the easy banter was a protective layer covering a deep, sincere interest which he took very seriously.

Dad was very much the fun guy who loved a meal and a drink and a joke and a laugh. But he was also very serious about the things which mattered to him - his friends, his family, the tennis, his car, the history channel.

When we lost Dad's eldest sister, my aunt Breda, in 2004 Dad told me he didn't want to let sadness be the dominating tone of the time. I know how much he was affected by Breda's loss, I know how strongly that impacted him, but I also saw how important it was to him to give her a positive sendoff and I saw how hard he worked to make our shared loss a celebration of Breda's life. His response to Breda's loss was something I respected him very much for.

Sometimes the conviviality and amiability was a tool  - a means of processing grief, a means of achieving goals. Scratching beneath the surface tended to reveal conviction, intention and a deep intelligence.

My Dad was a big man, perhaps not big in height, but big in waist and big in character. He left us in May of last year, and global events have conspired to prevent us from coming together to recognise that loss before now. We've all felt that loss individually over the last year, but if there's one thing I know about my Dad, it's that he wouldn't want us to focus, today, on that sadness. He'd want us, in coming together, to remember what he brought to us in our association with him rather than what we've lost by his passing. We've all benefited through knowing Joseph Donlon - the Don to some of his friends - and today we say goodbye to him, in sadness, but also remembering how much he brought to us.