Brendan Courtney and Bryan Murray on Keys to My Life on RTÉ One. 

The revelation comes at the start of episode one of the new series of Keys to My Life. Actor Bryan Murray has been diagnosed with early stage dementia.

“I’ve a little problem with my memory,” the 73-year-old theatre and TV star tells presenter Brendan Courtney.

“It’s more than a little,” clarifies Murray’s partner Una Crawford O’Brien.

“If you tell me something in the morning, by lunchtime I’ve forgotten,” Murray explains.

RTÉ’s Keys to My Life, now in season three, already carries an emotional charge, as it brings well-known people back to homes they once lived in. Revisiting deeply familiar places where they spent key years of their lives inevitably unspools memories, often long put aside. It couldn’t but be emotional.

But news of Murray’s diagnosis adds another layer of poignancy. Courtney observes: “Our planned journey of remembrance [is] turning into the journey of a man remembering his past before he forgets.”

 And Murray has a lot to remember. Born in a crumbling tenement in Islandbridge, he’s visibly emotional as he visits the corporation house in Arbour Hill that pulled his family out of destitution.

“This is from our time,” he says, running his fingers over a window’s frosted glass. It’s a moment of wonderment for Murray, almost sacred – here he can touch his past, which he hasn’t seen in decades.

It’s here especially we feel the show’s great theme: the passing of time – and what’s left of it. And its great tension: the seeming-impossibility of a phase of life gone forever – yet the place in which it was lived is still here. Standing at this frosted window, it almost feels time-travel should be possible.

Here, his voice choked, Murray remembers his parents: “I didn’t quite get that we were as poor as we were… they kept it from me and that takes some doing.” 

We move to the chic London apartment which saw Murray’s rise to TV stardom in BBC’s Bread, The Irish RM and RTÉ’s Strumpet City. Here he lived with first wife Angela – romance began with the offer of a biscuit from his sock.

Then to the suburban South London home, scene of the breakdown of his second marriage after a failed theme-park investment. And Courtney even has keys to the house in Brookside Close, where Murray’s legendary Channel 4 villain met his end.

As the show closes, Murray reads from Ulysses to an audience. Courtney observes: “Live performance really suits you.” Murray agrees, adding: “Having dementia – and what’s possible after dementia – is a pretty scary thing, but they’ll have to drag me away.” 

And we are reminded of his other home – the theatre, the stage. And that from this home, Murray will not go easily.

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