Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

New landmark documentary series Stardust on RT One and RT Player

13/05/2024

New compelling eye-witness testimony of Stardust fire in RT documentary

Series filmed over three years includes interview with Charlie Bird filmed in 2021

New eye-witness testimony from the night of the Stardust fire from bar staff, emergency responders and survivors comprehensively recount the events of the night of the disaster in the first episode of a new landmark documentary series on RT One and RT Player from Sunday at 9.30pm.

Stardust, a three-part documentary series, tells the full and unvarnished story of the Stardust nightclub fire and the 43-year search for justice undertaken by the families of those killed in the fire. The series will be broadcast across three consecutive nights, Sunday May 12th at 9.30pm and continues tomorrow night and Tuesday at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player.

Three years in the making by RT , this definitive account of the Stardust nightclub tragedy chronicles the night of the fire and the fall-out from it, the initial investigation into the fire, the relatives' fight for justice up to the point of a second inquest and concludes with the historic decision of unlawful killing' delivered into the Coroner's Court on April 18th.

Tonight's episode features a sit-down interview with the late Charlie Bird about the nightclub fire that he attended as an RT News journalist in 1981. After campaigning for decades on behalf of the Stardust families, Charlie spoke to RT 's documentary crew in 2021 to recall the night.

Charlie Bird said: I remember getting the phone call that night - my boss he told me to get my backside out to Artane - there had been a fire in a disco called the Stardust, I hadn't a clue where it was. I remember jumping in my car and going over Butt Bridge and I just followed the ambulances from there out to the Stardust So many people there - ambulances, fire brigades, reporters, onlookers from all over the place - it was absolutely chaotic.

He continued: It was a dream - the whole thing was a dream or a nightmare - that was unfolding as dawn came you began to see the shell of the Stardust - that charred and the smell the smoke was still rising from it.

In a way we didn't know then what the scale of the tragedy was, how many people had died and the numbers who were injured. Charlie Haughey arrives and the most bizarre thing of all - we walked through the Stardust! We were allowed in talk about forensics, it's the most bizarre thing! We were actually allowed to trudge through it!

In a rare interview, survivor of the Stardust fire Valerie Deasy describes first seeing the blaze in the nightclub: I looked around for my sister to see where she was and I went up to her and said c'mon we better go' and she said sure it's only a little fire.' We could see it It was in a corner on a seatthat's what it looked like to me anyway and we walked over and we were standing quite close to the exits - but they were chained.

Valerie talks about how the fire grew quickly and in the chaos, she ended up on the floor. She says: Everyone was standing on me, trampling on me but then I thought I had died - because everything went deathly silent - there wasn't a sound and it was pitch black.

She adds: You could see the light coming from a door being opened and slowly but surely there was people just pulling people out and eventually somebody pulled me out. There was guy who worked in the community centre, the youth leaders, and I went over to him and said Mick will you bring me home'. I actually thought I was going to sneak back into the house and my mother wouldn't realise that I'd been out - so he said to me Who are you?' because he didn't recognise me. And I said it's Valerie' and he said to me - what's that?' And all the skin off my face was here it was in my hand, and I just held it in my hand while we got in the car and he drove me into Jervis Street.

Phyllis Campbell was 16years old on the night of fire and was working as bar staff in another part of the Stardust venue. In Sunday night's documentary, Phyllis recounts for the first time in a television interview the first signs of fire and the panic in the venue as they discovered the doors wouldn't open.

Phyllis Campbell tells the Stardust documentary: We were lounge girls and we would serve the drink to the tables, clear the glasses, we would wear a white blouse, black skirt, we were supposed to - that was our uniform.

Everybody was excited to be going to the Stardust on Valentine's night with a disco competition because most of the people that were in the disco competition - we knew

We were in the Lantern Rooms tidying around, that function was coming to an end - one of the lounge staff came in to say there was a fire in the Stardust and we went into see.

She continues: The flames was going across the ceiling then there was a gush of fire and it was like the material from the ceiling was falling on fire

The lights went out People screaming, glasses smashing, the roars of the fire - so we held on to each other and we went through the bar - I slipped and fell.

Phyllis says: When we got outside it was as bad outside - the screams coming from inside People that did go to exit doors had no chance - there was no way that they would have got out those doors because they were chained and because the toilet windows had bars on - there was no way out there. Jesus help us get us out' and then silence. Seeing people that you had spoke to a couple of minutes beforehand coming out black, covered in smoke and there was others trying to get back in cos their families were in there.

I remember my aunt saying is it really really bad - and she saying half of Coolock is gone.

RT 's Stardust documentary project is a comprehensive telling of the s
LINK: https://about.rte.ie/2024/05/13/new-landmark-documentary-series-stardu...
See more stories from rte

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

01/06/2026

Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026

January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026 Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...

02/05/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Search, Faster Editing, and an AI-Ready Foundation for Modern Media

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

01/05/2026

NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to Integrate Dolby's Full Suite of Premium Picture and Sound Innovations

January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...

15/04/2026

WIDOW: The Mission Software Defining Rotary Strike

Image courtesy of MD Helicopters...

15/04/2026

L3Harris Announces Billion Dollar Expansion to Boost Solid Rocket Motor Production in Orange County, Virginia

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, L3Harris VP Mark Farley, and state and local l...

15/04/2026

Advancing America's Space Defense: L3Harris Completes Critical Milestone on Way to Delivering GBOSS Capability to the Warfighter

U.S. Space Forces Ground-Based Optical Sensor System upgrade at the Maui Space S...

15/04/2026

Winter Olympics, Super Bowl Power NBCU-Versant to Gold Medal Performance in Nielsen's February Gauge Reports

NBCU-Versant notches 13.1% of TV viewing in February, its best since August 2024...

15/04/2026

Nielsen CMI shows New Zealand's over-65s are a growing, cashed-up and still-working audience brands can't ignore

New data reveals older Kiwis are financially resilient, loyal to local products,...

15/04/2026

aconnic launches ACCEED 4430 10 Gigabit system for high volume enterprise and business service aggregation

aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, announces the market launch of the ACCE...

15/04/2026

Autocue to Mark 2026 NAB Show Debut of its New PTZ Prompter

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Locality Deploys Nielsen's Media Data Engine

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Viant Announces Agreement to Acquire TVision

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Evergent introduces Agentic Revenue Orchestration Platfor...

Evergent introduces its Agentic Revenue Orchestration Platform, transforming how subscription businesses across direct-to-consumer streaming, pay-TV, telecommun...

15/04/2026

CentralCast Delivers Breakthrough Efficiencies to Public...

Harmonic's XOS Media Processor Delivers Exceptional Video Quality to More than Half of U.S. Public Media Viewership Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announce...

15/04/2026

DPA N Series Wireless System Unlocks Duplex Gap and Guard...

LONGMONT, COLORADO, APRIL 15, 2026 DPA Microphones N Series Digital Wireless System users in North America can now take full advantage of the system's exc...

15/04/2026

Cobalt Iron Launches Compass Tape Gateway Modernizing IBM...

Cobalt Iron, a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced the launch of Compass Tape Gateway (CTG), a transformative enhancemen...

15/04/2026

Disguise to Showcase Cutting-Edge Experience Tech for Sports, Broadcast and More at NAB 2026

Disguise to Showcase Cutting-Edge Experience Tech for Sports, Broadcast and More...

15/04/2026

Arooj Aftab Makes the Music She Wants to Hear

Arooj Aftab Makes the Music She Wants to Hear The singular artist explores the juxtaposition of grief and joy, dark and light, in her distinctive sound. Apri...

15/04/2026

Panasonic, NEP Partner on IP-Based Live Production

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Encompass Digital Media Powers Global Cloud Transformatio...

Interra Systems, a provider of end-to-end quality assurance solutions for the digital media industry, is proud to announce its central role in the digital trans...

15/04/2026

Viaccess-Orca Powers MasOranges Multi-Brand TV Expansion...

VO Integrates Client-Side and Server-Side Ad Technologies with its Secure Video Player and Segmentation Tools, Leveraging Broadpeak's SSAI and BPK SmartLib ...

15/04/2026

TMT Insights Unveils AI at NAB 2026

TMT Insights, a leader in professional services and software development for the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, today announced the launch of TMT AI at...

15/04/2026

Encompass Digital Media and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure E...

Encompass Digital Media, a global leader in managed broadcast and cloud-based media services, today announced an expanded partnership with Oracle Cloud Infrastr...

15/04/2026

Middleman Software Debuts PhaseLock Technology and Expand...

Middleman Software, a leading provider of signaling and synchronization solutions for broadcast and streaming workflows, today announced it will unveil PhaseLoc...

15/04/2026

Deity Announces PR-4 Compact Field Recorder

Deity Microphones today announced the PR-4, a compact six-track field recorder featuring four inputs, 32-bit float recording, advanced routing, and a workflow-f...

15/04/2026

Blackmagic Design Announces Fairlight Live

Blackmagic Design Announces Fairlight Live Brie Clayton April 15, 2026 0 Comments Powerful software-based live audio mixer with support for SMPTE-2110...

15/04/2026

Haivision Launches Falkon X4 5G Transmitters

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

JB&A Spotlights Exhibitors Ahead of Pre-NAB 2026 Technology Event

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Wave Central, EVS Announce SMPTE ST 2110 Interop Collaboration

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Top Reason for Subscribing to Pay TV Is Live News and TV, Survey Finds

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

NAB Leadership Foundation Honors Outstanding Broadcasters

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Wisycom Expands MPR60 With New Multichannel IFB Mode

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/04/2026

Thomas Riedel Acquires Premium Manufacturer ARRI

Strategic Alignment With the Riedel Group for Innovation and Growth Thomas Riedel, founder and owner of Riedel Communications and the Riedel Group, has acqui...

15/04/2026

Iyuno Deploys SDVI Rally Platform to Accelerate and Scale...

SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that the company's Rally platform has been deployed by Iyuno Media...

15/04/2026

Frequency Leads the Industry in Live Local News on FAST

Frequency, the engine behind many of the worlds leading streaming television channels, has become the platform of choice for leading U.S. broadcasters bringing ...

15/04/2026

Harmonic Introduces Breakthrough AI Orchestration Service...

New Service Simplifies Integration of AI Applications with Exceptional Reliability and Security SAN JOSE, Calif. April 14, 2026 Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) t...

15/04/2026

VIDI and Media Links Bring Scalable IP Transport to Germa...

During the 2025 off-season, VIDI completed a major upgrade of the broadcast infrastructure across all 36 stadiums in Germany's 1st and 2nd Bundesliga. The p...

15/04/2026

Clear-Com Introduces Transformational Arcadia and Eclipse...

Clear-Com announced significant updates to its award-winning Arcadia Central Station as well as enhancements to the Eclipse HX Digital Matrix System now runn...

15/04/2026

Shotoku Introduces the World to Aura P2 PTZ Prompter Panner at NAB SHOW 2026

Shotoku Introduces the World to Aura P2 PTZ Prompter Panner at NAB SHOW 2026 Brie Clayton April 15, 2026 0 Comments New system removes PTZ pan restric...

15/04/2026

LiveU Announces Expanded Collaboration with Sony at NAB Show, Adding Direct File Workflow Integration

LiveU Announces Expanded Collaboration with Sony at NAB Show, Adding Direct File...

15/04/2026

This 24-Hour Performance Art Piece Needs Your Participation

This 24-Hour Performance Art Piece Needs Your Participation Keefer Glenshaws latest project is about collaborating with the Berklee community and beyond. Apr...

15/04/2026

CentralCast Delivers Breakthrough Efficiencies to Public Broadcasting Stations with Harmonic

Harmonic's XOS Media Processor Delivers Exceptional Video Quality to More th...

15/04/2026

Five Decades of Box Office Intelligence: Comscore Celebrates 50 Years of Movie Measurement

Five Decades of Box Office Intelligence: Comscore Celebrates 50 Years of Movie M...

15/04/2026

Rethinking AI TCO: Why Cost per Token Is the Only Metric That Matters

Traditional data centers only stored, retrieved and processed data. In the generative and agentic AI era, these facilities have evolved into AI token factories....

15/04/2026

RT announces new crime drama The Yank starring Kate Mulgrew and Colm Meaney

Two Cities Television and Keeper Pictures to produce six-part series in association with Screen Ireland for RT and ITV Studios RT has commissioned Two Citie...

15/04/2026

RT unveils The Signal' a specially commissioned 60-second film to celebrate RT100

RT 100 RT unveils The Signal' a specially commissioned 60-second film ...

15/04/2026

New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs

The NAB Show 2026 trade show, running April 18-22 in Las Vegas, is set to showcase a wave of new features and optimizations for top video editing applications. ...