Val often talks about the great happiness of his childhood – his ‘Special Years’. However, his family were poor and he shared a room in their small house in St. Alphonsus' Road with his three brothers: his four sisters slept on the other side of a partition wall and his parents in the living room.  When Val was old enough to attend school he attended De La Salle schools, round the corner from his home.  

The pair would pick watercress to make sandwiches and they would boil-up baby potatoes, making the most delicious meals Val had tasted. Val tells a great lesson that he learned from his father. Apparently Val wanted to go the cinema with his pals but his father refused him the money. Val sulked all day until his father asked him to go for a walk with him. Still sulking, Val joined his father and they had gone a short distance out the Passage Road when they spotted a farmer leaning on a gate. They saluted the man and continued their walk. Then Val's father asked Val if he knew the man. Val replied that he did not, whereupon Mr. Doonican said, "We are only a short distance from home. That man thinks he is the centre of the world, and yet you don't know who he is!"  Val quickly realised that he had been thinking only of himself and was feeling sorry for himself over a trivial hurt. It was a lesson that he never forgot. However, there were also darker times - waiting for his father to leave the pub, barely able to stand and having lavished most of his weekly wage packet on alcohol. In fact, despite working in many bars and nightclubs, Val remained virtually teetotal until middle age.

When Val was fourteen, his world was shattered by his father’s death from cancer of the throat and mouth. Val felt unable to attend the funeral, and shortly afterwards felt compelled to leave school in order to help support the family. He had been a reasonable scholar, but left without qualifications and had to take a job assembling crates at Graves' Timber yard where his father and older brothers had worked – something which he says would almost certainly have disappointed his father greatly.

However, Val had been writing and arranging music from a very young age, harmonising his friends’ versions of the songs they saw performed on film by the likes of Gene Autry. His first ‘professional’ engagement came with his friend Mickey Brennan at the Ballybricken Carnival, an annual affair organised to raise funds to build the Holy Family Church – singing ‘We’re Three Caballeros!’ Almost inevitably, it would now seem, Val met up with another musician, Bruce Clarke, and left Graves' to tour Ireland in a caravan with Bruce. Val, though, was earning his keep by playing house-keeper.

Eventually, Val joined a band, this time as drummer, despite never having played drums before! He stayed with the band for six months, despite being sacked for blowing his nose during a set and reinstated almost instantly because no-one else owned any drum sticks. From the drums, Val found a job – again with Bruce Clarke – playing guitar and performing general duties on the seafront in Bray, County Wicklow. It was here that he and Bruce were spotted and, with a bass player, they were given work on Radio Eireann, advertising Donnelly’s Sausages to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance… a plug that he is still singing to this day!

In 1951, still touring Ireland with Bruce Clarke’s band, Val was approached by representatives of the Four Ramblers and invited to join them in England, where they are best remembered for ‘Riders of the Range’ on BBC Radio. They also presented Workers’ Playtime, their salaries augmented by gifts from the factories whence the broadcast was being made. Looking forward to his first free products, Val found that his 'Playtime' debut was in a corset factory! 

His time with the Four Ramblers introduced Val to the joys of golf, honed his professional singing skills and arrangements, and led to the tour that was to revolutionise his life…

Val had bought himself an amplifier for his guitar, into which had gone most of his savings. Making a case to protect the amplifier, he used an old theatre poster advertising one Lynnette Rae (at the time more famous than Val) who was re-building her career after an operation for throat cancer (ironically, the disease that had killed his father). Having used her as his amp’s guardian angel, Val finally met Lynnette when both she and the Ramblers supported the late Anthony Newley on tour. For the first time in his life, Val fell in love. He and Lynn have now been married for more than thirty seven years, and are the parents to two grown-up daughters, Sarah and Fiona. 

Whilst on that particular tour, Anthony Newley held a birthday party where all the acts had to perform, but not in their usual roles. Thus, singers did impressions and comedy turns, with Lynn regaling the audience as an impressionist.  The Four Ramblers did not have another ‘turn’ and Val stepped forward, guitar in hand, and perched on a stool and singing a couple of ballads and ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat.’ At the end of his performance, Anthony Newley suggested that his solo spot was more commercially marketable than the Ramblers act and urged Val to ‘go solo’. Thus, he left the group and started a more lonely professional  life as Val Doonican – solo singer.

Val secured a radio programme on Wednesdays with the BBC ‘Light Programme’ – the precursor to Radio 2. This led to him linking his own material at a time when regional accents were almost unknown at the BBC. However, Val’s surname was still not known to his listeners - the powers that be in Broadcasting House having decided that the general public would never remember a complicated surname like Doonican!

Val continued to play cabaret and occasional theatre gigs but despite being a regular radio personality, no recording contracts were forthcoming for him. He was spotted at a concert by Val Parnell, who at that time arranged the acts for ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, booked onto the show and performed an eight minute spot that, he says, changed his life. By the Monday, there were recording contracts and TV show offers flooding his manager’s office.  Truly, as Val has said many times,  he was 'an overnight success after seventeen years.'

Val has gone on to record over fifty albums, sales of which register in the millions, and he has fans all over the world.  He charted many times with both singles and albums, appearing on ‘Top of the Pops’ to sing hits such as ‘Walk Tall‘, ‘The Special Years‘, ‘What Would I Be’, and ‘Elusive Butterfly’. His TV shows ran for twenty four years, from humble beginnings opposite ‘Coronation Street’ on Thursday nights, which he says enabled him to iron out the mistakes without the pressure of a large audience, to being the mainstay of the Saturday night TV schedules for many years. Val’s Christmas Eve shows became a national institution in Britain and are fondly remembered even by those who would not consider themselves to be fans.

These days Val still tours but he is fortunate enough to be able to pick and choose his concerts. He does not undertake television work as the market for the lavish music shows no longer exists and, as he says, how could he top the marvellous time he had doing what he loved musically: Val presenting a game show would not have the same appeal to him.

Val is now a grandfather of two, and the father of a successful novelist, his elder daughter Sarah having scored some success in that field. He divides his time between his homes in Buckinghamshire and Spain, and is enjoying the fruits of his years of work. He visits his native city regularly where his brothers and sisters still live and he has never been found wanting whenever he has been asked to attend functions in the city - especially charity functions. He is, truly, a Waterford legend.