Tuam’s secret millionaire a hit with viewers

By Martina Nee

The first episode of RTÉ’s The Secret Millionaire, which featured an emotional and generous donation by Galway man John Concannon, was the most watched programme on television on Monday night.

The Tuam-based entrepreneur and managing director of JFC Manufacturing is given a new identity in the programme and spends a number of days and nights in different areas of Dublin, sometimes posing as a community worker and in other instances as a handyman, on the look-out for people and charities to help. In the programme we see the cameras following Mr Concannon around his plastics manufacturing business in Tuam, with his family in nearby Kilconly, and then on to Dublin where most of the show is set with audiences seeing him working undercover.