'EXEUNT Omnes' was the term used by Shakespeare to signal the end of a scene or act in his dramas. The Latin phrase meaning "all go out" has a particular resonance for veteran journalist and broadcaster Cathal O'Shannon.

Sitting in his Ballsbridge home, the widower, who turns 80 next year, speaks eloquently about a decorated career that has seen him achieve all of his ambitions . . .with a few exceptions.

One of these exceptions was his futile attempts to persuade Charlie Haughey to participate in a TV documentary about his life.

O'Shannon recalls, "I remember Noel Pearson and myself going to visit Haughey to try and persuade him to do a documentary.

"He explained that he was too ill to give evidence at the tribunal and could not appear in a documentary. Charlie told us that he had arranged to allow his family and friends talk about him for Miriam O'Callaghan's Mint Productions' documentary. I hadn't the courage to ask him to do one for us that we wouldn't show until he was dead.

"He was very funny. He said to Pearson and me, 'when Shakespeare wanted to finish a scene or an act he used to write 'Exeunt Omnes' at the bottom of the page.' Haughey then said to us, 'So I am saying to you now . . .

Exeunt Omnes. That means f**k off and leave me alone'."

Haughey's refusal to participate in a documentary for O'Shannon marks a rare disappointment in a career that most would envy.

Even as he approaches 80, O'Shannon has presented one of the most talked about and controversial programmes on Irish television so far this year.

Hidden History: Ireland's Nazis was a two-part series that explored the way the Irish public provided a safe haven to some of the Nazi regime's most notorious collaborators and war criminals in post-war Europe.

Keith Farrell of Tile Films spent almost a year researching the idea before he approached O'Shannon to get involved.

"I was asked for two reasons.

Firstly, I had been in the RAF at the end of the Second World War and secondly, I had worked as a reporter in The Irish Times after the war so I would have known a number of the people, " explains O'Shannon.

"We did the programmes and I have to admit that I was quite surprised at the huge reaction.

Television by its nature is an ephemeral sort of thing so after three weeks or a month people have forgotten all about a programme. Unfortunately the Folens felt it was necessary to go to court to try and get some changes made and that just drew attention to it. It had a remarkable effect on the programme."

O'Shannon is very surprised that so many people were taken aback by his documentary.

"The fact that there were Nazis in Ireland after the war was not new to me but apparently it has shocked and surprised a lot of people. Inevitably when you reveal facts of this sort there is residual damage. You don't do this deliberately to hurt people and it is sad that it should hurt people.

Most people do not want things revealed about their parents or grandparents which others would not have known. My father was a northerner who came down for the Rising in 1916 and I have heard people call him a murderer."

O'Shannon grew up in a Dublin Corporation estate in Marino on the north side of the city.

Along with one of his life-long friends Fred O'Donnell, the former chairman of RTE and the National Concert Hall, O'Shannon joined the RAF when O'Donnell was 15 and he was 16.

"We decided we wanted to learn how to fly, so out of youthful naivety we decided to join the RAF. The second reason I wanted to join is because I was facing the Leaving Cert the following year and I knew that I wasn't going to pass so I buggered off."

O'Shannon jokes that by the time he finished his training the war was nearly over "so I never raised my hands against the Germans or the Japanese".

After spending time in Burma, O'Shannon left the RAF after two and half years' service in 1947.

The following year he decided to pursue his lifelong interest in journalism so he got a job in The Irish Times where he remained as a reporter and feature writer until he joined the BBC's Tonight programme in 1964.

"Tonight was the big news programme of the time. It was like Newsnight is now, " explains O'Shannon. "I have been very lucky in my life. I wanted to be in the air force and I got in. I wanted to be a reporter in The Irish Times and I became one. I wanted to work in Fleet Street in London and I got working in The Irish Times office in London. Then I wanted to get into television, not just any programme, but either Panorama or the Tonight programme and I got my wish."

O'Shannon and Magnus Magnusson were recruited to work for the Tonight programme together but the programme was axed 18 months later and O'Shannon returned to work for RTE where he remained until 1978.

In that time, O'Shannon conducted one of the biggest interviews in the history of Irish television when he interviewed Muhammad Ali for 52 minutes in front of a studio audience in 1972.

It was billed as 'Muhammad Ali v Cathal O'Shannon' and took place in 1972 to coincide with Ali's fight with Al Blue Lewis in Croke Park.

Among O'Shannon's more colourful memories of that historic interview was having to go into the RTE canteen to cash a cheque for Ali's coach Angelo Dundee who demanded that 'The Greatest' be paid in cash. Four years later he made his acclaimed documentary about the Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War called Even the Olives are Bleeding.

Before leaving RTE in 1978, O'Shannon made a landmark documentary about General Emmet Dalton, a major in the British Army who had won a Military Cross fighting at the Somme, and subsequently returned to Ireland to become one of Michael Collins's right hand men.

Dalton was with Collins at Beal na Blath when he was shot and O'Shannon managed to bring Dalton back to the historic spot for the first time since Collins's death for an emotional interview.

Later in 1978, in yet another new departure in his career, O'Shannon left journalism to work as public affairs director for Alcan in Aughinish, Co Limerick.

Employing 8,500 people on the biggest building site in Europe at the time, Alcan built their aluminium plant at a cost of US$1bn over five years.

When construction was completed, O'Shannon's job became "less exciting" and he decided to move back into journalism . . . although he had never really left it.

"I was lucky that I had very understanding bosses at the time who allowed me time off to make films for the last five or six years while I was there, " he said. "We did a series called Thou Shalt Not kill and a holiday programme called Bon Voyage which took me all over the world at that time.

"I was very grateful that they gave me time off and allowed me to do these programmes and with the exception of a 10-year gap I never really lost touch with television."

Thou Shalt Not Kill, which revisited 13 of Ireland's most chilling murders, was one of the most popular RTE documentary series ever made and one of the highlights of O'Shannon's career.

"I really enjoyed doing that as I was really familiar with a lot of cases having covered them for The Irish Times, " he said.

The cases of the murder of teenager Hazel Mullen by Shan Mahangi on Dublin's Harcourt Street in 1964, and a murder carried out by backstreet abortionist Nurse Mamie Cadden in 1956 stand out as the most memorable of that series for O'Shannon.

Today, with the exception of the recent Ireland's Nazis documentary, O'Shannon's life is not as hectic.

But as he recalls his life, his phone keeps ringing with friends wishing him well before he went into hospital for medical tests.

"I am not going looking for work anymore but if I am approached with an idea I will certainly consider it. I am not getting any younger and I face progressive illhealth, " he explains.

O'Shannon's wife Patsy Dyke, the popular Sunday Press columnist, died last year and, as they had no children, he lives alone with the family cat Fred who is 20 years old.

"Patsy dying took a lot of good out of my life. When she died it was the bitterest, bitterest blow for me because we had been married for more than 50 years. She died of cancer having struggled for a couple of years in remission so I don't know if I have the spirit to do any more television.

"She was my buttress. She reckoned that I could do anything and there was no challenge that she allowed me to ignore. She kept saying, 'Of course you can do it'."

O'Shannon's friend Paul Cusack who produced Thou Shalt Not Kill, is understood to be working on the idea of producing a documentary for RTE about O'Shannon's life to date.

Few could disagree that it would be a fascinating documentary.

Few would bet that Ireland's Nazis will mark the 'Exeunt Omnes' at the end of O'Shannon's career.