‘Like an old and trusted friend’ – An Interview with Holly Bough Editor John Dolan

As longtime Features Editor at the Echo and nearing two decades at the helm of the Holly Bough, there scarcely seems to be a Cork institution that John Dolan has not found himself at the heart of. Born in Warrington, a large town bisecting Liverpool and Manchester on the banks of the River Mersey, and spending his early professional days as a journalist in the north of England, it was a lengthy path that led John to Cork, and one lengthier still that landed him at the centre of an age-old Cork tradition such as the Holly Bough.“I came over here just at the turn of the millennium. I’m here twenty years in January, in Cork. My wife’s Irish, and I got a job at the Echo as Features Editor”. The pressure-steeped promotion to a post such as orchestrating the Holly Bough isn’t one that comes easy, but for John, it came at a time when the annual Christmas omnibus was in need of some redecoration. “It was more run by the Examiner at the time. Our Chief Executive at the Echo, Dan Linehan, said he wouldn’t mind the Echo taking on the Holly Bough and seeing if we could maybe revamp it and breathe a bit of life into it”.And so they did, but not before a bit of groundwork was done on John’s part. “Because I was Features Editor, he asked me to edit the Holly Bough. I remember the conversation, and I hadn’t heard of it before. I didn’t know what he was talking about! So, obviously I kind of immersed myself in it”. A few lunch meetings with his late predecessor Walter McGrath illuminated things somewhat for Dolan, and a new era of the Holly Bough was soon upon us.Since the turn of the millennium, the Holly Bough has continued to fly in the face of trends that otherwise cast print media as an industry in extremis. Sales of about 21,000 have since leapt ever closer to the 60,000 mark, facilitating a readership of 250k worldwide, not to mention the Bough itself expanding from sixty pages to one hundred and sixty four across the span of Dolan’s tenure. “The Holly Bough has just gone from strength to strength. I mean, It was always a great tradition in Cork anyway. I don’t think there was ever a time when it wasn’t, but I think what we’ve managed to do is really dedicate an awful lot of time and effort to it”.Time is one thing that no publication ever seems to have enough of. Deadlines, irrespective of their distance or your awareness of them, have an ability to hold the element of surprise unless you’re putting in the legwork early. For John, with twenty-two years under his belt, an early start remains key. “I always say to people, it’s a Christmas publication, but to my eyes it’s an Easter to Halloween publication”. The editorial team starts “tipping away” early in the year, with the conceptual stages of organising the edition starting in the early Spring period of March-April. “It intensifies in the Summer. When it gets to July and especially August, that to me is the key time for the Holly Bough. It’s such a big product, you don’t want to leave it all for the last few weeks, scrambling around chasing copy. It’s very much a gradual thing”. By the start of October, the edition is “ninety to ninety-five percent done”. From there, it’s a matter of continuous reassessing and fine tuning until the edition goes to print on the Monday following the Jazz Weekend.With Springtime marking the Holly Bough’s starting point, coinciding this year with the onset of the pandemic, I ask John how the whole editorial process was affected. “We knew when we were setting up the Holly Bough around April that this year was going to be a very different year. It was hard to tell then how much Covid would affect us”.With an unpredictable year only just getting underway, the people of Cork were nonetheless determined that Christmas tradition would endure. “Back in late March, literally a few days into the lockdown, our Oliver Plunkett street office for the Examiner and the Echo was still open. We still had someone manning the counter there, and I got a call saying two or three people had stuck their head in the door asking if there would be a Holly Bough this year. I just thought ‘my God, no pressure, you know?”But the pressure was on more than ever before - and if anything stood a chance of dampening the annual’s consistent growth in sales, it was a global pandemic. I ask John if there’s been any indication as to how the 2020 edition has been doing sales-wise. “I was onto the distribution manager just a few days ago asking if he had any pointers, but it’s so hard to tell anyway normally. But this year particularly, it’s impossible”. Yet, with no solid idea of how uptake of the Holly Bough has been amid our first Christmas post-pandemic, John remains optimistic. “I think it’s going to be as big as it has been in previous years - it could even sell more because people are going to be spending Christmas in their own house instead of somewhere else. It may well be that there’s a bit of an uptake in sales just for that reason, but it’s been doing so well that I’d be happy to just keep it going as it’s been”.In a year sorely lacking the soothing comfort of constants, I point out to John how the Holly Bough’s arrival on shelves across Cork in early November provided just that. ‘Like an old and trusted friend, the Holly Bough will always be there for you’ begins the 2020 message on their website, and this year more than most, the comfort of this Cork tradition’s continuance was felt. “The first week of November, I’m the same as anyone else. If I see a Christmas ad or a shop window with Christmas trees, I groan. But it’s funny, the Holly Bough gets a free pass. People forget that it’s early. The Toy Show’s not the first sign of Christmas in Cork. It’s the Holly Bough”.As for the annual’s unique prosperity in an industry often seen as toiling, John insists there’s no “magic formula” bar the enduring powers of habit and tradition. “Christmas is a funny time, because it’s the one time of year when young people don’t mind doing what their parents did. It’s that kind of carry-on tradition we’ve set into the Holly Bough which I think is probably the key to it”. Aside from that, it’s a festive helping of Cork pride which ensures the Bough continues to buck industry trends year after year. “[It’s] the pride that people have in Cork when they’re born here. They’ll move away to Australia like during the eighties when there was a recession, during the nineties and even in 2010 - people left Cork, but Cork never left them. [The Holly Bough’s] as much about Cork people living abroad as it is people living here now”.Curious as to what’s brought John back to his post at the Holly Bough every year for almost two decades, I finish by asking what he finds to be the single most rewarding aspect of editing the Holly Bough - he answers with an anecdote: “I had an email from somebody just the other day. She shared this story with me about her grandfather; he’d had a tough year. He’s eighty-nine, he’d had Covid - recovered, thankfully - and he’d also gone blind. One of the things she’d done was she brought the Holly Bough to him, and she read the stories to him. She said he got such a lift out of that. The feeling that gives you, to make someone so happy - to make a family so happy - it’s off the scales. It’s so rewarding”. In a time defined by transience and adjustment, new normals and fleeting pasts, we need our traditions now more than ever. The Holly Bough has been Cork’s very own since 1897 - what’s one mad year to a spirit spanning centuries?Print editions of the Holly Bough are available to purchase in booksellers and newsagents across the country, as well as through the Holly Bough website - hollybough.ie - where digital copies are also accessible.