TEENAGERS CAN DEVELOP crushes on the most unlikely of people.
Hormones and emotions are running high, and life is spent just trying to figure it all out. Here is a list of unlikely teen heart throbs that you may not have realised you fancied, but you probably totally did.
Sully: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman
There is no one on this earth that has a better mane (or did have a mane) than Sully from Dr. Quinn medicine woman. Anyone who watched the TV series Dr. Quinn medicine woman on a Saturday evening on RTE would have followed the trials and tribulations of Jane Seymour (as Dr. Quinn Medicine woman) and the love story that was her and the emotionally wounded Sully. Sully- played by Joe Lando was a ride. A big mountain man, horse lover and friend of the Cheyenne tribe- ride.
Women all over the country were asking their men to grow their hair long like Sully. We watched on numerous occasions as he became friends with Michaela, supported her as a female Doctor in the small wild west town of Colorado Springs and when he even saved her from a bear. (He was THAT manly) The will-they-won’t-they romantic goings on of the two kept audience hooked and fans of the show revelled when he finally went in for the shift. Which they continued to do for six whole seasons before the series was cancelled in 1998. Jane Seymour must have thought he was a ride too as they dated for a while in real life before she married some one else. Why?
Mike Murphy: Winning Streak
Never mind your Gay Byrnes, Pat Kennys, or Ryan Tubridys there was only one man in Montrose that had it all. Mike-the ride-Murphy. Saturday nights after mass, TV boxes across the country were turned on (and people too) for the appearance of the sauve, sophisticated presenter of Winning Streak, Mike Murphy wowed the hopeful contestants and sent the rent a crowd into a frenzy of cheers and banner shaking.
People at home watching prayed that it would be their name that was pulled from the wheel with the three stars, not to win the money mind, but to just get a chance to bask in the glory of the presence of the candid camera legend Mike Murphy.
He was like a modern Rock Hudson, and hearts broke across the parish when his reign at the helm of Winning Streak ended in 2001. No one has come close to replacing Mike Murphy until of late with the ride that is Marty Whelan.
Charles Ingalls Wilder: Little House on the prairie
The beautiful Michael Landon, known for playing the father Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Praire and also as a a probationary angel wandering Earth helping people in Highway to Heaven. There’s no way that you didn’t watch either of these show if you only had the two channels of RTE 1 and Network.
It’s also easy to see why he played an angel, as he basically looked like one, a hot angel that is. Back to Little House on the prairie, and Charles Ingalls Wilder, Pa to a lucky few, was a family man who lives on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. Hot right?!
Charles personality was more soft spoken then men of that time, but his manliness lay in his love for his wife and his children and bringing them to church on a Sunday which must have taken ages what with all those skirts and bonnets. He was pretty fertile too it seems as he ended up having 7 children in the end. Charles Ingalls Wilder was indeed a ride.
Dick Moran: Glenroe
You didn’t know why you fancied Dick Moran, you probably shouldn’t. He was bad boy personified. If you had been in school with him you would have spent your time smoking behind the gym and vying for his attention because he was hot. Hot with a capital H. He was the bad boy lothario of Wicklow, bedding women and giving them legal advice at the same time.
Irish mothers across the country gave out about the fact that he cheated on poor Mary with that jezebel Terry Kileen but teenagers were turned on by his general skullduggery. Life in Glenroe was more interesting with Dick Moran around, making him the ultimate teenage heart throb.
Harry Molloy: Fair City
As soon as Harry uttered the word ‘Dolores’ with that deep North side accent on Fair City, knees would go weak across the country. If it wasn’t those sensuous side burns that did it for you, then it had to have been his black hat. His sexy woolly black hat that he wore nearly every moment of his time on screen. And if THAT didn’t it for you, maybe it was his greasy hands from all the manly work he was doing on cars in his garage and other women.
Who can forget that affair, that passionate affair (and most unlikely to ever happen in real life affair) with Shelley. There was a lot more going on under that moustache. Dirty Harry indeed.
Michael Collins: Ireland
Michael Collins was a teenage heart throb, not because of 1916 but because of 1996. Liam Neeson portrayed the ‘big fellah’ on screen and Michael Collins suddenly became a ride to the eyes of those who didn’t really understand the majority of what had been taught to them in History class, if they bothered continuing it on for the Leaving Cert that is.
To teens it just seemed that Michael Collins had stolen Richard Gere’s lady from Pretty Woman and was now going steady with Julia Roberts. To top it all off he died for his country, and in fairness, how hot is that right?!
Ciara King is the author of Ciara’s Diary: 1999 – 2002 Sense and Shiftability published by Gill Books, priced €14.99
