Bowman was brought up in Ballsbridge in south Dublin. His father worked for Great Southern Railways (later CIE) and his mother was a nurse, originally from Co. Monaghan. Bowman was educated at Belvedere College and Trinity College Dublin where he received a PhD in political science. He joined Radio Éireann in 1962, later becoming the presenter and commentator on numerous current affairs programmes, as well as an analyst of political developments and interviewer of politicians on radio and later on television. In the 1980s, he presented the current affairs programme Today Tonight, the precursor to Prime Time.

Bowman has won two Jacob's Awards for his radio broadcasting, in 1970 and 1981, the latter for his presentation of the current affairs programme, Day by Day. He chaired the audience-participation political programme Questions and Answers on RTÉ One television for 21 years, the final edition airing on 29 June 2009. He is the presenter of Bowman Sunday Morning (previously Bowman Saturday) on radio, a weekly compilation of material from broadcasting archives at home and abroad. He has also co-anchored RTÉ election coverage since the early 1980s.

Bowman was President of the Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations in 1993 and of Comhar, an environmental pressure group, from 1999 until 2004 [1].

He is married to psychiatrist Eimer Philbin Bowman and they have had four children: Jonathan, Emma, Abie and Daniel. His eldest son Jonathan Philbin Bowman a journalist, television and radio presenter died in an accident in March 2000. His daughter Emma Philbin Bowman works in Dublin as a psychotherapist [2]. His middle son Abie Philbin Bowman is a columnist [3] for The Dubliner magazine and a stand up comedian [4], while in 2005 his youngest son Daniel initiated Be Not Afraid; a charity wristband campaign which raised over ?80,000 in aid of Turning the Tide of Suicide and the Irish Red Cross [5] and later set up a youth-marketing firm, Spark [6].