Terry Prone was once asked by Charles Haughey if he should have eyelid surgery to make himself look less sinister. She tactfully removed a copy of The Joy of Sex from Albert Reynolds’s bookshelf just as he was about to record a televised address. To persuade Pádraig Flynn that he must read speeches before delivering them, she inserted a joke into one: “How do hedgehogs make love? Very carefully.”
While Prone is obviously most famous for giving media training to Leinster House luminaries, the former Abbey actor and RTÉ broadcaster largely omitted politics from her first memoir, Caution to the Wind (2023). The canny businesswoman was saving her juiciest material for this companion volume.
I’m Glad You Asked Me That (a cliche she loathes) is a more episodic work that presents highlights from Prone’s 50-odd years of witnessing meltdowns, stiffening spines and drafting resignation statements in Government Buildings. It also sets out her no-nonsense PR philosophy, with lengthy tangents on why tailored jackets convey authority, body language is “pseudoscience” and a key talent for any public representative is knowing when to shut up.
Prone is a bracing raconteur, allergic to false modesty and scornful of those who do not share her opinions. She colourfully recalls starting out at a time when Dáil bar denizens were “covered in puke and urine” but deliberately dull on camera. Disputing the popular prejudice that her trade relies on tricks or spin, she instead explains how its aim is to project a TD’s best, authentic self.
I’m Glad You Asked Me That: The Political Years by Terry Prone - Caustic and entertaining
The Great Gambon by Milly Ellis: A hilarious stocking filler about the Dublin-born actor
Three Irish traditional music books from a piper, a flautist and a professor
Children’s books for Christmas: from a crime-fighting fox to the best encyclopaedias
Although many Communications Clinic clients will be anxiously looking up their names in Prone’s index, her sharpest pen portraits feature safely dead subjects. She freely admits that some were beyond her help, such as the “infinitely distractable” Garret FitzGerald, who once turned up in another company’s studios, and the “brainy” but gauche John Bruton, who made voters cross the street to avoid him.
Being called “a rude bitch” by Haughey did not prevent them from developing a productive working relationship, even though she regarded him as “a medieval monarch out of time” and later assisted the spurned courtier Seán Doherty to engineer his downfall.
“Be interesting, be understandable, be memorable,” are Prone’s golden rules for successful communicators. She achieves all three in this typically caustic, occasionally scattershot but always entertaining book.
Andrew Lynch is a journalist, editor and book reviewer
