My siblings say to me: “You had different parents. We don’t know what your parents are like because we didn’t have them.” Because I was an accident: they were so tired by the time I came along. Dad started crying. He said, “We were done, Marie.” And she’s like, “Well, here we go again.” I had the best childhood, I got away with murder. My sister is 13 years older – she was like my second mom. My parents had such a strong sense of themselves. The music played in the house was The Fureys, The Dubliners; Daniel O’Donnell could be Harry Styles in my mother’s mind. My parents would jive in the kitchen. They were fantastic dancers together. We were the sort of family who ate dinner on our laps in front of Home and Away.
Dad was looking for me to be a secondary schoolteacher. I’m not a planner, so I’d always been like, “Okay, you’re gonna go to college in Galway and then you’re going to go to Australia”. There was nothing beyond that. I worked in the Cock’n’Bull in Bondi Junction. I think I fell into a bit of depression there. I piled on the weight. I don’t think I went out at one stage for about a month, unless I was going out and getting sloshed. I was homesick and I refused to acknowledge it.
When I got home from Australia, I spent six weeks socialising, going out as I thought it was this big return – like I had to go and see all my friends all around Ireland, and what they’d been up to for a year. My dad was like, “Are you going to get a job? What are you doing?” I didn’t know. I was back home in the attic in my parents’ house at 24.
My friend heard an ad on our local radio station Live 95 in Limerick, looking for people to drive the jeeps: the promo crew. And she said, “Come here, this will get your dad off your back. Will you just go in and do an interview?”
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At that time, those Roland Mouret [bodycon] dresses were really in. I went off and bought a Peter O’Brien one that was in A Wear. And I walked into a radio station dressed up to the nines. Everyone was wearing a band T-shirt and jeans.
It was a really casual job. I did it with [RTÉ presenter] Jacqui Hurley. Our job was basically to be outside Penneys in Limerick, and give out banana and strawberry milk. If we were late on a Wednesday, people would be like, “Where are the milk-ladies?”
Even though Terry Wogan and Vincent Browne are from Limerick, I’d never thought, being from Limerick, you could get a job on the radio, and then it happened. Spin opened up in Limerick. But I did think that Dublin was a closed shop. Moving to Dublin to start on Phantom FM [later moving to Today FM], I could have been moving to the moon. That’s what it felt like. I’ve never been so intimidated.
TV is easy in comparison. It just seems to suit my personality more. I find it so much easier because all of you is there, and you’re making a connection on a few levels.
By the end the estate agents were like: are you still looking for a house?
My new project for Virgin – The Assembly – is a format that has worked in many other countries. It started in France, where a well-known member of French society would come into the room, and a group of neurodivergent people would ask them whatever question they wanted. They can refuse to answer or they can answer. The episode with Emmanuel Macron is one of the most brilliant half hours of TV I’ve ever seen. In the English version, Michael Sheen and Danny Dyer were in it. In Ireland we’ve got a group of 34 fantastic people and they’re talking to some people who are very well known, Ryan Tubridy being one of them. He was not allowed to see questions beforehand. You want to come on the show? You don’t get to set the agenda. The show is theirs.
No matter what you do in this life, there will always be criticism. I know that there are people in this country that will never meet me, but hate me with the fire of a thousand suns. That’s grand. I am not for everyone. I don’t think anyone can be for everyone. But when someone comes up to me in public and feels like they know me, that’s a huge privilege and honour. Genuinely: we’re just having a chat.
We finally went sale agreed on our new house at the start of December. We got the keys in May. God did I make it hard for myself. All the things that people told me to do – get to know your estate agents, do all that – I didn’t do quickly enough. By the end the estate agents were like: are you still looking for a house? One of them had gone off, had a baby and come back to work after maternity leave. She was like: “Did you still not buy a house?” But we finally did it.
This is the cheesiest line ever but whenever I was leaving Limerick and going back to Dublin, I was always just going back to Dublin. But for the first time I left my mother’s house recently and I said, “Oh I’m going home”, and it felt like I was actually going home.
In conversation with Nadine O’Regan. This interview is part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland. Muireann O’Connell presents Ireland AM weekdays on Virgin Media. The Assembly comes to Virgin Media in January.
