{"id":100706,"date":"2025-10-03T07:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T07:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/100706\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T07:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T07:24:07","slug":"there-are-people-in-this-country-who-hate-me-with-the-fire-of-a-thousand-suns-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/100706\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018There are people in this country who hate me with the fire of a thousand suns\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

My siblings say to me: \u201cYou had different parents. We don\u2019t know what your parents<\/a> are like because we didn\u2019t have them.\u201d Because I was an accident: they were so tired by the time I came along. Dad started crying. He said, \u201cWe were done, Marie.\u201d And she\u2019s like, \u201cWell, here we go again.\u201d I had the best childhood, I got away with murder. My sister is 13 years older \u2013 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<\/a>; Daniel O\u2019Donnell<\/a> could be Harry Styles<\/a> in my mother\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Dad was looking for me to be a secondary schoolteacher. I\u2019m not a planner, so I\u2019d always been like, \u201cOkay, you\u2019re gonna go to college in Galway and then you\u2019re going to go to Australia<\/a>\u201d. There was nothing beyond that. I worked in the Cock\u2019n\u2019Bull in Bondi Junction. I think I fell into a bit of depression there. I piled on the weight. I don\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Muireann O\u2019Connell: If bodies came with a Facebook relationship status, mine would be \u2018it\u2019s complicated\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

When I got home from Australia, I spent six weeks socialising, going out as I thought it was this big return \u2013 like I had to go and see all my friends all around Ireland, and what they\u2019d been up to for a year. My dad was like, \u201cAre you going to get a job? What are you doing?\u201d I didn\u2019t know. I was back home in the attic in my parents\u2019 house at 24. <\/p>\n

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, \u201cCome here, this will get your dad off your back. Will you just go in and do an interview?\u201d <\/p>\n

At that time, those Roland Mouret [bodycon] dresses were really in. I went off and bought a Peter O\u2019Brien 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. <\/p>\n

It was a really casual job. I did it with [RT\u00c9 <\/a>presenter] Jacqui Hurley<\/a>. 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, \u201cWhere are the milk-ladies?\u201d <\/p>\n

Even though Terry Wogan and Vincent Browne are from Limerick, I\u2019d 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\u2019s what it felt like. I\u2019ve never been so intimidated. <\/p>\n

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\u2019re making a connection on a few levels. <\/p>\n

\n

By the end the estate agents were like: are you still looking for a house?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My new project for Virgin \u2013 The Assembly \u2013 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\u2019ve ever seen. In the English version, Michael Sheen and Danny Dyer were in it. In Ireland we\u2019ve got a group of 34 fantastic people and they\u2019re 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\u2019t get to set the agenda. The show is theirs. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s grand. I am not for everyone. I don\u2019t think anyone can be for everyone. But when someone comes up to me in public and feels like they know me, that\u2019s a huge privilege and honour. Genuinely: we\u2019re just having a chat. <\/p>\n

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 \u2013 get to know your estate agents, do all that \u2013 I didn\u2019t 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: \u201cDid you still not buy a house?\u201d But we finally did it. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s house recently and I said, \u201cOh I\u2019m going home\u201d, and it felt like I was actually going home.<\/p>\n

In conversation with Nadine O\u2019Regan. This interview is part of a series<\/a> about well-known people\u2019s lives and relationship with Ireland. Muireann O\u2019Connell presents Ireland AM weekdays on Virgin Media. The Assembly comes to Virgin Media in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My siblings say to me: \u201cYou had different parents. We don\u2019t know what your parents are like because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1128,9,10,52,18,14189,13,14,2215,6,19,17,11,12,1844,361,15,16,14232,63930,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-100706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-dublin","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-emigration","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-for-you","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-latest-news","21":"tag-latestnews","22":"tag-limerick","23":"tag-magazine","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-me-myself-and-ireland","27":"tag-muireann-o-connell","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-top-stories","30":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}