{"id":154990,"date":"2025-10-31T09:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154990\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T09:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:18:12","slug":"receptiongate-was-the-most-stressful-moment-of-my-entire-career-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154990\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Receptiongate was the most stressful moment of my entire career\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miriam O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> has been doing one thing since she was a schoolgirl that \u201cno one can believe\u201d. She reveals it late in her memoir, noting that women are often amused by it, though when I meet her in RT\u00c9<\/a>\u2019s Oasis cafe, I misremember this as horrified and admit I was a little shocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, you shouldn\u2019t do it. I\u2019m not recommending it,\u201d she says of her policy of leaving her eye make-up on for days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey laugh at me in RT\u00c9 Make-up. I get it put on for Prime Time on Tuesday, and it stays on until the following Tuesday. I do not take it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

She attributes this to her \u201clazy side\u201d, knows it\u2019s \u201cprobably terrible\u201d for her eyes and \u201cdefinitely disastrous\u201d for her pillows, but it helps her \u201cturn into television Miriam\u201d at a moment\u2019s notice if, say, she\u2019s forgotten she\u2019s meant to be at a public event.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Thursday and she\u2019s on Prime Time tonight, so I find myself assessing the eyes of one of Ireland\u2019s leading current affairs broadcasters five minutes after sitting down with her, then seeking an important clarification about the need for midweek top-ups (only if it\u2019s gone \u201cmessy\u201d).<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t my plan for the interview. But then in Miriam: Life, Work, Everything, she lets readers in, and her make-up custom seems to depart from another aspect of her personality, which is that she is the opposite of lazy when it comes to most things, from work prep to decluttering. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a thing about untidiness. It\u2019s like my brain works better when there\u2019s no clutter \u2013 in my bedroom everything is quite sparse.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the memoir, O\u2019Callaghan says she is competitive (as most journalists are), a creature of habit (she has toast, cheese and a glass of red wine after every Prime Time), adept at switching off from work (playing the piano helps), prone to stress before big election debates (the seven-way presidential debate in 2011 was \u201cthe worst\u201d) and \u201cnormally calm\u201d in tricky personal situations, except when it\u2019s anything to do with her children.<\/p>\n

Penguin Sandycove, her publisher, wanted her to write a memoir 20 years ago \u2013 there was even a contract \u2013 but then she had her eighth child, and life was too hectic to proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, interestingly, I decided not to write it. I made a firm decision. Like all my decisions,\u201d she says, smiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was wondering how I would write it without upsetting people. Because I\u2019m no Prince Harry. I was never going to write a book that upset people, and yet I wanted it to be honest, so it was kind of a hard one.\u201d<\/p>\n

But after Patricia Deevy, her editor in Penguin, told her at the Irish Book Awards in 2023 that if she didn\u2019t do it then, she never would, O\u2019Callaghan went to her desk in the top bedroom of her Rathmines home at 5.30am the next day and started to write.<\/p>\n

On advice from Deevy, she didn\u2019t share the finished memoir with everyone in her family in advance, but Steve Carson, her husband of 25 years, did read it beforehand, as did the family of her late sister Anne, while she showed her ex-husband Tom McGurk and his wife Caroline Kennedy \u201cthe bits of the book about them, because I thought that was important\u201d.<\/p>\n

She reiterates that she was never going to emulate those memoirists who \u201ckind of throw a grenade into people\u2019s lives\u201d.<\/p>\n

Two themes that do emerge are that a lot happened to her at a relatively young age and that the pivotal event in her life, what she calls her \u201cBC and AD\u201d, was the death of Anne.<\/p>\n

\"CatherineCatherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys with Miriam O\u2019Callaghan and Sarah McInerney in the Prime Time studio. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

O\u2019Callaghan, who is now 65, is the second of five children born to Jerry, from Co Kerry, and Miriam, aka \u201cthe real Miriam O\u2019Callaghan\u201d, from Co Laois. Her father was a civil servant, while her mother, now 97, was a teacher who became principal of St Brigid\u2019s national school in Cabinteely in Dublin, close to their home in Cornelscourt.<\/p>\n

She started at St Brigid\u2019s \u201cway too young\u201d at the age of 3\u00bd, and was reserved as a teen to the point of being \u201cclearly extremely odd\u201d at times. On summer holidays in Killarney, she and her sisters would go to a local disco, but O\u2019Callaghan would head straight to the loo, lock the door and stay there for the entire night.<\/p>\n

I ask if she thinks her shyness was a product of always being younger than her classmates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, because I don\u2019t reflect enough. I\u2019ve been forced to reflect, obviously, but I don\u2019t believe in reflection. But I think it\u2019s because my older sister [Margaret] was exceptionally brilliant, and then Anne came the year after me and she was a movie star, in every way beautiful, and highly intelligent. I just got slightly sandwiched. Not in a bad way.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t ready to make the most of college life when she started UCD law at just 16, and she began to lose weight, becoming \u201cunhealthily thin\u201d. It wasn\u2019t anorexia, she writes, but her eating was disordered for several years.<\/p>\n

\n

It all just seemed clear to me that this was my only life. This was it, and I owed it to myself<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Miriam O’Callaghan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She was 19 when she met McGurk. A well-known journalist in his early 30s, he swept her off her feet and showed her \u201ca fascinating side to Ireland\u201d, bringing her to the funeral of hunger striker Bobby Sands. It was the first time she had seen a dead person.<\/p>\n

They moved to London in 1982 \u2013 marrying (in Dublin) the following year \u2013 but to practise law in the UK would have required further study, so she stopped being a solicitor and tried other things before a serendipitous dinner-party mention of a researcher job on This Is Your Life led to an interview at Thames Television. When the first-choice candidate turned it down, that was it \u2013 she got her foot in the door.<\/p>\n

The show, on which presenter Eamonn Andrews surprised people with a review of their life, was her \u201chappiest work time\u201d, but after giving birth to her first child, Alannah, ambitions to pursue serious journalism kicked in. A stint on Thames\u2019s Reporting London was followed by a producer job at the BBC, then she joined Newsnight as a reporter in 1989.<\/p>\n

She had been lured back to Dublin to present RT\u00c9 economics show Marketplace, while still freelancing for the BBC\u2019s Newsnight, when her life changed: Anne, younger by 17 months, was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She died six months later, in February 1995, aged 33.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still … It\u2019s so weird, I still get upset. It\u2019s just because she was such a special person,\u201d she says, grief entering her voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad\u2019s generation always thought that if you work really hard, life will reward you, and my mum would still say God is good. But I realised then that, no, life is unfair. It came along, it kicked my parents in the face and it robbed her of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She likes talking about Anne as it helps keep her memory alive. The photographs she has included with the book do that too, and her most cherished one shows her and Anne with their second babies, Clara and Lizzie.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam O\u2019Callaghan and sister Anne with their babies Clara and Lizzie. Photograph: Penguin Random House UK <\/p>\n

\u201cTo be fair to Tom, he was taking them, and I said, \u2018Ah, Tom, stop taking photographs, we\u2019re wrecked.\u2019 I was giving out to him. He ignored me. Thank God, I always say to him, he ignored me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight weeks after Anne died, her father had a stroke as he was arranging to get her memorial card printed. He died soon after.<\/p>\n

During this \u201cannus horribilis\u201d, she became a stronger person. Determined not to waste time being unhappy, she decided to separate from McGurk, writing that she \u201cjust knew it was the right thing to do\u201d. She and their four daughters moved out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all just seemed clear to me that this was my only life. This was it, and I owed it to myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She and Carson \u2013 now a senior RT\u00c9 executive \u2013 became a couple in 1996, though she thinks she might have fallen in love with him when they first met at the National Famine Museum in Strokestown, Co Roscommon, a year earlier.<\/p>\n

They had been paired up to make a Newsnight film about the 150th anniversary of the famine, and O\u2019Callaghan was taken with his \u201ckind face\u201d. On a long drive, after she said she was worried about Anne\u2019s daughters, he opened up to her about losing his mother when he was four.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam O\u2019Callaghan’s second wedding day, in November 2000, to Steve Carson. Photograph: Penguin Random House UK <\/p>\n

Her extraction of Carson\u2019s life story within hours of meeting him was a sign of the deftness she would later display on some compelling, emotion-laden TV and radio. O\u2019Callaghan became RT\u00c9\u2019s queen of the personal question, so much so that after Brian Lenihan jnr cried on Radio 1\u2019s Miriam Meets about the loss of his younger brother Mark to leukaemia when they were children, colleagues rechristened her show \u201cMiriam Weeps\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Prime Time, she honed a confident \u201ciron fist in a velvet glove\u201d style, but on radio and her TV chatshow, empathy became her calling card. People trusted her to be sensitive, and it helped her secure one of her most famous interviews in 2015 when Leo Varadkar became the first serving minister to come out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what you call a scoop as well,\u201d she says, adding that she has read Varadkar\u2019s memoir to double-check she was first choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you wonder if they\u2019ve gone out to five other people and I\u2019m far down the list. Miss Competitive Miriam. But, no, they came to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a less happy episode, scammers exploited her profile, unleashing a stream of fake Facebook ads that lied about her being \u201cdrunk on air, dragged out of the studio, fired\u201d to dupe people into buying a non-existent face cream she was allegedly selling to turn around her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe that. I still can\u2019t,\u201d she says incredulously. <\/p>\n

It was only after she lawyered up that the scams went away and people stopped sympathising with her for being fired. Facebook owner Meta eventually apologised and made a financial settlement.<\/p>\n

Maybe she should do a face cream for real though?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funny thing is loads of people said to me I should launch a face cream, because [the fake one] sold very well. That\u2019ll be my next initiative!\u201d<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, everyone else is at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Congrats to him on having his great career, but my career is my career. The day of the patriarchy is dead<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Miriam O’Callaghan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there\u2019s only thing O\u2019Callaghan would advertise if she could.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love epidurals. I even get excited thinking about them. Because all the pain goes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people don\u2019t want to have them, that\u2019s completely their business, but for me it would be like a man having his leg amputated without an anaesthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her memoir is generous with details of everything from her hormone replacement therapy to her favoured dermatologists. She knows that, having gone on to have four sons with Carson, being a mother of eight is \u201ca source of endless fascination\u201d, and what she understatedly calls \u201ca lot of obstetric experience\u201d is the subject of chapters on pregnancy and childbirth that should prove either relatable or illuminating to readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy gynae, Prof Colm O\u2019Herlihy, said to me, \u2018I think you\u2019ve had virtually every type of childbirth emergency.\u2019 I said, \u2018Colm, if you say it, it must be true\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most dramatic birth was that of Jamie, her youngest, in February 2006. She had woken up 21 weeks into her pregnancy to bloodied sheets, and even after being shown he had a strong heartbeat, she was inconsolable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just kept thinking, I cannot believe this boy will survive. It\u2019s one of my really bad points, I\u2019m really black and white in life. There\u2019s way too little grey in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam O\u2019Callaghan with husband Steve and their son Jamie in Holles Street Hospital, February 2006. Photograph: Penguin Random House UK <\/p>\n

Her despair prompted O\u2019Herlihy to instruct her to \u201ccop yourself on, Miriam\u201d, and she believes this intervention saved Jamie\u2019s life. After four months of bed rest \u2013 the haemorrhage was caused by a condition called placenta previa \u2013 she gave birth. But the story didn\u2019t end there, as while she was in the post-delivery room, a journalist she recognised walked in, seeking a quote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was hallucinating. I thought it was the epidural. Like, I was waiting to be stitched when I saw him, and I said to him, \u2018Are you for real?\u2019 He said, \u2018No, Miriam, everyone was so worried, and this is going to be a really happy story.\u2019 I told him if he didn\u2019t leave, I was going to scream.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she felt sorry for him, too, thinking \u201cwhat an awful job\u201d. He apologised to her later, she says, and she knows he had an editor leaning on him. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t care. I had my happy baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now a grandmother of two, she\u2019s keen to dispel any impression she was ever \u201csome kind of superwoman\u201d, and the memoir pays tribute to the childcare providers she has employed, while acknowledging that not everyone can afford to do this.<\/p>\n

I tell her I haven\u2019t read a memoir by a male celebrity where they outlined similar levels of gratitude for their childminders. She can\u2019t think of any either.<\/p>\n

But she just wanted to thank them?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I couldn\u2019t do what I do without them. It\u2019s funny when you see big stars coming off their private jet holding all their children, and you just know there\u2019s a posse of nannies in the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the strangest saga to revisit now is \u201cReceptiongate\u201d, in which she and several other RT\u00c9 presenters posed for photographs with a retiring staff member in November 2020, breaching social-distancing guidelines. Garda\u00ed investigated the impromptu gathering, ultimately determining that no Covid-era law had been broken.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the most stressful moment of my entire career,\u201d she says. \u201cI had messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n

It triggered a \u201csurreal\u201d 90-minute interview with two detectives, at the end of which she cried.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because one of them very nicely asked me if I was okay. I was fine up to then, but then I just started to cry. I burst into tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask if she would describe herself as a crier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t cry all day or anything, but if something upsets me, I\u2019ll cry. I don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She still cries about Anne, and she cried writing the memoir, in part because she realised she hadn\u2019t fully grieved for her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I cried for my dad, because I\u2019ve cried so much for Anne, and I thought, \u2018Oh, I love you, Dad, sorry you got forgotten\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I have killed this rumour so many times. It\u2019s kind of an interesting narrative of how a story doesn\u2019t go away<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Miriam O’Callaghan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She wakes up \u201cannoyingly enthusiastic\u201d every day because she loves her two regular gigs for RT\u00c9 \u2013 Prime Time and Sunday with Miriam \u2013 and she recently renewed her contract, though an intriguing footnote in the book discloses that Virgin Media Television tried to poach her sometime before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably not the best negotiating strategy in the world to say I love what I do, but that\u2019s what I feel. So even when I got that offer from Virgin Media, and it was a financially good offer, I didn\u2019t bother saying it to RT\u00c9. They\u2019ll be reading that for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the day we meet, D\u00e1il-watchers are tipping her younger brother, Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan, to succeed Miche\u00e1l Martin, lending extra pertinence to the book\u2019s rejection of \u201castonishing\u201d suggestions last January \u2013 though not from within RT\u00c9 \u2013 that his appointment to the Cabinet might jeopardise her role.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it is a red-line feminist issue. I am a woman who has worked very hard in her career and, thankfully, I have a good career. Glorious at times, you know? Why should my career be impacted by a man? Congrats to him on having his great career, but my career is my career. The day of the patriarchy is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if he did become leader of Fianna F\u00e1il or Taoiseach and he came on Prime Time, how would it work?<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wouldn\u2019t interview him. It\u2019s so simple, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of high office, stubborn speculation that she fancies relocating to \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in has now been going for 15 years, yet she has never herself raised the possibility of running for president, nor has she ever met anyone about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have killed this rumour so many times. It\u2019s kind of an interesting narrative of how a story doesn\u2019t go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s because people think she would be good at it?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, thank you. But never. Never. That is a definite.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she would like to do is travel. \u201cI\u2019m a bit of a homebird, but Steve would love to go to a few different places, so we probably will. Nothing too exotic or far.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalls the joy of doing nothing on a flight to Las Vegas for Alannah\u2019s hen. \u201cI asked for two vodkas, and I sat there and watched movies non-stop for 11 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam O\u2019Callaghan with her mum Miriam at Queen\u2019s University Belfast,
\nNovember 2024. Photograph: Penguin Random House UK <\/p>\n

Near the end of our chat, she demonstrates her tidying-up instincts by clearing away our coffee debris, then she says she intends to call in to her mother, \u201cthe real Miriam\u201d, in Cornelscourt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ring her every night when I\u2019m coming home from Prime Time, just to say goodnight, and she\u2019ll very willingly tell me if she didn\u2019t like my jacket or wasn\u2019t mad about a question. I\u2019m going, \u2018No, you\u2019ve never lost it, Mum.\u2019 I know she won\u2019t be well when she stops doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week later, she posts a photograph of her mother holding her memoir and, like many of her Instagram posts, this makes headlines. The book seems poised to fly out of shops. Still, as I say goodbye, she\u2019s swearing she\u2019ll never do another.<\/p>\n

She wrote this one quickly \u201cto get it over with\u201d, because she\u2019s \u201callergic\u201d to looking back. One of her daughters has told her therapists would love to get hold of her, but that\u2019s not her scene. Live for today, forget about yesterday\u2019s mistakes and move on to tomorrow is her mantra \u2013 it\u2019s worked out pretty well for her so far.<\/p>\n

Miriam: Life, Work, Everything by Miriam O\u2019Callaghan is published by Penguin Sandycove<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miriam O\u2019Callaghan has been doing one thing since she was a schoolgirl that \u201cno one can believe\u201d. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[3412,18,117,19,17,26735,34886,361,16035,1181,78533],"class_list":{"0":"post-154990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jim-ocallaghan","14":"tag-leo-varadkar","15":"tag-magazine","16":"tag-miriam-o-callaghan","17":"tag-rte","18":"tag-steve-carson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115468036739393010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154990","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=154990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}