{"id":277386,"date":"2026-01-10T08:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/277386\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:34:08","slug":"it-broke-my-mothers-heart-when-i-turned-down-a-college-place-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/277386\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It broke my mother\u2019s heart when I turned down a college place\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura Fox<\/a> has her schedule for the year \u201ccompartmentalised\u201d in her head. The presenter\u2019s star has been rising at RT\u00c9<\/a> in each of the past four years, but 2026 promises to be \u201cjam-packed\u201d off-air as well as on, and she\u2019s \u201cbroken it up into different blocks\u201d so it doesn\u2019t feel overwhelming.<\/p>\n

From January to March, the 35-year-old from Galway has five mornings a week on 2FM and weekends working on Dancing with the Stars<\/a>. She will get married to long-term boyfriend Brian Moran in April, then \u2013 \u201cfingers crossed\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s straight into a summer of \u201cmammoth\u201d shooting days for Ireland Fittest Family<\/a> on RT\u00c9 before the couple\u2019s wedding celebrations in Rome in August. After two weeks off, she\u2019s \u201cright back into it\u201d with 2FM\u2019s coverage of Electric Picnic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this, plus the frustrations of house-hunting in Dublin<\/a>. It\u2019s not surprising that \u201chow\u2019s next October?\u201d is her instinctive response whenever people suggest meeting up for coffee. But she\u2019s absolutely not complaining. \u201cLucky\u201d is a word that recurs throughout our conversation, \u201copportunity\u201d another. She\u2019s conscious that Irish television and radio gigs don\u2019t come along every day and has made sure to embrace them whenever they do.<\/p>\n

Fox has open, artifice-free vibes that match her live-broadcasting material. \u201cIt\u2019s all light entertainment, and that\u2019s exactly who I am,\u201d she says, laughing as naturally as she does on radio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI laugh all the time on air. My friends listen to the show, and they will say, \u2018That\u2019s exactly what she\u2019s like in real life.\u2019 I feel like the only way I\u2019m ever going to survive in this industry is just by being myself. Because if I start to feign it and be someone else, I\u2019m never going to be able to keep the facade up.\u201d<\/p>\n

On her presenting debut Fox proved a great fit for Dancing with the Stars, establishing a comfortable rapport with co-host Jennifer Zamparelli and the cast as the series, filmed in Font Hill Studios in south-west Dublin, returned to RT\u00c9 One for its ninth season last Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had an absolute ball,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m so proud to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But was she nervous?<\/p>\n

\u201cI had good nerves, I think. There would be something wrong if I didn\u2019t have some nerves walking down those stairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds like the hardest part might be winding down afterwards \u2013 on Sunday night, the adrenaline meant she didn\u2019t. After she got home to her couch, she was unable to do or concentrate on anything save talk to Moran about how it had all gone. \u201dI was on cloud nine.”<\/p>\n

She finally got into bed at 12.30am, rising early for her radio show.<\/p>\n

\"LauraRT\u00c9 presenter Laura Fox has a busy year ahead. Photograph: Barry McCall <\/p>\n

Dancing with the Stars is a dream gig for Fox, who has watched the show \u201csince day dot\u201d and also competed on it in 2024, reaching the final.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be able to stand in for a year [for Doireann Garrihy, who is on maternity leave] and have a go at the glitzy floor and the lovely set-up and not be standing in a field in wellies is something I was never going to turn down,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Doing \u201cDoireann\u2019s job\u201d means she\u2019s \u201cup in the box\u201d chatting with the celebrities and their professional partners after they come off the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how they\u2019re feeling. I know the sweet relief of not messing up, and if they have messed up, I can let them know I\u2019ve been there too.\u201d<\/p>\n

She expects presenting will be \u201c100 per cent easier\u201d than dancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s incredibly hard work, because it\u2019s physical, it\u2019s mental, it\u2019s hours upon hours of using your body, trying to learn all these new things and work a job on top of it, all while thinking you could get voted out in the second week. Whereas now it\u2019s like, \u2018Let\u2019s go in and have a lovely time for ourselves.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her favourite dance was the Charleston, for which she and professional partner Denys Samson received full marks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to do the Charleston so bad that every week when I got given my dance and it wasn\u2019t the Charleston, I was worrying that I wouldn\u2019t make it through and get to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She loved the Charleston and the Latin dances because they suited her \u201cquite bouncy and quite excitable\u201d personality \u2013 Brian Redmond, one of the judges, dubbed her \u201cvivacious Laura\u201d. She dreaded the ballroom ones, but told herself to enjoy every last second of the experience. Bottom of the leaderboard one week, she was saved by the public vote, which was \u201cnearly a nicer feeling\u201d than being at the top.<\/p>\n

Competing on the show was \u201ckind of nonstop\u201d and that could be stressful, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way that you can do anything 100 per cent all the time and not have a little bit of a wobble. In the weeks when my period was happening, I was just like, \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 For me, with my cycle, it\u2019s the three days beforehand that I can nearly choke on the anxiety of what\u2019s happening. And then I get my period, and I\u2019m fine. I realise it\u2019s just my cycle that is actually making me feel like I\u2019m losing the will here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Fox and her dance partner Denys Samson during Dancing with the Stars. Photograph: Kyran O\u2019Brien\/kobpix <\/p>\n

The upside of waiting to do the Charleston was that she was a better dancer when it did come along, and she and Samson were able to put more tricks into their routine. \u201cNow if you ask me to do it in the morning, I would not be able to at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thrill of dancing live may be gone, but the thrill of presenting live is the day job she loves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely adore radio so much, and that\u2019s live all the time. You can never predict what\u2019s actually going to happen. On my show we have a plan. We put in a lot of work to make sure we know where we\u2019re going, but you still don\u2019t know where an interviewee or a caller is going to take you. Live telly is exactly the same, except you can\u2019t hide your face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox, who inherited her 2FM slot<\/a> from Zamparelli when she decided to leave the station in May 2024, wants listeners to feel they are part of her show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never want anyone to just have disdain or an uneasy feeling listening to it. That\u2019s not what we\u2019re about, you know? There\u2019s so much going on in the world that is full of doom and gloom, and we need to be well-informed about that, but we also need an escape.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has settled into the slot \u2013 regular features include a fun headline-review segment called \u201cWhat the Fox?\u201d \u2013 but when she initially stepped in for Zamparelli for six weeks while she was on leave, she had no idea it would become her gig.<\/p>\n

\"JenniferJennifer Zamparelli and Laura Fox, presenters of Dancing with the Stars 2026. Photograph: Barry McCall <\/p>\n

\u201cI was getting to cover 9am to [noon] and I was absolutely delighted, but I was already preparing interviews and segments for my weekend show for when I went back to it. Then I just never left.\u201d<\/p>\n

People think 2FM is bigger than it is, she says, but there\u2019s only \u201c20-something of us\u201d in the building, so everybody knows everybody. She feels lucky to work in a pop-music station, being \u201cpop through and through\u201d. She racked up an impressive 161,000 minutes, or 111 days, of listening on Spotify last year \u2013 Sabrina Carpenter was her top artist \u2013 and Spotify Wrapped told her she had a \u201clistening age\u201d of 33, not far off her actual one.<\/p>\n

She felt lucky growing up, too. Fox\u2019s mother, a young single parent, moved into a house in Galway city with another woman who had a daughter the same age, and she has fond memories of \u201ctwo really hard-working mams\u201d throwing twice-yearly birthday parties for all the kids on their estate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were like the happiest years of my life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Her mother later got married and the family moved to Moylough, Fox gaining two younger brothers and a sister, who are \u201cabsolutely fantastic\u201d, she says, and have \u201cmore responsible jobs\u201d than her.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I always look at my mam and think, Look at what you did in the \u201990s and look at how amazing it was and how happy I turned out. I\u2019m just so grateful for everything that she sorted for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wanted to work in the media from an early age. \u201cGod knows,\u201d she says, when I ask why this ambition planted itself in her mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I just grew up with linear traditional media. We didn\u2019t have social media. Like, I had Bebo, but you had to use a dial-up connection to get on to that. I remember listening to different radio shows at night in my bedroom when I was a teenager, because I wasn\u2019t scrolling TikTok \u2013 I was reading magazines, and I loved it. I could never wrap my head around the fact that it was somebody\u2019s job. They actually got paid to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She got a place on a science course but decided not to accept it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt broke my mother\u2019s heart, but I kept saying that I had scraped a pass in biology and hadn\u2019t done any other science in the Leaving, so I knew it was never going to work out. To me it was a waste of money \u2013 money my mother would have had to pay for me to go to college. I just couldn\u2019t have that guilt on my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mother has always been \u201c100 per cent supportive\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut she\u2019s a parent and she was terrified, because every school report came back and said, \u2018She\u2019s a lovely girl but her head\u2019s in the clouds.\u2019 She kind of thought, Oh my God, how are you going to make ends meet? How are you going to make a living? But I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

When me and Brian got engaged, I woke up the next morning and said, \u2018Oh, I paid the deposit for our wedding.\u2019 I don\u2019t mess around<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Laura Fox<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She moved to London aged 20 and worked in bars there before returning home two years later to figure out her next moves. \u201cI worked in every bar and every restaurant, and I did retail, and I made sure I always had enough coming in, but I still had this tunnel vision of where I wanted to be and where I wanted to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had \u201ca ball\u201d doing beauty pageants, winning Miss Galway in 2013, competing in Miss Ireland and claiming the title Miss Sunday World, the newspaper\u2019s \u201cfoxy lady\u201d headline writing itself. She had no industry connections and this was all part of her bid to make some.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that I wouldn\u2019t be here if I hadn\u2019t done the Miss Galway competitions and the Miss Ireland competitions, but I think it would have taken me a little bit longer. My whole schtick going into these things was that I didn\u2019t really care about winning. I just want to get myself in front of people and pick their brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her first break in media arrived after she applied for an unpaid internship at Galway Bay FM, learning everything she could at the station and ending up on air. But Dublin was calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought if I didn\u2019t leave then, I never would, and I wanted to try my hand and see if I could make it into 2FM, because that\u2019s what I\u2019d listened to growing up. I was just really and truly winging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While working as a social-media manager for brands, she met a photographer who put her in touch with someone in RT\u00c9 Pulse, a digital station that has since closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spammed them with emails for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I got myself in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the people she made friends with was the late 2FM presenter Alan McQuillan. \u201cAl told me I would be brilliant on the 2FM entertainment news. He said, \u2018Let\u2019s see if we can get you on there.\u2019 I sent in demos, and then it was just lucky breaks. I suppose I made myself usable, in that I could run a [radio] desk and was able to step in to do contributor bits, but I was also able to run a show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Fox with Sonia O’Sullivan, Donncha O’Callaghan, Anna Geary and Davy Fitzgerald for Ireland’s Fittest Family 2024. Photograph: RT\u00c9 <\/p>\n

She got her own 2FM weekend show in 2022. A year later she screen-tested for Ireland\u2019s Fittest Family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I wouldn\u2019t get it, because I hadn\u2019t done huge TV before, but it was an opportunity to be in the right rooms with the right people,\u201d she says. Previously, her main TV work had been co-presenting the schools fashion competition Junk Kouture, alongside best friend Emma Power.<\/p>\n

If other TV roles come up in the future, she will \u201c100 per cent consider them\u201d, she says, but she hasn\u2019t thought beyond the next 1\u00bd years and is \u201coverwhelmingly happy\u201d with what she has.<\/p>\n

Her work commitments meant the only time she could do a hen party \u201cproperly\u201d \u2013 five days in Las Vegas, with a crew of 17 \u2013 was at the end of October.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the time of our lives. Everyone was just so ready for Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of her wedding admin is \u201cdone and dusted\u201d too. \u201cI\u2019m very decisive when I know what I want. When me and Brian got engaged [in August 2024], I woke up the next morning and said, \u2018Oh, I paid the deposit for our wedding.\u2019 I don\u2019t mess around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moran, a fellow Galwegian who works in Intel, would have married her 10 years ago, she says, but she wanted to get her career on track first.<\/p>\n

If she wasn\u2019t working in broadcasting, what would she be doing?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my God, I\u2019d love to be in veterinary, or something to do with animals. I think that would be the only other thing that I would be content in and happy to be working in every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hesitantly ask about pets. Fox has spoken on air about her grief for Thor, her French bulldog, who died suddenly last July after a seizure, and the reminder of his loss brings those emotions to the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the hardest part was that there had been nothing wrong with him. I mean, I brought him to the vet when he had a runny nose and I also brought him when I thought he had a tick bite and the vet laughed at me and was like, \u2018That\u2019s his nipple, Laura.\u2019 I always looked after him and made sure that he was okay, but these things just happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talk about house-hunting. She\u2019s at the point where she would love to paint her own walls, choose bathroom tiles, reach the next stage of life. She and Moran \u201ckind of scroll Daft the way we scroll TikTok\u201d, but so far they can see nothing in their price range.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe that it will happen,\u201d she says brightly, though tears silently spill out, her mind on the memory of Thor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think I could love any dog so much. I\u2019ve lost dogs before in my life, but it was never to the level of what this dog was for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lots of people will relate to how she feels, I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually one of the things I couldn\u2019t get over was how many people of different ages, women and men, who said, \u2018Oh my God, you\u2019re saying exactly what I\u2019m feeling.\u2019 I think we sometimes feel a bit guilty for being this upset about losing a pet, even though they\u2019re around you all day, and your routine is based around what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cit\u2019s life\u201d, Fox says, and soon she\u2019s onto her next engagement.<\/p>\n

When someone said \u201csee you next week\u201d to her after the first Dancing with the Stars last week, she joyfully remembered she has 10 more live shows to go. This Sunday, she will be back out at Font Hill at about 8.30am, entering the calm of the hair and make-up room in the knowledge that the production is a \u201cwell-oiled machine\u201d and that the best part arrives when the cameras go live.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s live, that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dancing With the Stars is on RT\u00c9 One on Sundays. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura Fox has her schedule for the year \u201ccompartmentalised\u201d in her head. The presenter\u2019s star has been rising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,5071,18,13,14,6,19,17,92143,133434,11,12,61956,361,15,16,5,1181,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-277386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dancing-with-the-stars","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-ireland-s-fittest-families","18":"tag-jennifer-zamparelli","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-laura-fox","22":"tag-magazine","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-rte","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115869887293228048","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277386","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=277386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}