Best-selling author Marian Keyes says she finds it odd when readers ask her for relationship advice and share their romance woes with her.
Speaking on The Late Late Show, the 53-year-old Limerick-born novelist, who married Tony Baines in 1995, told Ryan Tubridy that she was "disastrous" at dating before she met her husband.
"I sort of feel it is bizarre because I know nothing. I was the queen of disastrous relationships until I met himself. I have no wisdom. People say, 'You know I love him, like I do. I mean, I really love him. But the sound of him eating an apple makes me want to bury an axe in his head. Is that normal?'.
"Or people say 'Yeah, I love him and we are newly married, but there's this man in work and every time I meet him, I just get the butterflies'".
She continued, "I have a lovely friend who says to me she never feels right until she has a work crush. She is happily coupled up and has no intentions of acting on it, but it just brightens up her day. It's like having a Mars bar or something - it gives you a lift."
When asked why she doesn't talk about her other half more, Keyes said she doesn't want to seem smug.
"People will say 'Oh look at her - smug aul yoke. I'm afraid God will be looking down on me going 'smug woman, make something terrible happen immediately," she added.
Keyes has sold over 35 million copies of her twelve novels to date and her work has been translated into 36 languages.
She has also written three collections of journalism, Under the Duvet, Further Under the Duvet and Making it Up as I Go Along.
The latter collection made the number one spot in the Irish book charts in 2016. Her experiences of depression were recounted in the memoir, Saved by Cake.
