Eurovision legend Niamh Kavanagh has said she was "ill-prepared" to win the competition in 1993, saying she struggled with the level of fame it brought.
The Dublin singer appears in the latest episode of the new series of Keys To My Life, the RTÉ show in which presenter Brendan Courtney meets Irish personalities who reveal how the places they've lived in have shaped their lives.
Visiting Kavanagh in the Antrim seaside town of Carrickfergus where she lives with her husband Paul and their two sons Jack and Tom, Courtney brings Kavanagh on a journey from her childhood home in Glasnevin, through her early brush with fame as the voice behind the Grammy-winning Commitments album.
"I was so grateful for the opportunity to do something so magnificent," she told Courtney of being part of the iconic film's soundtrack. "And then in 1992, we went to New York and sang at the Grammys because the album was nominated. It was so fun.
"Weirdly, The Commitments helped me because I was learning my trade. So by the time Eurovision came I'd already done a lot and was still loving it and learning about who I was. I got the best gift I cold have got out of it, which was to use my voice."
In 1993, aged just 25-years-old, Kavanagh won the Eurovision Song Contest with the power-ballad In Your Eyes, which became the biggest selling single in Ireland for 10 years.
She struggled in the aftermath of the win.
"When I won I was a little bit ill-prepared for it because I was a voice-for-hire before that and then I suddenly had to become an artist, which was a very different animal," she said.
"I was thrown into this level of working, because I was signed to a record deal and suddenly had to decide what I wanted to do with that and I was travelling so much I was hardly home.
"Within a year I had travelled so much that I had a panic attack in a hotel one night, because I missed people knowing me as a person. There was nobody that called me Niamh, I was Ms Kavanagh everywhere. I did struggle because I wasn't ready for that."
The resilient and optimistic star also opened up about her husband Paul's stroke in 2018.
"I was on stage in Cork and I got a call from Jack, who was 17-years-of-age, to say that they brought Paul to the hospital, he had a stroke," she said.
"They basically saved his life. It was quite a moment - one day I was standing on stage, in full voice, feeling really good about what was happening. The next day I was sitting with a folder trying to understand about strokes and trying to make Paul understand that it was going to be ok.
"It's been a lovely gift because we discovered we still enjoy each other. We were able to use our friendship and our love to find the sweet spot again, because we had to."
Keys To My Life airs on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player at 8:30pm on Sunday, 21 September.
