Broadcaster Miriam O'Callaghan’s lust for life, informed by the loss of her sister, is realised in her charity work as well as a career that’s busier than ever. She talks to Donal O’Donoghue about Face Up to Cancer, RTÉ’s recent controversies and why she’d love to host an Irish version of The Traitors.
"I’ve always wanted to keep the name of my sister alive," says Miriam O’Callaghan of her sibling, Anne, who was 33 when she died from cancer in 1995. Down the years, the broadcaster has done this, most recently in her role as an ambassador for Face Up to Cancer, a fundraising charity campaign where people share their stories, just as Miriam shares hers.
"Anne was only sick for about six months. She had two little girls, aged four and two, and a fantastic husband. I’m also conscious that I have a huge family, including my Mum, and they don’t get to say how much they miss Anne. But that story never gets better; it just gets sad. Steve, my husband, was only four when his mother died of cancer, and he has said that while his loss was overwhelming, what of those who died of cancer and had their lives stolen from them while we keep on living?’"
O’Callaghan’s zest for life owes much to such loss. "Everything changed for me when Anne died," she says. "People sweat the small stuff, and everyone will tell you that I don’t. I do live TV all the time and occasionally things fall apart, but I realise in such moments those things don’t really matter. It’s a TV show, I want to do my best, but nobody has died. And that is my mantra: no one has died or is very ill, so all is fine."
At home in Dublin, she has a cherished photograph of her sister. "It was taken in my kitchen, and we look wrecked as we both just had new babies, which we are holding. My little Clara was two months old, and Anne’s little girl Lizzie was a few weeks younger. Today, Lizzie and Clara are best friends and I think that there is a beautiful symmetry about that."
I first met Miriam O’Callaghan in November 1992. It was on the eve of a general election, and she was the only woman among three men (John Bowman, Brian Farrell and Pat Kenny) on the election cover of the RTÉ Guide. At the time, O’Callaghan was based in London, married to her first husband, Tom McGurk, and working full-time with the BBC’s Newsnight. She was also presenting the consumer programme, Marketplace, on RTÉ.
"And I was pregnant with another child," she adds. Thirty-two years on, much has changed. She is now a mother of eight (four girls with McGurk and four boys with her second husband, Steve Carson) and is as busy as ever. Apart from Prime Time, she hosts the radio chat show, Sunday with Miriam, supports a number of charities and has designs on anchoring an RTÉ version of the smash reality show, The Traitors.
The last time we spoke was in RTÉ last June. "Have you heard the news?" asked Miriam that Thursday lunchtime. Earlier that day, O’Callaghan and her Prime Time colleagues had been briefed on the Ryan Tubridy payments, the beginning of a crisis that would engulf the station. "I remember sitting in that briefing room having an out-of-body experience and thinking 'Is this real?’," she says now.
"And then realising that I would have to present a Prime Time show on it later that night. Now my overwhelming emotion is sadness. I’m fond of almost everyone in RTÉ, just as I’m incredibly fond of the organisation. I believe RTÉ does so much good work and sure yes, it has failings, but very few organisations in this country make programmes like we do and will continue to do."
Some seven months later; the story has moved from the front pages but its legacy continues to resonate. "I'm hoping the damage won’t be long-lasting and I believe it won’t be," says O’Callaghan. "All of us in broadcasting must reconfigure how we work but ultimately, RTÉ has many brilliant people." Did she get much flak in person or online in the wake of the scandal?
"People were so nice, asking ‘Are you OK?’ which makes me wonder ‘Maybe I’m not OK?’. But I feel sorry for everyone involved. I believe that lessons have been learned. I also believe that no one comes into work in any job to mess things up or create a scandal. As I say, my overwhelming emotion for most people involved in this is one of great sadness. And will it have a legacy? I think it will but ultimately, I believe, for the better."
Miriam O’Callaghan is in her 65th year but looks years younger, with the energy to match. "I might not be doing a Barbara Walters and working into my 90s but I’m not going anywhere soon," she says. As a contractor with RTÉ, she’s not tied to the statutory staff retirement age.
"People rarely ask George Clooney if he is retiring and I’m not saying that you’re being sexist in asking me that, but if George Clooney plans to make movies into his 80s, nobody ask him about retirement," she says to the ‘R’ word question. "Hannah Waddingham was also recently asked a question about age and turned it on its head. It’s one last bastion that people need to be pulled up on. I have eight children and a lot of people would have said to me ‘There’s no way you can carry on with your career and have eight children.’ But I proved them wrong. Just saying."
Her husband Steve, who she married in 2000 after they first met at Strokestown a few years earlier (her wedding band is inscribed with letters ALWFS – ‘A Long Way from Strokestown’), is director at BBC Scotland. During the week, he is based in Glasgow (Miriam drops him to Dublin airport for a red eye flight on Monday mornings) while his wife holds the fort at home in Dublin. Tuesdays and Thursday are Prime Time, Wednesdays is time for her gal pals and on Sunday morning, she’s back in RTÉ to broadcast her radio show.
"I’m an unbelievably and annoyingly positive person," she says. "I feel incredibly lucky in my life and cannot believe that I threw the dice so many times (with motherhood) and maybe I didn’t think about it all that much, but I have eight healthy children. So how lucky am I? I ask myself that all the time."
But you make your own luck too. O’Callaghan, one of five siblings, was just 16 when she enrolled in UCD to study law. Later she moved to the UK, living in London for ten years, working with Thames Television and the BBC, before relocating back to Dublin and RTÉ. She doesn’t believe that her parents (her father, Jerry, died in 1995, her annus horribilis that also saw the break-up of her first marriage) instilled her with formidable drive, but they were always her rock. "My Mum, also Miriam, who is now in her 90s, is living with us and doing great. She could probably present Prime Time better than me!"
She’d have to get past Miriam Jr first. "Elections?" says Miriam. "I love them. I get excited even at the thought of them, except for those big debates which are always such a nightmare because they can be so stressful. But I do love elections, which are democracy at work. People should never take that for granted."
She’s fizzingly hopeful for the future, as if there can be no other way. "Look at the chances of being here in the first place, the randomness of being born, the luck involved," she says. "My Mum and Dad met, stars collided, and I arrived. I’m here and I’m so grateful every day that I am. I say that to my children all the time, and sometimes they look at me as if to say, ‘She’s gone off on one again’.
"My mantra is ‘Get up every day and make the most of it.’ Of course, I also understand there are people who struggle but as long as you aren’t unwell, get up, enjoy life and go party. A few months back, on a Friday afternoon, I was opening a bottle of cheap champagne when one of my sons asked: ‘Mum, what’s the occasion?’ And I just said: ‘Conor, it’s Friday!’ and he just thought that was the funniest thing."
So yes, Miriam O’Callaghan has no plans to ease back on the throttle any time soon. It’s part of her DNA: what she was, is and ever will be. "I’m trying to convince RTÉ to do The Traitors," she says (according to recent reports, Dublin-based production company Kite Entertainment has optioned the hit show, that aired recently on the BBC, for the Irish market with hopes that RTÉ will commission it).
"I’m obsessed with The Traitors, and I want to do a Claudia (Winkelman, host of the UK version). So right now, I’m channelling black leather jackets and all the rest. I want that job. I’m unashamedly out there on that. I went into a garage recently to get a tyre changed and the guy behind the counter said, ‘Myself and the wife were saying last night that you should present an Irish version of The Traitors!’ and I said, ‘Have you been reading my mind?’"
Miriam O’Callaghan is an ambassador for Face Up To Cancer, a fundraising campaign, asking people to upload their selfies and make a donation at faceuptocancer.ie, in support of cancer research and support services in partnership with three leading Irish cancer charities.
