Once again, Dáithí Ó Sé is back on his home turf to co-host one of the biggest shows on Irish TV. Donal O'Donoghue catches up a man seemingly in perpetual motion.
Some 30 hours after Kerry won their 39th All-Ireland, the phone rings. It’s Dáithí Ó Sé.
"I’m hanging in there by a thread," says the man from An Daingean after what was, I’m guessing, a mammoth celebration.
"Some win wasn’t it?" he asks, although being from the Cork side of the border, I can’t honestly comment.
"After the game, I was invited to travel south to Kerry with the team, but it was time to call a halt and get the show back on the road."
There’s always a show on the road for Ó Se, from the Today show to Seal le Daithi to presenting The Fleadh, but in this case he’s referring to the annual blockbuster that is the Rose of Tralee, an evergreen ratings monster that has its champions as well as its critics but is impossible to ignore, just like Ó Sé himself.
Four days before the All-Ireland, I met Dáithí in RTÉ: dapper in a tux and looking fit as a fiddle. "It’s the hair," he says, showing me a fine head of transplanted thatch. It’s more than that. Off the beer for the most part (excepting All-Irelands), in the gym most mornings (he was there at 7am the morning we spoke) and early to bed most evenings (that’s what a hyperactive 11-year-old does to you), he’s raring for road.
I suggest we talk after the Kerry-Donegal game, but he’s having none of it. "I’m out of circulation next week, but I’ll give you a ring after the game," he says (a man of his word), and he did. But first, the Zoom.
The following day – and three days before the All-Ireland – Ó Se is back home in south Galway, Zooming in from a room walls festooned with GAA memorabilia, including a framed jersey of local club St Thomas’s ("All-Ireland senior club champs from last year").
"There’s no football around here at all, so Micheál Óg (Óige) is mad into the hurling," he says of his son, with his wife Rita, the former New Jersey Rose. Over blurry Zoom, he still looks a million bucks.
"I’m 50 next year and it has been a huge confidence boost," he says of his hair, which arrived over two years ago. "I have two brothers, and they have fine heads of hair, and neither of them on TV. But sure, isn’t that always the way?"
It has been a hectic summer for Ó Se. "I finished the Today show on May 30, did 20 episodes of Seal le Daithí (his TG4 chat show returns this autumn) and after that I closed the gate and shut up shop."
Well, not exactly true. In the week before the All-Ireland, Ó Sé seemed to be everywhere. He was on Oliver Callan’s radio show jousting with Donegal’s Daniel O’Donnell on the eve of the All-Ireland, he was on Up for the Match talking Sam Maguire and on the day itself he was in Croke Park introducing the Jubilee Team (the previous weekend, for the hurling final, he was also in Croker doing a half-time spiel on the big screen with former Cork and Tipp players).
But that’s the lot of the freelance broadcaster, and no better buachaill than the man who worked various odds and jobs – including teacher and circus ringmaster – before finding his home in broadcasting.
This year, Rita and Micheál Óg will be in the Dome for both televised shows, a first for his son. "He has a velvet tux for the occasion, is getting his hair cut today and is very excited about going to the show, which he watched on TV last year."
I ask him if he sees his late father, the celebrated writer and musician, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé, in the ways and words of his son, and he nods.
"I see myself turning into my dad as well," he says. "I’m going around the house at nighttime turning off all the lights, which was something my dad used to do. Those things that used to irritate my dad also irritate me. Like I was driving the other day, and this person did something, and I was like 'that fecking gobshite’, only one step away from hooting the horn like my father used to do."
Is turning 50 a big deal? "Not really," he says after a pause. "But I want to get healthier and fitter, make it easier for myself physically."
There’s the possibility of a party for the big day, if only to meet up with family and friends. "Outside of work, the only few times I’ve been home to Dingle in recent times were for funerals, so why not a party?"
Back home, his mam is still going strong, but with a crammed work schedule including 166 episodes of Today, he says there’s not a lot of time for anything else. But there is.
Last year, he went back to college. "I now have a diploma in coaching and mentoring," he says. "I focused on conflict management, and it has helped me big time. I’m non-confrontational, so people see that as a weakness. So, you must show them it is, in fact, a strength. People are looking to be happy, but really, it’s all about being content."
From here, Dáithí Ó Sé certainly seems to tick that box.
