Chris’s fighting spirit

Newstalk presenter Chris Donoghue battled cancer at 23, and the death of his mother when he was just 14, he tells Jonathan deBurca Butler

IT may come as a bit of a shock to regular listeners of Newstalk’s Breakfast Show to discover that its main presenter, Chris Donoghue, is just 28 years old.

There is a maturity about the Dubliner; a self-assurance that belies his years and somehow contradicts his insistence that he is essentially a shy character. Even his physique is quite imposing. Tall, but not awkward, he cuts an impressive figure on first meeting him. And yet there are little signs of shyness — slightly hunched shoulders, a reddening of the face when he cracks a joke and a modesty that sees him refer to himself constantly as “this little fecker”.