This much I know: Anne Gildea

I’ve always had a wry, Beckettian view of the world — we try so hard, but ultimately we are all going to die.

My first love was art. I did it for the Leaving Cert and even won a Texaco prize and had a painting in their calendar one year.

I was an outgoing child and, although I was a pretty good student, I was a bit of a joker down the back of the class. I knew I wanted to go to college and became an excellent last minute crammer for exams, able to learn off huge tracts of stuff, including words that I didn’t even know the meaning of.