This much I know: Sean Rocks, Broadcaster

I always loved telling stories, even as a kid. That’s what acting and presenting is: telling stories.

I am a pragmatic thinker but I also take flights of fancy.

I’d love if we could get to a place where spin didn’t play such a role in how things unfold in our society, if we could debate things more openly. The men and women who are trying to run the country are not ogres, yet sometimes the spin gets in the way of political debate.

I was an outgoing child. At family parties I’d be the one asked to say that poem or sing that song.

As a child, I loved the idea of infinity, as it was mathematical. But the idea of eternity — thanks, but no thanks. I still find that concept quite a frightening one.

I’m a Catholic. But for me, the bottom line is how hard is it to do the right thing. You don’t need the ten commandments to tell you that, you just need good sense.

I grew up in Monaghan town, with two sisters and a brother. My father was an accountant and had a grocery shop. My family is still there — my mother will be 90 this June — but home for me is Dublin now, although I wish I felt more rooted there.

My father died three years ago, I still have a sense of his spirit. I remember him being incredibly content when he died. Of course that didn’t come from the final days of his life but from the previous 83 years.

The arts are important because ultimately they give a richness to our culture which feeds into everything else and helps to improve our society.

Life has taught me to tell the truth and to say what you think.

I worked as a teacher for seven years. I liked teaching younger kids but it remains the most difficult job I’ve ever done. When you’re on, you’re on — it’s like acting and live radio. The skill sets are similar too — the most important trait in all those jobs is to be able to listen.

I didn’t set out to be an actor. When I was at college I got involved in am dram doing concerts and plays, which meant acting at night, and my voice was getting really tired, yet it was vital for my work as a teacher. My brother, who is a singer and was training in The College of Music at the time, suggested the Drama Dept there might help with voice training. So that’s where I learnt about vocal projection and began reading a wide variety of plays.

I became more and more interested in acting and decided to take a career break from teaching to give it a go. In the final year of that career break Pat McCabe’s Frank Pig Says Hello happened. We only had three weeks to rehearse and I remember thinking this is either absolutely brilliant, or appalling. It turned out to be my big break as an actor and opened a lot of doors.

The transition to radio was accidental. Lyric had just started up and I came up with an idea that they turned into a series about music in Shakespeare, that’s how I started on radio. At first, I couldn’t get my head around the fact that I wasn’t acting, there was no script — that it was me talking. It was a huge learning curve.

Radio is never about the presenter, it’s about the person who is opposite you. If I have Brendan Gleeson on for half an hour, it’s much more important for listeners to hear him than to hear me.

I’m not good a separating work from the rest of my life. The story of my life does not fit into neat chapters — it’s more like a post-modernist sprawling mess

Seán Rocks presents ARENA, RTÉ Radio 1’s flagship arts, popular culture and entertainment programme which is broadcast at 7pm from Monday to Friday.