This much I know: Seán Moncrieff

I was always a bit of a smart-arse.

I was quiet enough as a teenager. In school, I was good at English but unclear what sort of career to follow. I studied journalism in Rathmines and, later on, did a degree in English and Philosophy at UCD.

I began working as a freelance journalist in Dublin. It never occurred to me to get into broadcasting until I moved to London and worked for Broadcast, the television trade magazine. When I returned to Dublin, I began by doing What It Says In The Papers.

It took a long time to get used to being on air. I used to race through my scripts until I was advised to calm down. When it comes to nerves, and overcoming them, there is no real replacement for getting live experience.

My Newstalk show is difficult to define. You could say we do dumb things in an intelligent way and intelligent things in a dumb way. It can be very serious but also very irreverent. Just because you are funny doesn’t mean you can’t be serious. And vice versa.

I write fiction and non-fiction and have incorporated that process into my life. I write on the Dart, on the journey from Baldoyle into Newstalk and back every day. It’s a bit like Pavlov’s dog, as soon as I board, I begin writing in longhand. I’m not a Luddite but its not worth using the computer for a journey of that length. By the time it’s powered up, we’re nearly there.

My latest book is The Irish Paradox, it looks at how and why we are such a contradictory people. I don’t have a preference for writing fiction or non-fiction. Although the nerdy side of me enjoys having an excuse for looking stuff up.

One thing I do like to be disciplined about is time management. I like routine. When I arrive in Newstalk at midday each day, I do certain things in the same order. I know how long each task will take and have them timed down to the minute.

If you have done lots of preparation, then you can wing it on air. Of course, sometimes you have no choice but to wing it, for various reasons. I will regularly start introducing an item only to have a voice in my ear tell me to ‘keep talking’ as they deal with a technical hitch. Once our main studio broke and we had to run to the other studio during a 30 second commercial break. Then that studio broke too. I was talking to a guy about his parents’ suicide and had to continue this delicate interview while three technicians crawled around on the floor.

One subject which I didn’t learn in school, and which I think would be most useful for every schoolchild, is Logic. I would make it mandatory in The Leaving Cert. So much of our public discourse consists of arguments which make no logical sense. Simplistic arguments do more harm than good.

My idea of misery is having to drive on the M50 every day. It’s awful. Having to waste so much time sitting in traffic saps your spirit.

Life is full of challenges on an ongoing basis. They ebb and they flow. Being a parent, there is always something new to worry about. When they are babies, it’s about eating and sleeping. When they’re older, it’s about whether or not they will find a sense of themselves. The most challenging thing of all is when you realise that there is not much you can do about any of it. I’m separated and my children are 13, 15, 18 and 24.

My biggest fault is a tendency to become sucked into arguments. My defence mechanism is giving a glib answer. I would be better off pausing and giving a better answer.

It would be foolish to be definitive about the existence, or otherwise, of an afterlife. There is only one way to find out. I wrote a book about the 20 largest religions in the world and was surprised to find they all have far more in common than you might think. We do seem to have a strong sense of wanting to believe in something greater than ourselves no matter what it is — be it a community or a family.

My most useful skill is being good at multi-tasking. Or at least at giving the impression of being able to do so.

* Seán Moncrieff presents The Moncrieff Show every weekday afternoon on Newstalk 106–8FM.