Up the walls: Lucy Kennedy faces down her fear of heights in aid of charity

TV and radio star Lucy Kennedy set her fear of heights aside to help raise awareness for the Make-A-Wish charity, writes Helen O’Callaghan

“YOUR’RE wondering am I totally insane?” Lucy Kennedy ventures when I get her on the phone.

“Are you?” I ask.

“Yes, I am,” she counters.

Lucy was contemplating scaling 115ft down one of Dublin’s tallest buildings — the annual Rope for Hope abseiling challenge for the Make-A-Wish charity scheduled for yesterday.

“I have a fear of heights,” confides Lucy. “Which isn’t great and it’s getting worse with age and since becoming a mother. You’re more conscious of what could go wrong.”

Lucy’s plan was to shoot down the building like a fly. “I want to go down in 30 seconds. My fear is I’m going to end up, splat against some office window like a dead ant.”

Her fellow Make-A-Wish ambassador, comedian Alan Shortt, and her “cheeky and delightful radio husband” on Radio Nova, Colm Hayes, make up the gutsy celeb trio who went for the teeth-clenching fundraiser — abseiling down the side of the State St building at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

In fact, the only thing keeping Lucy going was that Colm might possibly be more scared than she was. “I imagine he’s going to cry,” she quips, adding that, for her, it’s the fear of being on the edge. “I get very, very queasy — it’s the feeling of loss of control. I might just pretend it’s not happening!”

Lucy is not a thrill-seeker. “I won’t even wash the top windows of my house, which is a normal semi-D. Thrill-seeking doesn’t turn me on. It’s very out of character. I’d much rather be in my pyjamas watching Fair City.

“How did I get roped into this? [Because] it’s for a truly wonderful cause: I’ve met some amazing Make-A-Wish children and they’re a very brave, courageous bunch — walking down the side of a building is nothing in comparison to what they face every day,” says the Living With Lucy star who we most recently saw move in for a night to Nathan Carter’s home for the first instalment of her new series.

“I love him,” she says, adding that the old adage is true — come and live with me to know me.

“We all have a perception of what celebs are like from what we’ve read or heard. The only way you can assess is to go and live with them. You see warts and all. The person you are is the person shown on TV [in Living With Lucy] because within 72 hours at some point you’re going to drop your guard. And I’m so much ‘the girl next door gone wrong’ that they feel at ease.”

And how would it be if somebody were to move in with her — would she embrace it?

“It depends on who it is. If it was Robbie Williams I’d be very pleased. I’m actually quite boring. I spent last weekend trimming the hedge in the driveway. I’m not a party-goer. I like the simple things. I’m the person who, when I get home, I take off my make-up, take off my bra and get into my pyjamas.

"I like a simple, quiet, peaceful life, no hassle. I don’t make controversial comments. I’m interested in positivity, all things nice.”

Alongside Lucy’s voice down the phone, there’s a pleasant burbling sound: Her one-and-a-half-year-old Jessica, her third and youngest child. “She’s teething at the moment, which is a bit hideous, but she’s still a saint.” Jessica does “house calls” every night, Lucy tells me. Son Jack, 9, will go into bed in his room, with Holly, 6, doing the same in her bedroom. “And they’ll shout ‘I’m ready for my house call’ and Jessica will go in to Jack and spend a few minutes with him and then into Holly before getting into her own cot.”

The three adore each other, says Lucy, though she expects it to go “arseways” when they reach a certain age. “But so far so good, so far so doable.”

Acknowledging that only women get asked the biased question “how do you juggle parenthood and career?” I ask it anyway. “I just wing it. I just go for it and hope everything falls into place,” she says, before adding that her saving grace is being highly organised.

“I have a very organised life. I know exactly where I’m going to be weeks ahead. I batch cook. I plan meals well in advance. I take Fridays off [radio presenting] — I’m either filming that day or I’m mum for the day.”

After doing the Breakfast Show on Radio Nova four days a week, soon enough it’s time to collect Jessica from crèche and then Holly at 2.30pm (when I talk to Lucy she’s waiting at the school gate for Holly, who has gone into first class) and then Jack at 3pm.

“After that, it’ll be home, snacks, into tracksuits and hopefully they’ll play football while I do the ironing. I’m in the lucky position that everything slots into place. But I do think there’s way too much homework for their age. Trying to motivate them to do that is the toughest part of my day.”

The 42-year-old is more of an instinctive mother than a consult-the-parenting-book mum. “I go with my gut. With Jack, I might have picked up a Gina Forde book — I threw it away after four pages. There is no rule book.”

Her role models for motherhood are her mum and, to a greater extent, her older sister, Anna.

“She’s my mom mentor. She’s a natural and makes it look easy. She’s also a qualified Montessori teacher. She’s my go-to for anything from teething to them not going to bed on time, anything from setting up routines to star charts and the whole reward system.”

Support Make-A-Wish by visiting www.makeawish.ie or calling 01 205 2012.