Culture That Made Me: Miriam O’Callaghan selects her touchstones from the world of arts and entertainment
Miriam O’Callaghan has just published her memoir. Picture: Evan Doherty
Born in 1960, Miriam O’Callaghan grew up in Cornelscourt, Dublin. In 1983, she got a job working as a researcher on Eamonn Andrews’ This is Your Life show. She joined BBC’s Newsnight in 1989, leaving the current affairs show to join RTÉ in 1992. She has presented RTÉ’s Prime Time show since 1996 and has anchored several television election debates. She also hosts the live radio show Sunday with Miriam. Her memoir, is published by Penguin Sandycove.
My favourite childhood book was LM Montgomery’s I read that book quite young and never put it down for a couple of years. It's beautifully written. It introduced me to a different world. The main character was adopted. She was 11. She was interesting because she was slightly rebellious. Yet at the same time, she was a good person. There's a moral in it. Also, everything ends up happily ever after. I don't like bad endings! It shows if you're a good person in life that it comes back in leaps and bounds.
I liked Ernie O'Malley's autobiography. It's not that long ago families were split over the civil war. There was so much anguish, so much hurt. It's a tragic time in our history. It is a personal, but classic account of those terrible years from, say, 1915 up to 1921-22. He was studying medicine during the 1916 Easter Rising. He fell into the movement, into the Irish Republican Army. He was reporting directly to Michael Collins. He was just an ordinary guy who ended up in the middle of all this. More than any other book of the period, it captures the feel of Ireland during that time.
I like Barack Obama's first memoir, He wrote a second memoir when he had finished as president, but there is something quite moving about his first memoir because he isn't president. It’s fascinating to think this guy would one day become president of the United States of America. He's very honest about his background, his mother, not really knowing his father that well. It's a really good read.
In the mid ’80s, I’d been working as a solicitor in Dublin. I got this job working as a researcher on which back then was getting 24 million viewers a night in the United Kingdom. It was my first job in television. Its presenter, Eamonn Andrews, was one of the most famous presenters in the United Kingdom. He was a beautiful man. He was so kind and so good to me. He was also an exceptional broadcaster with the most magnificent speaking voice. I learned so much from him.
I remember when we were doing in America. People like Bob Hope were on it. We stayed up late the night after the show in Beverly Hills in some stunning hotel. I thought I'd made it. Eamonn Andrews went to bed early. My hotel phone rang the following morning just before 8am. It was Eamonn. I was only going to bed. He said, “Miriam, I'll meet you downstairs in 15 minutes.” I asked politely, “Why?” He said, “Because we're going to mass on Sunset Boulevard.”
He taught me that you never forget who you are. Even if people think you're so-called famous, you should never change. We used to have a party every night we did All the waitresses were Irish. He spent most of his time not talking to the huge stars but talking to the Irish waitresses. I learned never to lose the run of yourself from Eamonn Andrews.
There is a four-volume biography about the life of Lydon B Johnson entitled They’re written by Robert Caro. People say they're the best biographies of an American president ever written. They’re hugely popular. They're not dry. They get beneath his personality, the idea that he was very brilliant.
A favourite movie when I was younger is It's a beautiful love story with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.
I'm into rom coms unapologetically. People need happy movies, with happy endings, about love, fun and laughter. I loved it. I watched it many times over and over.
I adore two Vietnam War movies, with Jon Voight and Jane Fonda and I watched those when I was in college. I had a couple of first cousins in America of the age you could have been drafted to serve in Vietnam. In the end, they weren't. So, Vietnam seemed very real to me when I was a law student in UCD.
My all-time go-to fun movie is Every Christmas I watch it. It’s a wonderful rom-com. It’s got Hugh Grant. Julia Roberts is the star in it. It’s very, very funny. It's a brilliantly made film, with a beautifully written script by Richard Curtis. I’d highly recommend it.
My husband [Steve Carson] is very into television. That’s what he does for a living. We have a company called Mint Productions. He’ll introduce me to shows early like, say, he was watching before I’d even heard of them. It’s still one of the most astonishing TV series ever – the character of Tony, everything about him, the way James Gandolfini played him. It was magnificent.
I love It’s very funny. It's based on the novels by Mick Herron. It's a spy thriller and yet it's not. It's about a number of failed spies living together in a place called Slough House solving different scenarios and crimes. It's magnificently written.
I like the TV drama series, mainly because of the lead actor Jared Harris, Richard Harris’s son. It's an extraordinary performance. I love looking at films as much for the story as for how they're made. I suppose because I'm involved in making documentaries. I love how they're directed, how they're edited, how they look. Chernobyl was amazing.
A Dublin street artist called Art of Asbestos made a very moving documentary about his experience with his mother who has Alzheimer's. It’s called I interviewed him recently. It’s very, very moving because it’s about his mother. It's a beautiful documentary, beautifully made.
I've been playing the piano since I was about eight. I wasn't good enough to be a classical pianist, but I'm a good piano player. I love Mozart. After all the busyness of live television and radio, it's beautiful to come home and play a bit of Mozart. I get lost playing his music. It transports me into another place. My favourite piece of Mozart music is his He was only 35 when he died. The body of work he wrote during his life is exceptional. The guy's a genius.
