Miriam O'Callaghan in Bantry: Broadcaster charms with tales of family and work life
Miriam O'Callaghan in Bantry for the West Cork Literary Festival. Picture: Karlis Dzjamko
At the Maritime Hotel in Bantry, Miriam O’Callaghan is introduced by West Cork Literary Festival director Eimear O’Herlihy and interviewed by the amicable arts journalist Cristín Leach. The audience is large and mostly female, and clearly, all are fans. The event is one of the first in the festival, a longstanding and much-loved event on the Irish social calendar, and many are regular visitors.
O’Callaghan’s recent memoir, is a frank and open account of the triumphs and tragedies of her personal and professional life. How one of Ireland’s busiest broadcasters, and a mother of eight, found time to write it is anybody’s guess.
O’Callaghan is as stylish as ever, and utterly serene. She is happy to discuss her first marriage, to the broadcaster Tom McGurk, which ended in separation and divorce in her mid-thirties. With four young daughters in tow, she just got on with things, she says. Eventually, she remarried, to the television producer Steve Carson, and they had four sons. She expresses surprise at how all this came about, having never planned for a large family.
Family is hugely important to O’Callaghan. She speaks fondly of her father Jerry, a senior civil servant who would have loved to study law and encouraged her decision to do so. He was just as supportive when she abandoned law to pursue a career in journalism instead. It may have helped that she was mentored by the legendary Eamon Andrews when she went to work on his poll-topping programme,
O’Callaghan’s father’s sudden death in 1995 came just weeks after that of her sister Anne from cancer, a double tragedy that continues to haunt her today. Happily, her mother and namesake, a former headmistress, is still hale and hearty, aged 98, and enjoys two glasses of Chardonnay daily.
O’Callaghan’s professionalism is best summed up by her account of her son’s christening being interrupted by news of the Omagh bombing in 1998. When asked to present a television special on the atrocity that same evening, she did so without hesitation.
Northern Ireland has featured large in her life. She recalls attending the hunger striker Bobby Sands’ funeral with her first husband, and her encounters with one of her heroes, the peace campaigner John Hume. She speaks movingly of how she interviewed him on television on the day the Good Friday Agreement was announced in 1998. When she asked how he felt, he cried on air.
In Bantry, the evening concludes with questions, and declarations of admiration, from the audience. O’Callaghan is clearly delighted when one woman recalls how her father and O’Callaghan’s were work colleagues, and arranges to meet with her afterwards to share photographs and memories.
Leach finally ends the interview by asking O’Callaghan if she will be running for President. “Never!” she replies. “And I won’t be presenting either.”
- West Cork Literary Festival runs until July 17. See westcorkmusic.ie
