Dáithí Ó Sé: I’d have thought I had a better chance of going to the Moon than working in the media

The TV presenter reflects on his childhood and how, instead of becoming a teacher, he ventured into a career in front of the cameras

Dáithí Ó Sé: 'School back then wasn’t what it is today: We were afraid of our teachers.' Photo: Domnick Walsh © Eye Focus LTD

TELEVISION presenter Dáithí Ó Sé shows me one of the three photos he has in his office. It’s of him as a three-year-old on his grandfather’s knee.

“The three photos in my office are: Rita and me on our wedding day; me and a schoolfriend called Adrian Begley at the Dingle Races two years before he died; and this one with my father’s father, Dainín Dan,” Ó Sé says.

“From the puss on both our faces, it looks like we were forced to pose for this photo, but I have fond memories of him. He died when I was about seven, and we spent lots of time together when I was a small child.”

Ó Sé was born in 1976 to Kathleen, a stay-at-home mother, and Maidhc Dainín, a Kerry Co-op milk lorry driver, musician, and author. He was the fourth of their five children and recalls a free-range childhood in West Kerry.

His parents expected their children to be resilient. “My mother dropped me off at my first day of playschool when I was about three, told me she was going across the road for some Juicy Fruits, and didn’t come back for hours. 

"When she finally turned up, I asked her why she’d left me for so long. Her response was: ‘You were fine, weren’t you?’ I had to agree that I had been. There had been plenty to keep a nosy kid like me entertained. However, I never got those Juicy Fruits. I’m still waiting.”

He has been told he “never shut up as a child. My godmother, Helen, once gave me 50p to keep me quiet. But as I’ve often said to her since, look how all that talking stands to me now.”

Football was his all-consuming passion. He and the neighbouring children would spend all day playing, only stopping once it got dark.

However, he did not like school. “School back then wasn’t what it is today: We were afraid of our teachers,” he says. “But we did have a great time in the yard. It was a chance to play more football.”

Dáithí Ó Sé as a three-year-old on his granddad’s knee.

People didn’t have much money, and chocolate bars were rare treats. He remembers the excitement he and his siblings felt when his father once delivered milk to Cadbury’s in Rathmore and returned home with a bag of mislabelled chocolate.

“He must have got £50 worth for a £1, and we had chocolate for weeks,” he says.

Ó Sé believes his relationship with his siblings was defined by the big age gap between him and the three oldest: Kevin, Deirdre, and Danny.

“Kevin is 10 years older than me and went to college when I was seven or eight,” he says. “He and Deirdre were born when Mam and Dad were living in America, and Deirdre moved back there when she was 17. 

"Danny is seven years older than me and he followed her to America when I was 14. I have very few memories of us all together at home. Mostly, it was me and my sister Marianne, who is a year younger than I am.”

During his teenage years, Ó Sé developed a love for Guns N’ Roses. In May 1992, two weeks before his Junior Cert, the band held a concert in Slane, and the then 15-year-old and his friend Shane Whelan went. “That was an experience I’ll never forget,” he says.

His parents trusted the teenagers to organise the trip on their own. On reflection, Ó Sé says: “That’s how they saw the process of transitioning into adulthood. 

I was let do my own thing, but there were boundaries that were not to be crossed, and if ever I crossed a line, I’d get a swift kick up the arse.

Along with listening to American rock bands, the teenage Ó Sé spent his free time working on the meat counter in a local supermarket. He considered leaving school and becoming a butcher, but his mother convinced him to sit his Leaving Certificate. 

He worked hard that year but didn’t get the points he needed for the course he wanted. His mother once again convinced him to persevere and he repeated his Leaving Certificate. “I got enough to study history and Irish at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick,” he says.

“For a fella who hated going to school, I was thinking of becoming a teacher.”

He left home for college in 1995, at the age of 18, and by 1999, he was working with TG4. The opportunities he has been offered since have taken his career in a direction he would never have anticipated.

“I’d have thought I had a better chance of going to the Moon than working in the media,” he says. “But I gave it a go for the adventure and here I am.”

Ó Sé is grateful to have grown up in “a happy home, where everyone got on”.

His father died in 2013, and his mother now lives in Cork with his sister Marianne. Ó Sé visits her regularly when he’s in the city filming RTÉ's Today.

He is thankful for the values his parents taught him. “They didn’t care if someone was black or white, gay or straight, Muslim or Catholic,” he says. “All that mattered was if they were good or bad. I’ve carried that with me.

“If you’re a good person, you’re in my gang. If you’re nasty to other people, I’ve no interest.”