Prime Time's Fran McNulty on bereavement, life, and local radio

'I used to joke that my favourite view of Dublin was from the rearview mirror': The Longford native has come a long way from making ads at his local radio station 

Fran McNulty has worked in RTÉ for 16 years but his new role on Prime Time is his proudest achievement.

I have a vivid memory as a child of being in a bicycle shop in the months approaching Christmas and the guy who owned the shop saying to my mother "he asks an awful lot of questions". I was clearly questioning the size of the bicycle, the size of the chimney at home, and how it would work. You can talk all the highfalutin stuff you want about journalism but I think it comes down to two things: doubt and nosiness, and I've had those from an early age. I toyed with the idea of being a solicitor, a hairdresser, an electrician. They're good jobs, but somehow I got pulled into this.

It probably started in secondary school. I ran a lunchtime radio show over the intercom and my sister worked in the local radio station, Shannonside, as a receptionist. On the way home from school in my Leaving Cert year, I asked the bus driver to stop outside Shannonside. I marched in in my uniform, left the schoolbag in reception, and went into the station manager's office. He did a voice test with me and that Saturday I started work.