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.

I was spinning programmes first and then they offered me a job making ads, so that was my first real job in radio. I started working in the newsroom when another job came up shortly after the shooting of John Carthy in Abbeylara. That really was my first taste of a national story at a local level. I learned more in that small room, in an old country house in Shannonside, than I've learned in any classroom in my life. Local radio just gives you such a grounding and it got me to RTÉ.

This might sound a bit cheesy but my proudest achievement is the Prime Time gig. It's so far from where I started out both in my personal life, as the son of two hard-working parents from Longford and Sligo, and in my professional life. I was making ads and all of a sudden you're standing in Studio 5 in RTÉ next to Miriam O' Callaghan and you're one of the anchors of Prime Time. It really is a pinch-me moment.

RTÉ has announced a new RTÉ Prime Time presenting team, as Miriam O'Callaghan is to be joined by presenters Sarah McInerney and Fran McNulty (right).

It's not something I ever really talk about but bereavement is probably the greatest challenge I've faced. By the age of 24, I had lowered two of my brothers into the ground. That's not easy but it gives you an appreciation of life. In one case my older brother died very suddenly, he had epilepsy. I went from bickering with him in the morning over a packet of Fruit Pastilles to coming in to see him gone. It gives you an appreciation of just how fragile life is and it puts other adversities in context. It teaches you not to sweat the small stuff and live every day and do every job like it is quite possibly the last one that you'll do.

I'd like to be remembered for fairness. When you report news and current affairs, inevitably somebody is not going to be happy. But what is always on my mind is to be fair. You want to know that when the ad break fires and that person stands up, they can't look at you and say "you were really unfair there". If you do that in your professional and personal life, you might be keeping an even keel. I listen far more than I talk as well and that's not common with people in media. If you just listen to what somebody says you garner far more from it.

I think the world needs more kindness. When I drive out of work there are traffic lights by the hospital and sometimes people don't turn quick enough and it is frustrating, but I often think: "that person could be going for chemo, they could be coming from losing a loved one". You never know what someone is carrying on their shoulders. If the world was just a little bit kinder, especially at the moment, everyone would be a little bit happier.

The greatest advice I've been given was from somebody who told me that 'you catch more flies with honey' and that's always stuck with me. I was also making a documentary years ago and I was interviewing a man who had never spoken to the media before, and he said something that also always stuck with me: "a shut mouth is a wise head". They're two solid pieces of advice for life.

I have a great belief that everything happens for a reason. It drives some of my friends crazy, but I genuinely believe it. I made ads in Shannonside, somebody got a promotion from the newsroom, I ended up in a newsroom. Sometimes in life you just have to go with things and take the fork in the road that hits you. This Prime Time gig was a fork in the road, the other fork was being a correspondent in the newsroom and a turn came up. We don't build the roads, we just walk down them.