What A Difference A Day Makes: 'I felt a really strong presence of my dad before I went on stage'

A shocking phone call, an urgent flight home — actor and writer Irene Kelleher tells Helen O’Callaghan about losing her beloved dad, and a moment of powerful connection she felt with him as she was about to go onstage at the Edinburgh Fringe

Irene Kelleher: "I closed my eyes, said, ‘Dad, I need you here with me’. I felt a really strong presence of my dad with me, saying the last thing he’d always say driving me to auditions: ‘Give ’em holly’."

In February 2016, my dad was told he had oesophageal cancer, terminal — the doctors said six months… He was the most positive person. He didn’t let ‘terminal’ affect how he’d cope with the diagnosis.

A favourite book of his was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, about how he survived Auschwitz — there’s a quote my dad kept looking to for inspiration and hope: ‘he who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any how’. To Dad, it meant ‘I’ve so many reasons to live — I’m going to find my way through this’.