Muireann O'Connell: 'Before we were told it’s all in your head — now everything is menopause'

As the face of breakfast television, and the host of new TV shows and podcasts, life has never been busier for Muireann O'Connell. Ahead of her visit to Cork to host ieStyle Live tonight, The Irish Examiner's flagship event, she sits down with Vickie Maye to talk work-life balance, settling into her new home - and why she feels so at home in the real capital  

TV presenter and podcast star Muireann O’Connell hosted ieStyle Live, the flagship event of the Irish Examiner, at Cork City Hall. All Pictures: Nina Val

Granted, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill first encounter. The first time I met Muireann O’Connell was at Brown Thomas, Dublin, as we mulled around, waiting for an introduction to Kate Moss, in town to launch her skincare brand.

Straight from the set of Virgin Media’s breakfast show, she was high glam — but minus any bit of ego.

She was, I told friends after, sound.

She was interested and generous in the revealing ways that really matter — when she could have been grabbing her own video for social, she pulled my phone out of my hands to record me in conversation with the supermodel for the Irish Examiner’s social channels.

The second time we meet, her career soaring with a new podcast and TV show The Assembly, she’s even more laid back. She rolls in to Lottie’s from Virgin Media studios fresh from Ireland AM. We meet to chat about the Irish Examiner’s flagship event, ieStyle Live. O’Connell hosted the evening on Thursday at Cork City Hall, introducing keynote speakers Katriona O’Sullivan and Louise O’Neill, and a fashion show curated by Corina Gaffey.

O’Connell’s hair — a long blonde bob with loose waves — is still in place from the studio that morning, styled by Michelle, the station’s hair and make-up artist. O’Connell does her own make-up — she’s mindful of the pressures on Michelle. There are other people to prep for the cameras, she explains. Years after our first meeting, and there still isn’t an iota of ego.

Today, she’s cleaned off her make-up as we have Amy, from Charlotte Tilbury, on hand for our shoot.

Bedtime battles

Immediately, our talk turns to sleep. A fair conversation starter for someone who has a 4am midweek alarm call for work. O’Connell is open about her battles with bedtime.

“I was very late this morning. My emergency alarm went off because I’m just not sleeping at the minute. I had to take my melatonin, my Nytol, and then eventually...”

If one more person, though, tells her that her insomnia might be related to perimenopause, well, they’ve been warned.

Not that she is opposed to HRT — she thinks it has saved lives. The marketeers are the problem.

“I know we discovered what the word is. I get that, and I’m so happy that there’s research into it. I’m so happy that we’re looking at it. But if I have to see yoga for menopause, if I have to see shampoo for menopause…

Before, we were told it’s all in your head. Now everything is menopause.”

Muireann O'Connell: 'Women love women and they want to help'

She explains how she fell into the same trap when she was diagnosed with thyroid issues.

“I have to say, I’ve got an amazing doctor. I went in and said, ‘It’s peri.’ She said, ‘Can I do a few tests?’

“I said, ‘No, I did my blood test last year. It has to be peri. Everyone’s telling me, the internet’s telling me. Every woman is telling me it’s peri.

She said, ‘You know I went to college for a while to do this. Any chance I can run a few tests? And it was my thyroid.

“Women love women and they want to help,” she continues, “but the marketeers jump onto it and, at the end, you’re looking at a company and there’s a man behind it — it’s really manipulative.”

As is her modest way, O’Connell plays down the terrifying reality of hosting live TV on minimal sleep.

“The first year, I did think I was going insane because you can’t think. It’s like you’re in a fog. We all know that [sleep deprivation] is a torture device.

“But, no, it doesn’t stress me. I only work four days a week and we’ve got a huge cohort of people — the supports are there. And most of them are mothers.

“They’re all running on nothing. There are women there with triplets who are newborns. A friend of mine had three under three... Another friend had four under three. So, look, I’m fine.”

She walks me through her intense morning schedule.

“I’m up at 4am, then you’re just reading. I try to listen to a good few podcasts before I go to work on 1.8 speed and then I try to read the papers. I don’t have to go in to do that any more, you can do so much at home.

“We do our morning meeting for a quarter to six, maybe half-five.

“You’d need two hours just to wake up, to do all of that, to iron and steam, and put your face on...”

The Buzz of TV

Nothing compares to the buzz of live TV, she says.

“It’s amazing. I don’t know how people do recorded TV because it’s stop, start, move there, stand in this chair, whatever. Live is speed — it’s just go.”

The nerves are gone, I ask?

“Yes, a long time ago. There were nerves again, obviously, when I started on Ireland AM but I viscerally remember my nerves when I started on The Six O’Clock Show — you settle in fairly lively. You’re always nervous when you start with someone new.”

The Six O’Clock Show, with Ray Foley, who fought for her as co-host, became a training ground.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to do it. Honestly, you can’t prep for it. There’s still, though, after all the years, a grá for radio. That connection. It’s really intense when you’re listening to the radio. I think it’s incredibly difficult to do.”

She talks with the wisdom of hindsight about her sudden departure from Today FM. She acknowledges now it opened up doors for her, though she couldn’t see at the time.

“I probably didn’t know it at the time. I was probably just a bit too immature to take it. It felt like a severing… like a divorce. It felt like my longest relationship had broken up and I was blindsided because that was the only thing I’d ever really known. And I’ve probably ‘Peter Pan-ed’ my way through life; I’d been very lucky and never took things seriously. I hadn’t started to think about mortgages and life and wills and what comes next.”

Having a good time, I interject?

Muireann O'Connell: 'I feel a responsibility to be part of a community, a neighbourhood'

“To my detriment, I think, an awful lot of the time.”

Her initial start in radio was unexpected. Just back from Australia, a friend told her about a radio job. Her father, meanwhile, had the H Dip in his sights for his daughter. Later, though, he took great pride in her success.

“I remember when he got the travel pass and I was working. He’d be like, ‘I’m in Dublin. Can you come for a bit of lunch? I’m outside. Can I come in?’ I’m very lucky. He was very proud. So was Mum. They’re two huge characters in my life.”

As well as career pivots, there have also been personal ones. She recently bought her first home.

“I feel a responsibility to be part of a community, a neighbourhood. Time seems to go faster these days. I’m coming into a neighbourhood where you’re in a community. Stuff happens

to kind of bring us all together, which is really lovely.

“But, you know, I haven’t seen Mum properly in, like, three weeks. I haven’t been home in about three or four weeks — I’d say that’s the longest I haven’t been down home in a long time. When you don’t have kids, you can just jump into the car and go any time you want.”

There's bigger things going on in life

O’Connell has already spoken about her decision not to have kids. I ask her if it’s frustrating that she’s asked the question — but it’s unlikely to be posed to her partner.

“No. He wouldn’t be asked but it doesn’t make me angry any more.”

She doesn’t mind the question, she says, but there is a hesitation.

“There’s bigger things going on in life and I just find myself becoming the most boring person on the planet. It’s, like, who wants to know about this?”

Returning to work, we talk about her joy at getting her teeth into The Assembly, the Virgin Media show that saw neurodivergent children pose questions to everyone from Micheál Martin to Joanne McNally, and Parting Words, the podcast she hosts for RIP.ie, which sees her navigate difficult conversations around grief with well-known Irish faces.

“It’s a privilege. When I got the call, if I could have risen my dad from dead, I would have been like, ‘Come here to me.’ Because he loved RIP. He’d have been, ‘You’ve made it.’ But it’s something I’m very comfortable in. I don’t know if that’s the Limerick in me, that death is everywhere.”

Not that hosting a podcast about grief has made processing her own grief at her father’s passing any easier.

“He’s very much still in the present tense for me. I still talk about him in the present tense. I couldn’t look at grass for about a year because my brain just went to the physical, the actual, what was happening to my dad. That was something that would just be in my brain all the time.

“I felt that podcast really delved into the issues and what people were feeling — and it was powerful. When they asked me to do this, I thought, ‘This is fascinating,’ because I’ve been fascinated with this — like, what the grief window is, how much leeway people will give you, and how forms of grief can be at different times. So I’ve always thought it was really interesting. And then the characters you get to talk to, and how their grief sits with them, and what has happened to them as a result.

“Everyone deals with things in very different ways. It’s the great leveller.

“With the guests, whatever they want to go with, it is where I’m going to go on the day. If someone wants to spend the whole day laughing, we’ll spend the whole day laughing.”

As all Cork people do, we begin to discuss the common denominators. Who do we know in Cork, Limerick, Dublin? It turns out O’Connell is a regular visitor to Cork, visiting friends living in my home town. Next time we meet, it could well be in the local pub or supermarket. There won’t be any supermodels but, really, who needs Kate Moss when we have Muireann O’Connell.