Terry Prone: Kathleen Watkins, trusted adviser to her husband Gay Byrne, knew fame was part of the deal

Kathleen Watkins, wife of Gay Byrne, has died. Photo: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

The thing about Kathleen Watkins is that she was always willing to be a subject if you were training journalism students. Could she come in and do three onscreen half-hour interviews? Of course she could. 

Terrified interviewers would gird their loins to ask her deeply personal questions, like why her children were adopted, and would then find themselves with another challenge — coping with an answer that was more frank than they had expected. Oh, that was because she had suffered TB, she told them, and it left her infertile. This was shared, despite the fact that in her time, TB was a shameful disease to be concealed.