Carl Mullan: 'I succeeded because I had mam and dad in my corner'

The 2FM Breakfast Show host on his struggles with confidence, falling in love with his wife in sixth class and the unwavering support of his parents 

Carl Mullan as a child 

Carl Mullan’s earliest memory is of being woken in the middle of the night by his grandmother. His grandmother had good news: His sister Emma had just been born. He and his older sister, Therese, were staying with her while their mother was in the maternity hospital.

“I was only three, and I remember how excited we were,” says the 36-year-old co-host of The RTÉ 2FM Breakfast Show. “It seemed like a big moment; big enough to be woken up for.”

Mullan says he was “a child who loved mischief, but hated getting into trouble. I was a big worrier, so even though I enjoyed silly things, like knick-knacks [knocking on people’s doors and then running away], I’d watch other kids doing it. I’d never do it myself.”

Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD, he wonders if his tendency to worry was related to the condition. “Overthinking is an ADHD symptom, and I was always so sensitive and afraid of upsetting other people,” Mullan says.

As a child, he struggled with confidence. He still struggles with it.

“People might be surprised, considering what I do, but I get serious imposter syndrome and convince myself I’m not good enough to do things. I shied away from sports as a kid because I thought I was bad at them.

“Socially, I’d get intimidated if others seemed louder and more confident, and I’d wish I were as assured as they were. I can still feel like that sometimes.”

Carl Mullan, his sister Emma and father Don meeting superheroes on a holiday in America around 1998.

However, these feelings did not stop him from enjoying his childhood and teenage years. He and his sisters used to “come up with scenarios and film them on an old video camera” and “pretend to be a radio DJ and record links to songs”.

Family holidays were frequent, too. “We weren’t well off, but we travelled a lot,” Mullan says.

“Dad’s from Derry, and we’d drive the five or six hours from Dublin every two or three weeks. We took trips to Kerry, Jersey, and Guernsey. And we visited friends in San Diego and did house swaps with other families.”

Mullan gets particularly animated when remembering a trip to Disneyland. “It was mad how that happened. Dad was in the audience of Kenny Live, and we were watching at home. There was a draw for a member of the audience to win a holiday, and he won.”

His overriding memory of those family holidays is how much fun they had together. “We always had a great laugh and all of us still love travelling to this day.”

As a child and teenager, he discovered his ability to make people laugh. “Other lads would sometimes mock the mole on my face, and I realised that the best way to shut them up was to be funnier than them,” he says. “Humour became my superpower.”

Carl Mullan: 'It doesn’t matter what you want to do, you’re much more likely to succeed with mam and dad in your corner.'

He met and fell in love with his now wife, Aisling, at a young age. “It sounds ridiculous, as I was only in sixth class, but I was mad about Ais from day one,” he says. “She lived around the corner from me in Perrystown, and we were friends from the start.

I spent my teens unsuccessfully chasing her, and we finally got together when I was 26.

Mullan’s teenage years were also when he started to consider his future career. Even though Mullan’s father, Don, was a journalist, the media wasn’t his first choice.

He initially wanted to be in the fire brigade and even volunteered with St John’s Ambulance to learn some of the necessary skills.

“But when the time came to decide, I realised I wasn’t cut out for it,” he says.

At a loss for what to put on his CAO form, he eventually opted for creative digital media at IT Tallaght. He was interested in photography and thought he might open his own studio.

A radio class on his first day convinced him otherwise. “I should have seen the signs from pretending to be a DJ when I was a kid,” he says. “As soon as I started doing it, I knew it was the job for me.”

He has always been close to his parents, Don and Margaret. He appreciates how they “encouraged laughter in the house, but called us out whenever we did anything we shouldn’t do”.

He is also thankful for their unwavering support. “Whatever my sisters and I wanted to do, they helped us do it,” he says. “When I picked digital media, many parents would have warned that it might be hard to get a job afterwards, but they only encouraged me.

And even though I was in college at the height of the recession, they always paid my fees. I’m so grateful for the graft they put in to help me get where I am now and the opportunities they gave us. I respect them so much and probably don’t tell them enough.

Mullan didn’t move out of home until he was 29, when he and Aisling bought a house together.

That house is only a three-minute drive from his childhood home, but he found it difficult to accept the chapter of his life where he lived with his parents had ended.

“Even though they knew we’d bought a house and we all know I was moving out, I was too emotional to talk about it,” he says. “I never said: ‘This is my last night in the house’. I just left.”

Now that he has three children of his own, Mullan tries to emulate his mother and father’s parenting style. “I want my kids to know I back them 100%, just as I knew my parents did,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter what you want to do, you’re much more likely to succeed with mam and dad in your corner.”