Miriam O'Callaghan's memoir to be published in October

Irish Independent

20 hours ago

As publication of the book – entitled 'Miriam: Life, Work, Everything' – will coincide with the campaign for the presidential election, a role she has been linked to in the past, it definitely rules her out of a run for the Áras this autumn.
Making the announcement today, the Prime Time presenter said she had first been sent a contract to tell her story 20 years ago by Penguin. 'I have always lived my life in fast forward, so I never thought I would have the time to look back and reflect. I also wondered if anyone would be interested,' she said.
'Then one day not that long ago — with a prompt from [editor] Patricia Deevy — I decided I would write it, because if I didn't write it now, I might never do so.'
O'Callaghan says the memoir will cover both personal issues and her career, which included working at the BBC and ITV as well as over 30 years at RTE.
'At first I thought it would just be about my work as a journalist, but then when I began writing I realised how impossible it was to separate my professional and personal lives,' she said.
'I don't know if that's because I'm a woman or a mother, or both or none of those things, but I just knew that for my story to be authentic and truthful, I couldn't simply focus on the work side of my life.'
The broadcaster says her memoir will also reflect on 'the worst year of my life', which was 1995, a time that forced her to rethink her life. It was the year she lost her sister Anne to cancer, and two months later her father, Jerry, a senior civil servant, died suddenly from a stroke. Her marriage to the broadcaster Tom McGurk ended the same year.
Now married to senior RTE executive Steve Carson, she has eight children – four daughters and four sons.
'When members of the public come up to me, they will often ask about certain programmes or interviews I have done, but more often than not they, usually women, quickly segue into asking me about having eight children and how I managed to hold down a big career,' she said. 'So that's why my story is about life, work and everything.'
In terms of her broadcasting career, the memoir is said to include stories about how she attended the wake of hunger striker Bobby Sands even before she was a journalist, covered the peace process for both the BBC and RTE including the day the Good Friday Agreement was signed, presented the marriage referendum results from Dublin Castle in 2015, and the interview with Leo Varadkar that year when he was the first cabinet minister to come out as a gay man.
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Coincidentally, the former Taoiseach will publish his own memoir just a few weeks earlier, a book that is also coming from Sandycove, the Penguin imprint.
The publishers are promising that O'Callaghan will relate 'important and heart-breaking conversations' with people in the eye of a media storm, how she goes after and prepares for the big interviews, and what happens when things go wrong. It is also said that she will address the recent RTÉ controversies, which included the revelation of secret payments to her former colleague Ryan Tubridy.
Patricia Deevy, deputy publisher at Sandycove, said: 'I am thrilled and honoured Miriam chose Sandycove as the home for her wonderful memoir. She is a one-off as a journalist and broadcaster, and her book is a one-off too. It has been a joy working with her on it.
'Having finally decided to tell her story, Miriam approached it with characteristic wholeheartedness, and she writes with such candour, intelligence and generosity that readers will be totally captivated.'