A fella from Cork "full of mad ideas" has just celebrated 10 years getting the nation up in the morning.
John Creedon has been with us for 39 years, though his gently eccentric Risin' Time took its first breath at 6 a.m., on RTE Radio 1, on Monday November 7th, 1988. "I feel it's RTE's best-kept secret," observes Creedon in his sometimes soft, oftentimes runaway Cork accent. "But that suits me fine. I think there's too much hype and people see through it. I don't do competitions and I don't ask people to ring in.
"It's a simple, traditional style, just saying `Good morning. It's OK. The world's in one piece and it's good to be Irish.' It's that kind of vibe. Sometimes, to be honest, it's just mad stuff, just stream of consciousness. But people seem to like it."
Talking to John Creedon feels like swimming in a stream of consciousness - and it is hard not to like it. He just has to be frequently reminded of what he's talking about as he meanders into tenuously relevant tangents. At several points during our chat, Creedon looks up suddenly. "Jesus, I don't know what I'm rambling on about now."
Risin' Time he describes as a graceful mix of music and his own observations.
"The show has become pacier over the 10 years, though still with a steady mix of contemporary music and then sometimes maybe I'll toss in a classical trumpet concerto.
"Marketing people", he says, "get so tied up pigeon-holing people. People have very broad tastes and really, there are just two types of music - good quality and bad quality." The 6 a.m. slot, he continues, is a wide brief. "The entire family at the breakfast table - and very different families. Enough of them seem to relate to me. I have found, though, that I can relate to anyone. I'm as happy dealing with a crowd of teenage motor-bike fanatics as with a room full of nuns. It doesn't faze me. I suppose it comes from being surrounded by women all my life."
Creedon is the 10th of 12 children, eight of whom were girls. Today he lives in Goatstown with his wife Mona and four daughters - Megan, Nancy, Martha and Katie - aged between 11 and 18.
The pocket of Cork city between Blackpool and the city-centre was his first home. His mother was from Adrygole in the Beara peninsula and his father from Inchigeelagh, Co Cork. "Mum was a stunner," he says remembering a picture his father Con gave him of baby John in his mother's arms.
"She's leaning against a big old car my dad bought in America. They were mad really, they always celebrated eccentricity."
The Creedon household was home to man and wife, 10 children, three dogs, two sick aunts and an assistant in the family shop. Two rooms were let out - one to an American writer called Joey and the other to a black medical student called Dr Naguriganda.
"So they always loved people, very open. But my poor mother," he nods. "I have no idea how she kept it going. Boy, had she a tough gig and she always had time for us. Tired a lot though."
His mother died 14 years ago, though his dad - "one of life's good guys" - is now in his 80s and living in Bray, Co Wicklow.
Radio was the place the young John always saw himself, he says, despite entertaining his mother's notion that he could make a lawyer.
"When I look back I realise I hadn't a clue. When I left school I missed law by a point so started arts in UCC. I started twice and after two years I quit. I have to say I have no regrets. I'd be Cork's unhappiest lawyer today if that plan had worked out."
So a job in the city library came next, then a stint as a film extra. He worked on building sites and "blagged" his way into a laboratory. "I bounced around really, just knowing I wanted to work in radio. But there was no radio. Just Radio 1 in Dublin and that seemed so far away."
ERI Radio, a large pirate covering all of Munster came just in time. There he was programme director until the pirates were closed down in the mid-1980s.
A scheme to sell a syndicated Irish radio show to stations in America was the next plan. Creedon had spoken with the IDA and carried out market-research in the US, when Mona pointed out an RTE advertisement for new presenters.
"I thought I'd never get into Radio 1, but Mona said `Sure, give it a bash'." Over 4,000 hopefuls replied to the ad. "There was major hype," he nods. "I did a series of interviews and auditions and they offered me a three week contract filling in for Pat Kenny on Drivetime. I must have been nervous, must have felt a bit out of my depth in there with the big guys and me just a fella from Cork with loads of mad ideas.
"It went great, though after a year I was let go - a very chastening experience. I had a wife and four small children living in a rented house in Templeogue. There I was, after the hype of a year earlier, signing on the dole. `What have I done,' I thought, `dragging my wife and family up to Dublin following some crazy dream?'
`But you work through a crisis," he says. "Worry is in the future, regret in the past and as long as you stay loosely focused on the present, things seem OK.
"I came back here (RTE) after a few weeks," he continues, "and saw Kevin Healy who was head of radio at the time. I said: `I'm the youngest guy in the schedule, I've come from the independent sector so I know how the opposition think. I've had nothing but good critiques, I've done classical, pop, jazz. Is that all there is?'
"So having done that I took a deep breath, got the bus into town, went into Budget Travel and blew my last £500 on a family holiday in the Canaries."
At home there was a message to ring a number. "I rang it and heard, `Hello. Kevin Healy's office.' I thought `Jesus. Straight through to the Oval Office.' "
He was offered the contract for the early morning radio show. "I says `Wow, that's great but I'm going on holiday for two weeks.'
`That's no problem', says Kevin. `It'll be here for you when you get back.'
"I turned and says to Mona, `Woohay! I'm back on the horse and we're going to the Canaries!' "
The next year Risin' Time won the Jacob's Radio Award "and I was thrilled," he laughs. "Kevin was sitting in the front seat and I was looking down at him thinking `Good on you boy. I told you I'd do you proud.' "
For 10 years he has kept up the 4.30 a.m. starts. He also presents Review of the Week on RTE television and is working on a TV documentary about his great passion, Cork City Football Club. In Dublin, one love is watching the football at Inchicore football ground.
Asked about future plans he falls pensively - and oddly - silent. "My only ambition really is to see my four daughters reach adulthood physically, mentally and spiritually intact. If they're happy, that's the only thing. "I have no career master-plan. I tend to hang loose. In my opinion life is a lottery. Yeah, you have to make preparations, pay the bills, but at the end of the day you never know what's around the corner. The best-laid plans can come to nought. So I accept that and I'm rarely disappointed.
"I suppose I do feel at the moment that I want to say, `Yeah! Let's go for it', to move up a gear."
He thinks some more before nodding, "Yeah, if the right opportunity came along I'd go for it. I can't do this forever I suppose. I'm desperately limp-wristed in targeting things."
Looking back up, he smiles, moving from the immediate subject to tell how he has often apologised for his lack of focus.
"A friend of mine sent me a poem at some stage when I was giving out about my giddiness. It's called The Boy's Heart and was about how when we grow older we tend to get rigid in life, less playful. He was saying men should not let go of their boy's heart.
"And then!" he bounds further, "I realised that all my life I had had a deep yearning for Scalectrix. I realised that now, Jesus, I could afford two if I wanted. And that Christmas Mona gave me one. I was 34. It was great craic. We had it set up on the kitchen table. We had to eat our meals off the coffee table for two weeks. Friends of mine were coming in and playing it too.
Getting back to his present, he says he knows he doesn't want to be "putting it to politicians. The more I get to know what I value the stronger my work becomes, I think.
"I don't apologise for not having a framework. It's not in my nature to be strategic. I'm more instinctive. So I'm not going to beat myself up for not playing golf with the `right' people. I'd rather go to Inchicore and watch a football match. I'd rather work at being me, I suppose, than trying to be some kind of a `star'."