The woman who polished an estimated 80 per cent of our national politicians by teaching them media communications skills, Terry Prone, is hoping to step down shortly as MD of Carr Communications and may be replaced at a coming board meeting by director Dermot McCrum. The business set up by Bunny Carr some 25 years ago, and now fronted by Prone and her husband Tom Savage, former priest, RTE journalist and one time adviser to Albert Reynolds, is a front-runner in media training but also offers PR and communications consultancy.
Prone is a well-known workaholic - she rises at 4 a.m., is in bed by 8 p.m. and shuns all social occasions - so she is not abandoning work. Currently completing her fourth novel and 15th book, she will continue with Carr but in a reduced capacity and still spend up to five months a year in Florida teaching presentation/customer skills to a variety of clients, from electronic salespeople to medics. "Teaching people how to listen is the most important thing in the world," Prone told Quidnunc this week. Prone frequently says she is brain-damaged, as a result of a car crash 16 years ago, but there's no evidence. She reads eight books a week and has 23,000 books in her house.
And who exactly are Prone and Savage's pupils? She won't say - except that they have come from every single party and that yes, most of the top names in politics and business have passed through their hands.