First Encounters

In conversation with FRANCES O'ROURKE

CAROLINE MURPHY

grew up in Malahide, Co Dublin, and joined RTÉ in 1978. She worked in radio as a sports presenter/reporter and in the newsroom, then as a radio producer on the Gay Byrne Show. In 2002, she retured to college to do a full-time degree in organisational psychology, and now combines work in that field with broadcasting.

'WE MET AT a party in Leo Enright's house; Leo is a distant cousin of mine. I had just started in radio, first as a production assistant from 1978 to 1979, and then I got one of four new jobs in radio sports. I met this individual – Seán – at Leo's party who said, 'You're the one who got my job – but I got a much better one, so I don't care.'

“Actually, I think it was Seán who unknowingly helped me get the job: I was in the room when one of the interview panel came out and said. ‘That fellow said something really stupid about horseracing.’ I was listening with all ears. The next day one of the interviewers asked me, ‘What would you think of Lester Piggott running the Grand National?’ and I said, ‘Doesn’t he just ride on the flat?’

“I really didn’t know that much about other sports apart from tennis – as Seán says, college friends would say that a tennis racquet was an extension of my arm.

“Our meeting at Leo’s was a brief encounter . . . The next time we met was around 1983, when I had a singles BBQ in a house I’d bought in Killiney: everyone invited had to bring a friend of the same sex and Fintan Drury brought Seán. He was still there with Fintan at 2am when I threw them out – Seán was shocked. I couldn’t believe anyone would think it wasn’t my right to say the party’s over.

“But then I went to Seán’s farewell party and we were more or less together after that. Our 27th anniversary is July 25th.

“I went from the newsroom to the Gay Byrne Show as a producer, after Maeve and Aisling were born. I really, really liked working in radio as a producer. And the Gay Byrne Show was completely the centre of everyone’s life.

“I went back into sport as a TV producer/director. For the life we had for the next few years [the couple’s four sons were born between 1990 and 2002], it suited, because TV sport is a couple of big set pieces a week when you’re producing or directing a live programme. You have to be 100 per cent concentrated, but for the rest of the week, to some extent, the time is your own.

“I always felt a bit of a fraud when people would say, ‘How do you manage?’ It was never both of us working nine-to-five. I don’t know how people get up at 7am and bring children to a creche and bring them back to the same house with the same dirty dishes . . . The lynchpin of our childcare arrangements was that we had one woman who stayed with us for about 10 years.”

SEÁN O’ROURKE

has been the presenter of News at Oneon RTÉ radio since 1995, and of The Week in Politicson Sunday nights on RTÉ1 for the past nine years. He and Caroline Murphy married in 1985 and have six children, two daughters and four sons, aged from 13 to 25.

'THE FIRST TIME I laid eyes on Caroline was one day when I opened the Evening Pressand saw a picture of her as RTÉ's latest recruit – I was thinking, she's the girl who got my job! It was 1982 and I had applied for a job in sports and didn't get it. Sport wasn't my forte. But I did get a job in the newsroom and went from the Sunday Pressto RTÉ for two years, 1982 and 1983.

“We met first at a party in [the broadcaster] Leo Enright’s house. And then some time later, I went to a party in Caroline’s house . . . I don’t think I was outraged when she threw me out at 2am, but it was an early introduction to Caroline’s capacity to be decisive.

“We didn’t meet that much over the next few years: RTÉ is very big and our paths didn’t cross much. Then I invited her to my farewell party – I went back to the Press, this time as the Irish Press political correspondent, in 1984.

“After that we went out for about 18 months, and got married in 1985. At the wedding one of the speakers said, ‘You won’t go wrong if you remember that Caroline is always right.’ Experience suggests that she is right more often than she’s wrong.

"Maeve was born in 1986 and Aisling in 1987; they're 13 months apart. The worst time was around then, when I was in the Irish Pressand Caroline was on the Gay Byrne Show. She'd start at 8am; I'd leave around noon and could be working for up to 12 hours. We had the weekends, but Monday to Friday was pretty full-on, although Caroline had two sisters with teenage daughters living nearby and that made a huge difference.

"I went back to RTÉ in 1989, first as a programme editor, then I went to the This Weekprogramme. That was actually the most fun I've ever had. I hit that programme in the summer of 1990. There were the presidential elections, Mary Robinson, the Lenihan business. It flowed seamlessly into things like the last of the Haughey heaves, Charlie's departure, Albert – three golden years.

"Then I became set on a being a producer and was in the middle of doing a training course when the opportunity came up to present the News at One, and I took that fork in the road. I couldn't refuse the chance to present a daily news programme, a job you'd give your right arm for. I've been on it since 1995. I reckon I've asked well over 100,000 questions by now.

“I work with a wonderful team: anytime we’ve had a good programme, more often than not it’s not because of what I do but because of what the people on the other side of the glass do.”