One of my earliest memories would be my very first day of school. I remember about 10 seconds of it. I just remember a fear of a thing that I didn't know. I was up with my mother in the old St Theresa's in Mount Merrion and I remember the cloakroom, that's all, just putting in my coat and thinking "this is hell on earth". Millions of people scurrying around that didn't want to be there, not just the parents, but the kids, and I hated the first day.

After that I was there for low babies, high babies and first class it was fine. It was only up the road so I didn't have to far to go. I do remember one time a bunch of people were reprimanded - as in they were biffed - for looking in the girl's toilet. I remember realising the injustice of it all - I didn't even know this had taken place, I wasn't within half a mile of it, yet I was one of the ones who was punished. Seemingly I was pointed out by some girls. I don't remember much apart from that.

For the next bunch of years, I went to St Laurences national school in Kilmacud. The first week, I found one of the most difficult of my entire life. I absolutely hated it. It was just that bit further from my house up by the Stillorgan shopping centre. Actually, we got a free day from school the day the Stillorgan shopping centre opened because it was the very first shopping centre in Ireland, but the first week was just awful.

We were waiting for the new school to be built and we were in prefabs and I just thought it was very tough and not really what I wanted. There were two classes in the one room. One bunch of 30 people would face this teacher one way, and the other bunch of 30 would face the other teacher the other way. Now, I realise the new school was just about to be opened, but Jesus I thought it was awful. The worst thing about it was that my best friend, Fintan Cullen, had come with me from Mount Merrion national school and he didn't mind it. I really was so annoyed. When you're in school if you're going to come second last in French the best thing is to sit beside the person who comes last, but the fact that this guy didn't mind, I could have killed him.

We were only there for about a week when we went into the main school. Academically I found it okay. I was just as good as anybody else and I made friends and all the rest, but there was a certain dread which is still with me, that Sunday-night feeling. If you had homework to do for Wednesday you'd do it on Tuesday no problem, you might even do it on the way home in the bus. If you got homework on Friday, the only time you did it was Monday morning, there was a bit of dread on a Sunday night: if I don't know my catechism, I'll just get thrown around the place. The ethos of the time was if you don't know your stuff you get hit. In one way it's very easy in retrospect to apply today's laws to something so long ago but I often wish I could go back with some great Oscar Wilde quotes, because it's at that moment I'd want them most to completely belittle the guy who was doing this and put him down with the very thing he was supposed to be teaching me.

After that, from the age of 12 through to Leaving Cert, I went to Blackrock College. I was good at certain subjects from the national school, Irish in particular, but there were six streams of a class in each year in Blackrock and I was never the first, never in the last, I was always in the middle, which is where I was very happy to be. The most important thing was to make good friends, which I still have. Academically I did fine - I was looking for a specific something in the Leaving Cert at the time called honours. I needed two honours do the arts subject I wanted, which was English, and that's exactly what I got.

We did musical appreciation, which was great in fifth and sixth year, and I remember bringing in stuff like Deep Purple with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and playing Jethro Tull and stuff like that. I was interested in music way before that because I had older brothers and sisters and by the time I'd started school, I could reel off the Top 30 in five seconds.

There's a myth about Blackrock College that you're going to be left behind if you don't play rugby, but it's just a normal school. I think they liked to think everyone would tog out, on the half-day we got on Wednesday afternoons, but 70 per cent never went near a rugby ball after the first week. I had nothing to do with rugby but I was into sport. I even played on a thing called the Blackrock College soccer team for about three years (you may as well have been on the tiddlywinks team), so I was sports-orientated but didn't even get coerced by rugby, let alone threatened by it. But I found it a fine school and I enjoyed myself while I was there.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly