Miriam O’Callaghan has been a staple of Irish television for almost three decades.
She has been presenting Prime Time since 1996. She has been on RTÉ Radio 1 since 2009. But behind the scenes, she is a hands-on mother of eight, her youngest has just finished their first year in college, and grandmother.
It’s no surprise that the story of her life is highly sought after; she reveals that she has been working on the memoir for 20 years.
“It did take me 20 years! Penguin Publishers gave me a contract 20 years ago so it’s taken me a while – because I was always very busy!” she tells us with the biggest smile for the August issue of VIP Magazine.
She’s our coverstar and what a coverstar she is!
“Patricia Deevy is my editor in Penguin, she is a fantastic person. I am blessed to have her as my editor, also because she never ever gave up on me,” she says.
“Every time she’d bump into me she’d say, ‘Miriam’, and tilt her head to the left and to the right and I’d say, ‘Patricia, I don’t know if I’ll ever do it’. But then I met her at The Book Awards not that long ago and she came up to me and said, ‘Miriam, what about now?’, and whatever way she said it, I went home and I started writing it the following morning.”
Her memoir comes out in October, so what can we expect?
“Everything is in the book, otherwise it’s a lie. It would be like an Instagram portrayal of ‘my perfect life’, and that’s not my life,” she tells us.
“Like most people, I have had ups and downs and I wasn’t going to be not open and address everything.”
Read our full interview with Miriam O’Callaghan in the August issue of VIP Magazine on shelves nationwide now
