Mark Cagney debuted a brand new look this week, as he appeared on RTE’s Today Show.
The broadcaster and former Ireland AM presenter has decided to change up things up, opting for a bold white beard instead of the clean-shaven look he has sported for years .
While Daithi O’Se told him he looked fantastic, Mark’s former colleague and close friend Maura Derrane wasn’t so keen.
Speaking about the beard, Mark revealed he was “doing a Liam Cunningham” and Maura quickly asked, ‘Do you want me to be honest?’ before being scolded by Daithi.
“I have to be honest with him, I’ve never been dishonest with Mark. I don’t feel it, sorry.
“I like you clean shaven Mark. I just got used to looking at you clean shaven and I can’t accept anything else,” she laughed.
Earlier this year, Mark suffered two strokes and feels “incredibly lucky and grateful” to be alive following the incident.
The presenter was on his way to supermarket at the beginning of January when he noticed his spacial awareness was off and there was a constant ringing noise in his ear.
“I didn’t feel woozy or dizzy but it was this rushing noise- like you’d been at a gig the day before and it hadn’t subsided,” he told Kieran Cuddihy on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder.
When he got into the supermarket, Mark fell to the ground before a number of people rushed to his aid.
“The room just went completely 180 degrees on me… I blacked out, collapsed, dropped,” he recalled.
“I didn’t topple, I was straight down on my knees and I still have a dent in my knee bone from it.
“The next thing I remember is a man leaning over me saying ‘sir, sir are you alright are you having chest pains?’
“I said no it’s not a heart attack, it’s something in my head… I still hadn’t put two and two together.”
Mark’s daughter brought him home, and there, he collapsed again.
“My eldest son who has some paramedic experience said it might be a stroke but he was looking at my face and following the protocols and none of that applied,” he said.
As they couldn’t be sure what was happening, they brought him straight into Beaumont Hospital where he was told he suffered two strokes.
“The following morning they came in and said ‘you had a pulmonary embolism’, which is a clot in your lung, and I thought ‘okay, it could’ve been worse – but why am I in a stroke ward?’
“And the doctor said ‘what you’ve told us doesn’t compute with what we’ve seen so far…’ and then they did a brain MRI and discovered I had a stroke, possibly two strokes,” he said.
Mark, who believed he was in good health, was shocked by what the doctors told him.
“I live like a monk. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, go to bed early, get up early, eat properly, exercise three to four times a week,” he said.
“Everything they said I should do for recovery I’ve been doing for years.”
The 64-year-old feels lucky and grateful to be alive, and he’s thankful that he didn’t suffer many physical setbacks.
“I’ve had no paralysis, no drooping of features, no loss of power in any limbs, but the one material physical damage is that I’ve lost a quarter of my vision,” he said.
“If you take your vision as a circle, divide it in four, the bottom left-hand quadrant is gone which means I’ll never drive again.”