Ever wanted to know more about your favourite celeb? We’ve been catching up with some of the biggest names in Irish showbiz to discover their hidden quirks and close-kept secrets. From pet peeves to bucket list dreams, we find out all there is to know about some very famous faces!
This week, we catch up with Mark Cagney to chat all about his tv career, work wives and early starts!
20 years on Ireland AM – did you ever sleep in?
Never. Sleeping in for me was coming in at 6 o’clock.
Did you ever push the snooze button?
The alarm would go off at 2.45am, then it would go off at 3am and then 3.15am. So no. The ritual was to be downstairs at the breakfast table with the porridge and out the door by 4am latest. I like a civilised start to the day.
I know you fell sick on air, but did you ever call in sick?
Funnily enough, with the falling sick on air, the ‘heart attack’… I found out what that was five years later – a stone. I’m going into have it out this month. It manifested as a pain in my shoulder and it moved across and my arm went numb. It looked exactly like a heart attack but it was on the wrong side.
Were there good and bad years in Ireland AM?
The first couple of years we didn’t know whether it would survive or not. And then when Amanda (Byram) left nobody knew what would happen. People think I’m the daddy of it but when it started out, Amanda was the star. Then we got Emma Buckley who’s one of the sweetest people you’d ever meet. Then Claire Byrne, who has gone onto become one of the best broadcasters in the country. Then by year five we were established and there was a period when someone new would come in each month and you’d have to start again.
Was that tedious?
Well, it was awful for them because by then the programme was a beast. How to eat an elephant was the only way through…
Small bites?
Small bites! As a gang, Alan, myself and Aidan, I think it’s fair to say we were never unkind and unwelcoming to anybody. Because there’s no point in the lead singer thinking the band hates her. That’s not going to work.
You’ve had many tv wives…
I’ve been incredibly lucky, look at the women, (also Maura Derrane, Sinead Desmond, Ciara Doherty, Anna Daly, Karen Koster, Clare McKenna). There’s a bit of me that feels I piggybacked on the brains and beauty of some remarkable women. If you put them in a line, that is some formidable team…but of all of them working with Maura Derrane is the best fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on!
Elaborate!
She’s bonkers in the best possible way but whip-smart at the same time. She’s the only woman who’d go on set without her full makeup done. She’d do it during the show, it was a work in progress. In a business that is so much about vanity, Maura didn’t give a damn and wasn’t giving up her extra half hour of sleep.
When you see ‘ex-Ireland AM prester’ in the papers, how does that make you feel?
Fine. I’ve moved on, it’s over, done.
Interview: Bianca Luykx.