As Halloween approaches, we had to catch up with someone who just loves the spooky season – Today FM’s Alison Curtis.
She absolutely adores Halloween and this year she has put her passion to good use to help launch Trick or Treat for Sick Children, supported by MiWadi, to raise vital funds for sick children in Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin, Temple Street, Tallaght and Connolly.
VIP Magazine caught up with Alison to see how she was getting on!
Hi Alison, how are you? You love Halloween, do you have a favourite Halloween memory?
Halloween is one of my favourite days of the year! Growing up in Canada it was always a big celebration and whole neighbourhoods would get together to go trick or treating. My twin and I have our birthday the next day, so it was a special time in our household with two days of non-stop sweet eating!
Do you still get to bring your daughter Trick or Treating or is she too big for that now?
Excuse me, you are never too old to go trick or treating! She is really excited because this is the first year she will go trick or treating with a gang of pals, and the parents will just hang back and mind from afar.
Do you have any Halloween traditions?
We start decorating the house pretty early in October if I am being totally honest. One of my daughter’s best friends lives across the road so we always take a night in the week of Halloween together as two families to carve pumpkins. Also, my niece has her birthday on Halloween so since she came along a lovely tradition has started that we go and visit them at some stage of the day to celebrate her birthday.
You launched the Trick or Treat for Sick Children campaign this year, tell us a bit about that.
Trick or Treat for Sick Children is a campaign I have long admired and have taken part in for many years so I am really really happy to be this year’s Ambassador. It is an easy, fun way to get families, friends, schools and creches together to host their own Halloween parties and raise funds for Ireland’s sickest children who need life-saving services and equipment.
Ireland is the birthplace of Halloween and you originally came here for a brief stay, now it’s been two decades. Would you have it any other way?
No! I honestly felt at home within a few weeks of moving here. I love Canada and I do miss it but I “fit” Ireland better. I love how Irish people approach life. I really feel we live for the moment, we can chat to anyone, we have a great sense of humour and most of all we are a nation of carers. People really look out for one another and help one another without hesitation.
Apart from Halloween, what are you up to at the minute?
It has been a busy autumn so far. Thankfully my Weekend Breakfast show for Today FM is as busy as ever and doing well. I have started writing a bit more…more on that later and have recorded a few episodes for a fun TV show coming out on Virgin Media this November.
We have to a nosy in your makeup bag. What makeup product can you not live without?
I got PHI brows done last year by Lizanne Proctor, and will forever want them done. They are amazing. But every so often when I really want to thicken or darken my brows I always use Charlotte Tilbury Brow Cheat pencil in medium brown, the best.
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You have an incredible career, what advice would you give teenage Alison?
Don’t worry so much. I wish when I was younger I had had the skills to approach problems or situations and be able to confidently evaluate them, in order to not waste so much time and energy on things that in the long run didn’t matter. This is something I am working on with my daughter.
Trick or Treat for Sick Children, the Children’s Health Foundation’s annual fundraising campaign, supported by MiWadi raises vital funds for sick children. Funds raised will go to support sick children in Children’s Health Ireland hospitals and urgent care centres in Crumlin, Temple Street, Tallaght and Connolly.