Miriam O'Callaghan

Miriam O'Callaghan (born 6 January 1960)^[1][6] is an Irish television current affairs broadcaster, chat show host and radio presenter with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). She has presented the leading current affairs show, Prime Time, since 1996, and her own chat show, Saturday Night with Miriam, since 2005. In the summer of 2009, she began a radio show, Miriam Meets.... That has now been replaced by a live show Sunday with Miriam. O'Callaghan has eight children.^[7]

Early life

O'Callaghan was born in Foxrock, Dublin, the second child in a family of five. Her father, Jerry, a senior civil servant in the Department of Energy, came from Currans, a small village outside Castleisland in County Kerry. He grew up on a small farm at Callaghan's Cross, where the young Miriam spent her childhood summer holidays. Her mother, also Miriam, was born in Ballylinan, a village in County Laois where her father was the local garda sergeant. Miriam Snr. became a primary school principal and taught her daughters at the local St. Brigid's National School in Foxrock.

O'Callaghan attended secondary school at the Sisters of Charity School in Milltown. She did her Leaving Certificate exams at the age of 16 and then studied law at University College Dublin, where she also completed a post-graduate diploma in European Law. She studied to be a solicitor at Blackhall Place, while articled to a solicitor's practice in Merrion Square.

British career

Soon after qualifying as a solicitor in 1983, O'Callaghan moved to London with her then husband, Tom McGurk, and applied for a researcher's job in Thames Television. She secured a position on This Is Your Life, then presented by Eamonn Andrews. She subsequently moved onto researching current affairs programmes for Thames and in 1987, she left to train as a BBC producer in the BBC Television Centre in west London. As a producer, she worked on shows such as Kilroy, Family Matters, and Prime Time, responsible for specials from Hong Kong and Jerusalem. O' Callaghan then joined the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Newsnight as a reporter where she worked for ten years. While there she was responsible for a number of high-profile investigative programmes, including one on the UDR 4 miscarriage of justice and another miscarriage of justice case about Kiranjit Ahluwalia. She also covered the Northern Ireland Peace Process for Newsnight during her years on the programme.

She has not ruled out a return to the BBC.^[8]

RTÉ career

O'Callaghan was head-hunted by RTÉ and returned to Ireland in 1993 to present Marketplace, an economics and business programme. She juggled working with the BBC and RTÉ at the same time and also worked on the debut series of the ITV show Tonight with Trevor MacDonald. From 1996, RTÉ secured her services exclusively as the presenter of Prime Time. She continues to present RTÉ's Prime Time programme on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights, as well as budget and election programmes.

In 2004, she began the first series of her own chat show, Saturday Night with Miriam, during the summer months. O'Callaghan made her debut as a radio presenter on 11 July 2009 on the programme, Miriam Meets, to run for eight weeks.^[9][10] It was confirmed in August 2009 that the programme would return permanently to RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday mornings.^[11] In 2013 she stood in as a long-term replacement on RTE Radio One in the key daily morning slot from 9am to 10am when presenter John Murray was off on extended sick leave. After this O' Callaghan was given a new live Sunday morning radio show on RTE Radio One from 10am until 11am.

She earned €307,000 in 2011.^[4] Her work that year included fronting RTÉ's coverage of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to the Republic of Ireland in May 2011,^[12] and hosting the 12 October 2011 Prime Time TV debate with the seven candidates standing in the Irish presidential election, 2011.^[13] Her treatment of Martin McGuinness resulted in more than 100 complaints to RTÉ.^[14] She also did RTÉ's 50th anniversary party on New Year's Eve 2011, attended by President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and Jedward.^[15][16]

At 10:00am on 24 October 2012, she clicked a mouse in RTÉ NL's national control centre to bring to an end fifty years of analogue television transmission in Ireland.^[17]

Private life

O'Callaghan married her first husband in 1983 and they separated in 1995; she had four daughters at the time; Alannah, Clara, and twins Jessica and Georgia.^[18] She met her present husband, Steve Carson, while working on Newsnight. In 2000, the couple married and set up their own television company, Mint Productions.^[19]

O'Callaghan has four sons with Carson.^[18] Her brother Jim O'Callaghan is a Fianna Fáil party Dublin City Councillor.^[20]

She was identified in the media as a possible Irish presidential candidate in 2010, though she was quick to deny her interest in the position.^{[21][22][23][24][25]}

Awards

In 2003, she won the Television Personality of the Year Award at the Irish Film and Television Awards.^[26]

O'Callaghan was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) degree by the University of Ulster in Derry on 5 July 2011.^[27]

She has won the RTÉ Guide Style Award.^[28]

References