There is a can of diet Coke on her desk. Her assistant says it is the only sustenance she has throughout the day. She claims she doesn't eat during the day because it makes her drowsy. She lost five stone a few years ago in six months to be in shape for the launch of Blood Brothers, Soul Sisters, her first collection of short stories.

She was born and reared in Clontarf, with one older sister, Hilary. She went to the Holy Faith Convent and to UCD where she dropped out after a year to go to London with the Abbey Theatre in a production of The Shaughraun. Throughout her secondary school years, she was appearing regularly on TV, having been picked out of the Teen Talk audience at 13 by presenter Bunny Carr as "a natural". She was also a member of the Abbey company, having misled then artistic director Walter Macken about her age. She understudied for Joan O'Hara, played in the first production of Borstal Boy, sang in reviews in the Peacock - and was then called in by Macken's successor as artistic director, Hugh Hunt.

"He sat me down. Told me I was the best actor of my generation. But that I had a serious problem: I was too fat. At 17, I was playing middle-aged women."

She tried to lose weight, failed and went to radio, where "they can't see how fat you are and could care less". She was busy as a freelance journalist and broadcaster when Bunny Carr telephoned. He was then running the Catholic Communications Centre. The senior tutor priest was Father Tom Savage.

She and Savage worked together. She admired him hugely, grew to like him and three years later, after he had been "reduced to the lay state", married him.

She is quick to point out Savage had decided to leave the priesthood long before she met him. And that she continued to live at home during the years it took to laicise him.

When Tom left the priesthood, the bishop in charge of the Catholic Communications Centre told Bunny Carr to fire him. Bunny Carr refused, on the basis that his clerical status had nothing to do with his competence. He was then told his budget would be halved. He resigned and five others resigned with him. Bunny then started Carr Communications. Tom and Terry worked as freelance journalists, Tom becoming the longest-running presenter of RTE's It Says in the Papers.

Then, in 1981, Bunny asked Tom and Terry to join the expanding company. They did so and have been there since. More than 10 years ago, Terry became managing director (she says she relinquished the position nine months ago). The company is still owned by Bunny Carr, Tom Savage, Terry Prone, Dominic McNamara and Frances Fox.

She has been a member of the IRTC and in that capacity recently gave evidence at the Flood Tribunal about the award of the national licence to Century Radio in 1989. She is currently a member of the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and has been a member of the Arts Council and several other bodies.

At her office most mornings by 5.00 a.m., when "under a bit of pressure" she gets there earlier. She never socialises. She has written "thirteen or fourteen" books and writes these mainly in Florida where they have an apartment and where she spends up to three months a year. A new novel, Running Before Daybreak is to be published in June.

She married Tom Savage in 1975 and they have one son, Anton, now aged 24.