Jenny Huston's unlikely career path took her from Ballymaloe cookery school to RTÉ radio. It was a dream come true for the Canadian, now making her mark beyond her regular music slots, writes Fiona McCann.
It's hardly the most generic route to RTÉ rock DJdom - from Vancouver Island, via a psychology degree and a Ballymaloe cookery course - but you get the impression that Jenny Huston would have gotten there wherever she started from. Not because of any inherent lust for limelight - she's disarmingly self-effacing and modest about her achievements - but because Huston is simply impossible not to like, and it seems inevitable that the nation's music-lovers would have picked up on that sooner or later.
So how does a Canadian psychology major end up rocking out in Montrose? It began, as so many stories do, in college. "I started doing a women's current affairs show for the university radio station," she explains. "But I really wanted to do my own rock show. I always loved music." Once the radio station gave her the chance she craved, this love was converted into an obsession. "My interest in music became magnified with all this access to music that having a rock show provided."
Her time on college radio came to an end with her graduation, and travel beckoned. Both Huston's parents had been born and raised in Ireland, and when her mother returned from Canada to Kilkenny, she decided to follow. With a psychology degree and some radio experience under her belt, she had, she recalls, a notion of opening a restaurant, and with this in mind completed the Ballymaloe cookery course. But it was while she was working "folding jumpers in Benetton in Kilkenny" that someone from Kilkenny Radio approached her, having heard about her radio experience, and Huston was back in the studio.
A stint at Kilkenny Radio later, she moved to Dublin where, after more study - "I clearly thought I had to have some degrees to fall back on in case the music thing didn't work out" - she began managing Corn Exchange theatre company. But she was eager not to let too much time lapse before getting back into radio. "I always thought if I stopped doing it I would lose the courage to come back to it," she says.
Friends suggested she try out for Phantom FM, the indie pirate radio station, and to her surprise, Huston was offered a Friday night show.
"I was delighted because it meant that it didn't matter what my job was, I had my musical outlet," she recalls. It was only when Phantom FM was shut down that she became conscious of how important it had been to her, and she panicked. "I realised I wouldn't be happy without that, I realised music was my passion. I needed to work in music full-time." So she knocked timidly on the door of the national broadcaster, hoping to get work "in the background somewhere".
Those in the know at 2FM had other ideas, and she was quickly launched on the national airwaves. Her glee is still palpable four years on. "It was a dream come true. It's the kind of thing you hear about but you never believe it happens to real people. I really felt like the living and breathing DJ Cinderella!" she says.
The change from a small independent station to the big national broadcast machine was one Huston took in her stride. "I always thought it doesn't matter so much what I sound like, or how I come across. It's not about me. It's about sharing this music. It's about saying: 'Wow, this song is so deadly, you have to hear it!' Now I get to share with people in Kerry and Donegal!" She pauses. "That's so cool." This sincere joy in what she does plays no small part in her success.
It's a tribute to Huston that she has managed to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of rock music. But she has never seen her gender as any kind of handicap. "Occasionally people have low expectations because I'm female, so it's easier to exceed them," she laughs. "And some musicians think it's hot for a girl who knows what she's talking about when it comes to music!"
Since her arrival at RTÉ, Huston has made her presence felt beyond her regular music slots, The Waiting Room and The Annex. She recently bagged herself a regular slot on The Gerry Ryan Show, where she talks about "anything from pop psychology to fashion", and has several TV appearances under her belt, most notably her presentation of RTÉ's live broadcast from the Electric Picnic music festival last year.
So where to next? "Oprah. A talk show with feelings and everything," she replies. The belly laugh that follows makes it clear she's joking. But being around this charismatic chatterbox, it's somehow not all that hard to believe. Ms Winfrey may well be advised to watch her back.
• Jenny Huston presents The Waiting Roomand The Annexon RTÉ 2FM JENNY HUSTON'S ROCK GREATS PLAYLIST
1 Rolling Stones: Under My Thumb
2 PJ Harvey: You Said Something
3 Radiohead: Fake Plastic Trees
4 Mazzy Star: Five String Serenade
5 The Jesus and Mary Chain: You Trip Me Up
6 Deus: Little Arithmetics
7 Pixies: Digging for Fire
8 Sugar: Hoover Dam
9 Elliott Smith: Junk Bond Trader
10 Pavement: Gold Soundz
JENNY HUSTON'S NEW MUSIC PLAYLIST
1 Cold War Kids: Robbers & Cowards
2 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Baby 81
3 Kings of Leon: Because of the Times
4 The Shins: Wincing the Night Away
5 Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
6 Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
7 Simple Kid: Simple Kid 2
8 Arctic Monkeys: Favourite Worst Nightmare
9 Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris
10 Editors: An End Has a Start