Katriona McFadden's job is nothing if not diverse. As roving reporter on RTÉ Radio's 'The Tubridy Show', she has broadcast from the top of Ireland's highest crane and from inside the animal houses in Dublin Zoo. Róisín Ingle meets the Bridget Jones of the airwaves.
As Katriona McFadden recounts her early days on Ryan Tubridy's RTÉ1 radio show, it's hard not to cast her as the Bridget Jones of the Irish airwaves. Fans of the fictional singleton will recall Jones completing a television report while sliding down a fireman's pole. Last summer, when the show started, McFadden filed reports for Tubridy from a hot air balloon, from a paraglider, and perched atop the country's tallest crane.
What she isn't, and insists she never could be, is an RTÉ version of the chirpy television presenter Davina McCall. "I screen-tested once for a new RTÉ dating show and they said they were looking for the next Davina McCall. I am not her and I don't want to pretend to be her," she says, sipping juice in a Dublin cafe. "I didn't enjoy it at all; maybe I am too reserved."
Reserved isn't a word you'd use if you saw her in action in her roving reporter role. She fizzes with enthusiasm, on and off the air, chatting non-stop in her distinctive Donegal lilt. On the day we meet, she is at Dublin Zoo for her weekly Monday slot called The Water Cooler, for which she clocks up thousands of miles visiting workplaces across the country. She did a "recce" at the zoo the Friday before, so when Monday morning comes she is on first-name terms with everyone from the ostrich keeper to the receptionist, firing them up with her breezy banter in advance of their time on air with Tubridy. "I love the buzz of it," she says later. "I just love the fact that my job brings me into contact with so many interesting people."
McFadden says she was a "nerdy, curious child" with her head stuck in an encyclopedia, and that journalism was the only choice she could think of to put on her CAO form. She studied at DCU, a course she enjoyed even if she says it was "too geared towards print journalism - they basically want you to get a job in The Irish Times."
It was the radio module of the course that got her excited. "I just loved it straight away. It was a hoot," she says. (McFadden describes lots of things as "a hoot", including Tubridy, and a trip to Amsterdam with her boyfriend.) When she graduated five years ago, she got a work placement in Radio 1's 5-7 Live, where she felt at home immediately. To her surprise, she was kept on after her eight-week placement, but she knew her position was precarious. "It was the time of the cut-backs; they even took the bin liners out of the bins to show how bad things were," she says.
Shortly afterwards she landed what, for some, is the holy grail of media jobs: three months as a researcher on the Late Late Show. She took the researcher job because it kept her in RTÉ, but she says now that she hated it. While Pat Kenny, she hastens to add, was "a dote" to work for, the environment was too different from the close-knit radio team she had become a part of on 5-7 Live. "It's a different kettle of fish, a lot more cut-throat than radio; you are competing much more fiercely with your colleagues for ideas. And I didn't have any experience with booking authors or celebrities, so I was at a bit of a disadvantage," she says.
She found dealing with celebrities "a nightmare". "Ruby Wax was so rude, a total diva, she wouldn't even look at me. George Foreman was just this quiet, yes ma'am, no ma'am person backstage, who was all showbiz when the red light came on. With experience, you find out there are some people who only perform in front of the cameras, and getting used to all that can be strange and stressful," she says. "I did get to meet to some great people though." Such as? "Chris Tarrant, who I love. The good thing was that a lot of my time there was spent organising the toy show, which was brilliant. I was glad when the three months were over, though."
Almost immediately, she got a call from her old boss at 5-7 Live. "On that programme you have your Philip Boucher Hayeses and your Fergal Keanes who are doing the live serious stuff. My stuff always veered towards human interest. If the St Vincent de Paul produced a report, I'd be the one interviewing the woman with the four children in a two-bedroomed flat, which suited me grand," she says.
Around this time, she became the regular newspaper reviewer on Tubridy's new 2FM breakfast show The Full Irish, though she admits she had to be persuaded, as the prospect of live radio - most of her 5-7 Live work was pre-recorded packages - terrified her. For a while she was doing three jobs: the 5-7 Live programme, The Full Irish and a weekly children's programme called The Funday Show. "I got really disciplined at this time. I was in bed by 9.30pm."
You get the impression McFadden is bit of a workaholic, and she doesn't disagree. She only sees her boyfriend once every two weeks. He is a hotel manager from Co Kerry who was introduced to her by Tubridy during the Rose of Tralee. "It suits us both. The long distance thing can be tiring, but even if he moved to Dublin tomorrow we still wouldn't live together. I share a house with my best friend and we have such a lovely time in the house that I don't want to give it up any time soon," she says.
McFadden is 26 and her boyfriend is 10 years older. "I tend to have more in common with guys that are older. They have more of an idea where they are going and treat girls better. There is more of that opening-the-door mentality." Is she an old-fashioned kind of girl? "Yeah, kind of. My mum is a housewife; she gave up work when I was born and has been in the home ever since. My Dad is an electrician, a complete gentleman and I like guys who are gentlemen."
She says she has always got on well with Tubridy. "He calls me McFaddy Pants and pulls my hair all the time," she says. "He is easy-going and trusts my judgment." Having said that, she is well aware that there are certain items that are harder to pitch to the presenter than others. A recent item on baby yoga, for example, received a cynical response from Tubridy, who, she says, is uncomfortable in the face of anything vaguely "new agey". "You can see his lips curling and his eyebrow arching," she laughs.
Her work with the Tubridy Show takes her all over the country, and she says that while it sounds a bit too good to be true, she is in her ideal job. "Since September, there has been less stuff with me in a field or in a hot air balloon, and more things with me and a mini-disc machine taping stories about interesting people," she says.
She also still presents The Funday Show. "I'm owed around 60 days off this year, but I won't take them. I hate being idle," she says. Then she utters the words that will endear her to bosses across the land, and make the rest of us want to strangle her. "I would never, ever dream of taking a sickie."