MY SCHOOL DAYS: Today FM presenter Ray D'Arcy sampled modelling at school before being caught by the disc-jockeying bug

I'm from Kildare and I did all my schooling in Kildare town. I started in St Bridget's primary school and it was one of those situations where as a little boy you attended the girls' primary school up until first class then you transferred over to the Brothers - the De La Salle primary school.

I remember in St Bridget's we had elocution lessons. Her name was Mrs Kennedy and she asked us all to bite into an apple and of course being about six we all took massive bites and she told us that was very rude and not the done thing so we all then learned to eat an apple without making a noise and drink a full glass of lemonade without going "aaaah!" at the end of it. I don't know what it did for me really though - I was still dropping my THs when I was in my 20s and I still drop the odd one now, so it obviously didn't work that well.

The other memory of that school was a fashion show. I think I would have been in senior infants and was making my first Holy Communion and some lady came in and asked if anyone wanted to be in a fashion show. Everybody put up their hands but myself and James Leavy were picked. We rehearsed it over and over again. We were supposed to walk up the ramp and separate and do a little twirl and go back up again. Of course when we saw all the lights and all the people we just ran up the top and sprinted back in our little Communion suits.

I went to the Brothers primary for five years and I had the same teacher for four of those years, a Mr Looney. His area of expertise was music, unfortunately, because I wasn't very musical. I remember in one music exam you were supposed to sing the scales and I started on a high doe when I should have started on a low doe so by the time I got to what should have been the high doe only the dogs in the street could here me.

I did every kind of sport in school. I was on the school gymnastics team and we won an all-Ireland gold medal and I won a silver medal individually. I played hurling, soccer and rugby. I was quite academic. I didn't come from an academic family; there's nine of us and my mum and dad were always laissez faire about it - if you wanted to do it, you did. With a small town like Kildare you were with the same guys right up through primary school and into secondary. The De La Salle secondary school was very small at the time - there were only 125 pupils in it. I enjoyed it but it was a school that concentrated on the academic side of your personal development.

When I was about 15, I was sitting in the local hall listening to the local DJ, Noel Roberts, who was also the local painter. He used to wear a monkey hat and his favourite song was My Boy Lollipop and I thought "If your man can do it anyone can." In school, I was sitting beside an English guy who'd just come into the class - a very flamboyant character called Paul. I was telling him about your man, Paul, the DJ, and he said he used to be a DJ in England. So the whole plan for world domination was that we would pool our resources and go into DJing and we'd have your man before the end of next week. But Paul suddenly wanted to be a drummer in a band, so I sold the bike I'd bought out of my earnings during the summer and bought his gear.

I was in Ogras, the junior Conradh na Gaeilge, not for any great love of my native tongue, but it was a way of meeting girls on Friday night. The guy who ran it had a programme on the local radio station at the time and he played traditional music. He asked me to do a half hour of pop music so I presented that as gaelige. "Tá súil agam gur bhain sibh taitneamh as an ceirnín sin, agus anois AC/DC Touch too Much." So that was my first outing into radio, and I sort of got the bug then at the age of 15.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly