MY SCHOOL DAYS: Precocious Terry Prone was being published at the tender age of 11 and started her television career at 13.

I remember remarkably little of primary school because I was always sick. I had asthma and a fantastic capacity to have accidents so I was always in plaster or with a sling or bandaged together and by the time I was about seven I was used to guys in accident and emergency who would say, "You're the person for whom the phrase accident-prone was invented." Ho ho bloody ho.

The teacher at some stage told my mother that I was absent more days than I was present. Being an asthmatic at that time, I didn't get to play any sports, so I was left out of the group of sporting people. I was not there during choir practice and things like that, so I wasn't part of any gang. As an odd outsider I missed bits. To this day, I get nervous when I hear the national anthem - I think I was out when they learned it and I'm still not sure if I have all the words right.

I went to John the Baptist primary school in Clontarf, Dublin, and I hated every minute of it, but then I hated every minute of my entire schooling. What highlights there were tended to occur out of school. I had a very bad accident when I was about four and it left me unable to talk properly. I had to go to a class to learn how to talk again and in the process the teacher submitted a whole lot of us for the Father Mathew Feis and I won first prize for reciting a poem. There was applause and I got my picture in the paper and I made the career choice there and then - I was going to be an actor. So I entered every competition that was going.

My mother was heavily into competitions of all kinds. I remember at one stage we had five black sacks of tea in a room because there was some competition where you had to prove you had bought a certain amount of tea and then come up with a slogan, but it was like an investment in tea futures. She did win us a back-garden swing at some stage. But she would also notice when there were competitions in newspapers for essays and she would sit me down to write out pages and I would enter art competitions too. They were the highlights of primary school.

When I was still in primary, I was getting published very regularly by the Irish Press. There was a wonderful man called Tony Butler in charge of the junior pages and I sent him a thing at one stage and I won a watch. He wrote to me and his letter said, "You can't spell and you can't punctuate, but you write funny stuff." He did a tutorial at long distance over several years, almost training me to be a journalist, and so I was being published when I was 11, 12 and 13.

I was still doing drama competitions when I went to the Holy Faith Convent in Clontarf. There was a nun there called Sister Anunciata and she was incredibly theatrical and had beautiful hands. They had a very elaborate uniform at that time - a floor-length gown - and one day she swept into the class and said "you all know Teen Talk" and the entire class did except me. (It was a little bit like Questions and Answers - there was an adult panel and an audience of young people.) Myself and another girl were chosen to go on but some of the class said, "Terry can't go because she's too young." I was 13 at the time and was supposed to be 16. Sister Annunciata said, "Terry will wear the high heels and she will look 16."

So I went along to Teen Talk and I was listening in the lobby of RTÉ to the presenter, whose name was Bunny Carr, asking the students what questions they wanted to ask. They were all asking terribly serious po-faced questions and when it came to me I suggested a very cheeky question. He sort of looked at me and I thought I'd blown it and he went off. The programme started and he said "our first question comes from Terry Prone". I asked my question and everybody fought with me, including the panel, and I fought back and because we didn't have television at home I had no sense that it was real, that there were maybe half a million people watching. I had great gas and when the programme was over and I was heading out, a man grasped me by the arm and said, "My name is Dennis O'Grady. I'm the producer of the programme. We'd like you on the panel next week."

So at 13 I started appearing regularly on television and that changed the dynamic in school. When there were visiting bishops and VIPs I was brought out and it was, "this is the girl off Teen Talk and the girl who wins the drama competitions", but the minute the bishops went the teachers worked very hard to make sure I didn't get above myself. It was a weird variety of "it's showtime" and "it's bloody not showtime any more - back in your box!"

In conversation with Olivia Kelly