Main causes of stress
I'm probably a very strange person because the things that most people find stressful don't stress me at all.
People say live television is very stressful but I don't find that. I worked with Eamon Andrews as a researcher and he used to get quite stressed before going on air. So maybe I was expecting that going on air would be much worse than it was. But I do get stressed at personal things. If my baby is crying all night then I get really stressed thinking about him and thinking about having to get up for work. Personal things cause me more stress than work.
I'm terrified of flying so that causes me stress.
Coping with stress
Because I hate flying, I will always have a large drink every time I get on a plane, even if it's 7 a.m.
When the baby cries at night and I feel myself getting stressed, I tell myself it's not that long until tomorrow and I will get better sleep the following night.
Before I go on air, I always go into a room on my own for 15 minutes. I need that time.
Putting it in perspective
Some guests get very nervous on live television and it's very understandable, especially with the bright lights. I tell them to forget the lights and the people and to talk to me as though they were sitting in a pub. It seems to work.
When you have an experience of death, it changes the way you see things. My sister and dad died around the same time and since I've had that experience, any stress I might have had before evaporated. Why worry about such small things? They don't matter.
In conversation with Alison Healy