Fiona Looney, a columnist in another newspaper, was interviewed in this one recently, and for some reason I came up in the conversation. "There's times," she confided to Hugh Linehan, "I've read her column and at the end of it I'd feel like ringing her and asking her: 'Are you okay? Do you want to talk?' " Well, I'm fine, thanks - never better - but I'm sure a few of you might also wonder about my health when you hear what I am about to say. My name is Róisín Ingle, and for years I fancied Pat Kenny.
I know. It's tragic. Nobody was more shocked than I was when I discovered that Pat induced in me feelings not dissimilar to the ones I experienced when George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley burst onto the Top of the Pops stage. And all through Kenny Live and into his hosting of The Late Late Show I still had a little thing for him, even though he could never, ever be Gay Byrne, whom I also briefly harboured teenage feelings for. (Okay, even I can see that a worrying pattern is developing.) Later I went through a stage of having recurring dreams that Pat and I were married and that I worked for him in his studio, which was in the kitchen of his big house in Dalkey, and, well, thank goodness the kitchen is as far as it ever went.
In my defence, can I just say that we can't help the people we fancy or have dreams about? It's biology. Some weird kind of science. A magazine recently asked its readers about the celebrities they were secretly attracted to but would never let on about. I fancied nearly all of the winners. Louis Theroux: it's his nose. Ricky Gervais: it's his funny bone. Gordon Ramsay: it's his scars. Jamie Oliver: it's his dinners. Tony Blair: it's . . . search me, don't have a clue. Of course I'm not averse to Brad Pitt and David Beckham, but if it was a toss-up between Becks and the geeky-looking Louis Theroux, Louis would win every time.
But crushes, thankfully, don't last forever. By the time I had to go and be interviewed by Pat during the publicity round for my book, my strange crush on him had ended. I was more scared of him than anything as I sat in his real-life studio, which wasn't in his kitchen but at RTÉ, and prepared for a grilling.
Before the interview I had researched suicide statistics, because I'd written about my father's death in the book, and although he did ask me about that, the tone of the interview was more like a friendly chat than the inquisition I'd expected. I still didn't fancy him, though. I'd moved on. By then it was just about collegial respect.
I can remember the second I stopped fancying Pat Kenny. He was hosting a fashion show from the Point. As he introduced Dawn French he said that while most models say they don't get out of bed for less than £10,000, he was sure some people would pay £10,000 so that French would stay in hers.
The subtext was that Dawn French is fat and therefore couldn't be attractive to anyone. My crush melted into nothing. If he thought fat people were unattractive, then he wasn't going to like me, and it's no fun having a crush that could never be requited, even in your dreams. Dawn French is also one of the people I admire most in the world, and for him to diss her like that was unforgivable. My mother wrote her a letter, apologising on behalf of the Irish nation. She wrote back, of course. She's a class act.
During last week's Late Late I noticed those feelings for Pat were resurfacing. He said he was featuring guns on the show so that we civilians could see what kind of murderous weapons were out there in gangland, but when he kept saying "bang, bang, bang, bang" every five minutes, while examining the Uzis and the Brownings, it looked more like he just fancied playing cowboys. I think it was the boyish enthusiasm that got me.
Later, while interviewing Lenny Henry, he played a clip of an old Late Late that I hadn't seen before. It was a few years after the fashion show, and Dawn French was offstage, demanding that Pat apologise for his insult before she would come on. He had to get on his knees and call French a "high sex goddess" before she would emerge from the wings. Watching him lying prostrate before Dawn French, I realised all those old feelings hadn't quite died.
But then, later that evening, he was talking to Ray D'Arcy about Brian Kennedy and the Eurovision, and how these days some of the entries feature whips and chains in their acts. "He's probably well used to it," Pat quipped of Kennedy, who, as well as being a brilliant singer, is a gay man. As D'Arcy walked away from Pat, all the better to distance himself from the comment, I knew things would never be the same between Pat and me. I felt like ringing him up and asking: "Are you okay? Do you want to talk?"
A friend pointed out that, in fancying him, I'd been like one of those women who develop crushes on serial killers and write to them in prison. "It's just wrong," she said. And although it killed me, I had to agree.
roisiningle@irish-times.ie