She's queen of the serious interview - but can Miriam O'Callaghan do chit chat and take the Late Late throne, asks Róisín Ingle
One of Miriam O'Callaghan's mobile phone ringtones is a recording of her young son singing "Happy Birthday To You". It can get a bit creepy after a while, says a colleague, but the tiny voice emanating from her handset leaves no doubt about the mother-of-seven's priorities.
The transition from current affairs queen on Prime Time to hostess of a light entertainment chat show, Saturday Night with Miriam, has been taking up much of her energy lately but friends say her children aged between three and 18 never take a back seat. This yummiest of Irish mummies appears to be the embodiment of having it all.
Tough, ambitious and sharp, it's unlikely she would risk throwing it all away either - so it's a fair bet that this six-week chat show won't go the way of other RTÉ summertime efforts. For a start, she is not exactly an unknown quantity on television, as some of the less successful summer presenters of the past have been. And while the leap from grilling politicians to chatting up authors, musicians and comedians might faze some of her colleagues in current affairs, observers say it has always been O'Callaghan's plan to launch her not inconsiderable talents on an even wider audience.
Viewers love Miriam O'Callaghan. In 2003 she won the TV Personality of the Year award - a gong voted for by the public - her warmth, intelligence and good looks giving her the edge over stiff competition from the likes of Patrick Kielty and Gráinne Seoige. In the male-dominated field of RTÉ's highest earners, it's O'Callaghan and Marian Finucane who are the most instantly recognisable female faces at the station. With Finucane taking a less high-profile role from September, there will be a marked lack of female broadcasting talent at the top. In presenting terms, the 45-year-old has emerged as the most influential woman in RTÉ - and there are few contenders for that position lining up behind her.
Some RTÉ insiders say O'Callaghan is being groomed to take over The Late Late Show from Pat Kenny whenever he decides to stand down and that with this in mind RTÉ bosses are keen to show her adoring public another side of the presenter. RTÉ's summer chat shows have received mixed-to-dire reviews in the past and have suffered badly from being under-resourced. The fact that producer Seamus Cassidy and his Happy Endings production company have been drafted in for the show - Cassidy has a strong track record in both British and Irish television - is an indication that RTÉ is desperate for O'Callaghan's entertainment debut to thrive.
Cassidy says O'Callaghan was one of three people on his wish list ever since she appeared on one of his other programmes, The Panel. The model for the two-hour Saturday Night With Miriam show is unashamedly Parkinson - it will also feature three guests who stay on throughout the programme. Eamon Dunphy, Cecilia Ahern and Charlie McCreevy are included in the line-up.
"What we are trying to make is an entertaining, intelligent chat show. As a presenter she is very relaxed, very engaging," says Cassidy. "I am very cynical and I found it hard to believe that Miriam was as unaffected as she appeared. I've been desperately looking for a chink in the down-to-earth persona but I haven't witnessed even a whiff of divadom."
Cassidy plays down the possibility that O'Callaghan is a possible Late Late Show presenter, but others are not convinced. "The new show is definitely like a toe in the water for her presenting the Late Late," says one source. "She is viewed as the best on-air presenter by the people who have influence in RTÉ and they really want her to shine with a view to her taking on the big gig."
Colleagues describe her as "sweet", "loyal" and "good humoured", putting her success down to her ambition, charisma and personality. According to one former colleague she brings something more to the small screen than her peers.
"She has that quality of being bigger than everything around her, and that is what it takes really to succeed in this game," says Eamon Lawler, who worked with O'Callaghan on Prime Time before taking a slot on Lyric FM. "I think it's because there is so much more to her than just being someone on the telly. She has a frightening capacity for doing several things at the same time; it used to scare me actually. She can ride several horses without feeling worn down or frazzled."
Her most recent project, the controversial Haughey series made by Mint - the production company she runs with her husband, Steve Carson - came in for criticism for taking too soft an approach to the former taoiseach. "Apparently Miriam and Steve are really surprised by the reaction, which suggests a certain naivety," says one acquaintance.
BROUGHT UP IN Foxrock, Co Dublin, O'Callaghan trained as a solicitor before moving with her then husband Tom McGurk to the US and later Britain where she started her career in the media as a researcher on This Is Your Life. She quickly moved up the BBC ladder to become a producer on Newsnight, where - after separating from McGurk - she met Irishman Carson, the father of her three sons. She returned to Ireland to present Marketplace and later Prime Time, where she soon made a name for hauling unsuspecting politicians over the coals.
She lives with Carson and the children in a five-bedroom house in Rathmines and enjoys a low-key lifestyle, preferring Dunnes Stores to designer clothes and shunning the celebrity circuit. Decidedly unstarry, she has been known to pop over to the local convenience store in her furry pink slippers, not caring whether she is recognised. A family friend describes her as a "down to earth and extremely endearing person who doesn't go in for the trappings of celebrity".
"She can tune into others very well," she says. "She sees a lot more in people than most of us would; she has this ability to get behind the outer image of a person to see what is really going on."
WHILE MUCH ADMIRED and sometimes envied by working mothers, O'Callaghan plays down her ability to juggle a successful career and a large family. "People always say, 'Aren't you great, you've got a job and you have seven kids'," she says in the current edition of the RTÉ Guide. "But women of my mother's generation worked their backsides off. They had loads of kids, they didn't have loads of money and they probably weren't wined and dined every week. I think women like me are spoilt."
A notoriously reluctant interviewee who has turned down slots on both The Late Late Show and Tubridy Tonight, O'Callaghan also told the magazine about the collapse of her marriage to Tom McGurk, the father of her four daughters, and the death of her younger sister Anne from cancer in the mid-1990s. The bereavement, say friends, made her take things more lightly.
"'Don't sweat the small stuff' would be a definite philosophy," says one.
"She doesn't think of herself in celebrity terms," says a colleague. "She is really easy-going, with a very sharp mind but not at all precious. Her journalistic pedigree is excellent and ordinary people connect with her, which could be a winning combination in terms of a chat show."
DESPITE THE SERIOUS nature of Prime Time, O'Callaghan's lighter side is never far from the surface and this has got her into trouble at times. A few years ago her Prime Time bosses banned her from dressing up as Britney Spears for the telethon and some eyebrows were raised by her wearing a black leather biker jacket and low-cut top on the current affairs show. While she herself admitted in a recent interview that she lacks the encyclopedic political knowledge of someone such as Brian Farrell, there has been some doubt about whether she has enough interest in popular culture to make light entertainment work.
Having said that, she has been known to come into Prime Time meetings with the latest gossip about reality TV and happily admits to reading Hello! magazine. She told the RTÉ Guide that "I'm not going on a chatshow to be an airhead" but even her admirers say that being ditzy is something of a trademark.
"She is a lovely woman but she can be a bit airheady," says one. "Sometimes it's a bit over the top. She can be in a room with people for five minutes and suddenly start asking how many of them have had multiple orgasms." Saturday nights with Miriam will be nothing if not interesting.