Miram O Callaghan in Conversation with Roddy, Rory & Ita Doyle at the Library

I went along to Tallaght Library last Thursday for the interview with Roddy Doyle and his parents with the wonderful Miriam O Callaghan.  I say wonderful because one, I had a very high opinion of Miriam before the interview, and two because after it, it went up a couple more notches.

Firstly, she did a very good job of putting everyone at their ease, including Roddy Doyle's parents, who turned out to be really interesting and also very moving to listen to.  You'll get a chance yourself to listen by clicking the link below, and also because Miriam was really supportive to the school students that came along, giving lots of encouragement and praise with a bit of humour fired in for good measure.

Now I am sure interviewing, even very good interviewing always throws up the odd curve ball, but Miriam had more than her fair share to deal with last Thursday, when having waited for the production team to do all the sound checks, whilst Miriam chatted to everyone, we had a power failure, complete black out.  Initially, most thought it would last a couple of minutes and then we would be off again, but it turned out the whole area was down and the ESB had no idea when they would get it back up again......interviewing nightmare..... except that the sound man had back up batteries!  As the setting up of the new sound level would take about 15 minutes, it was decided to have a bit of a question and answer session while we waited.  This was really good, with some great questions from the students about Roddy's characters and stories, and it was awful pity that it wasn't being recorded, and again to Miriam's credit, not only did she praise and encourage the teenagers, but she also managed to store up items in her head out of the responses from the Q & A, for the interview once it got rolling.

So the first part of the interview, all 4 minutes before the power cut had to be scraped, because the sound would be different, and then 15 to 20 minutes later, the sound guys had everything set up on battery, when guess what, yes you've guessed it, the power came back on.  So..........this meant changing all the sound settings again, another 10 or 15 minutes, and me thinks deffo an interviewer's worst nightmare.  But the lady just kept on going, charming everyone, and smiling all the way through it.  So when we did finally start, the below recording took place and well worth a listen to, so get listening.

Miriam O Callaghan in conversation with Roddy, Ita and Rory Doyle  HERE