At Home With... Claudia Carroll

Claudia Carroll is quietly cock-a-hoop when we talk, and for good reason. “I’ve just heard from the USA that my book Remind Me Again Why I Need A Man? is to be serialised by Fox TV. With a bit of luck it’ll get done before the strike takes hold. Unfortunately, I can’t even get the Fox channel on my TV!”

Amid this new excitement, spreading from her home in the upmarket Dublin suburb of Ballsbridge, Carroll is still promoting her latest book I Never Fancied Him Anyway. She is also working on her fifth novel There’s A Secret And No One Told Me. Apart from noting her penchant for long titles, I wonder how does she fit all this writing in among her acting duties as Nicola Prendergast/Brennan in RTÉ’s Fair City.
“I have a study-cum-office here in the house, but I write most of my books while hanging around during the scenes for Fair City. Living here has the advantage that it’s only a ten-minute walk to RTÉ and I bring my laptop with me,” she explains. But had I peeped in the window, might I have spotted her doing some “air-acting”, getting in some advance rehearsals in preparation for the next day’s shooting? “Not at all,” she insists. “I never rehearse and I never learn my lines. I might read over them once or twice, but that’s all.”
Her house is 200 years old, two storeys over basement, and it has strong sentimental value for Carroll. “I grew up in this house, long before Ballsbridge became part of the city centre,” she recounts. “Then I moved away, but ten years ago, when nobody else in the family wanted it, I moved back. It’s a bit dilapidated and needs lots of work, but I love it. I can walk to Grafton Street in half an hour.”
The first impression on entering the house is that Carroll is not planning to enter it in the Tidy Houses Competition. “I’m just naturally untidy and I don’t mind stuff being strewn all over the place,” she says. “It’s full of piles of books as I’m an avid reader. I’d nearly read anything. My recent reading has included Kate Kerrigan’s The Miracle of Grace, which is a really gripping but sad book. It should have won the Booker Prize. Another one is On The Edge by Richard Hammond, which I’m reviewing for Newstalk. And I actually love reading self-help books.” I ask her if any of these have ever, er, helped her self. “Oh yeah, lots of them, especially The Secret by Rhonda Byrne,” she replies enthusiastically.
Living on her own, Carroll has had to do occasional DIY. “Handymen in Dublin charge about €300 just to turn up, so as an economic necessity I had to get handy with the power drill. I also deal with dead mice and even once had to remove a decapitated magpie,” she recounts.
Mice and handymen are not the worst of her problems. “There are loads of rats out the back. Fortunately they haven’t come into the house yet, and I’ve had the pest control people around. All they can do is put poison down. They tell me it’s because there’s so much building going on.”
Apart from the rats and the mice, there are no pets. “It’d be unfair to have a pet as I’m away so much," she says. "I’d be afraid of the responsibility and I’d have to find somebody to look after them."
There’s also a neighbour who plays music very loud at night.
“But then you get used to the general background noise. Rush hour begins about 6.30 in the morning and it’s busy all day.”
Not to mention the haunted room.
“One of the rooms has this very strange atmosphere," she says. "Even builders have noticed it. You could have the radiators on full and it’ll still be very cold. A friend stayed the night, slept in it and said she didn’t sleep a wink and she’d never sleep there again. It seems to have a bad energy about it. Maybe somebody was murdered in it,” she adds cheerfully.
Claudia's record collection is fairly respectable, with The Scissor Sisters and Amy Winehouse in there, but a copy of a compilation called This Is Eurovision might raise a few eyebrows among the highbrows.
“I can explain that," she protests. "It goes back to a time when Eurovision was actually quite good. A gang of us used to sit in here and watch it. We’d take it all very seriously and we’d even hang a European flag out the window. Somebody brought that record around with them and left it behind.”
Not surprising for an actress, Carroll watches a lot of TV. “I think American programmes are the best these days, especially series like The Sopranos and Lost.,/i> And I’ve watched The Simpsons so much I can nearly speak the dialogue before the characters do. BBC used to be tops for drama, but not any more.”
Apart from when she’s in the car, she isn’t a great radio listener, although she loves Gerry Ryan and listens to Newstalk. “I like George Hook, not because I’ve that much interest in sport but because he’s so good.” As for cooking, Rachel Allen's job is safe. “I’m a terrible cook. I get everything I need from Marks and Spencer. But then, when you’re single and on your own, cooking is just a chore, isn’t it?”
You can look around for precious ornaments or art works, but you’ll do so in vain. “Most of the ornaments in the house got broken, down through the years. I’ve really no interest in collecting stuff like that. I’m too busy with my acting and my writing,” she concludes.

I Never Fancied Him Anyway by Claudia Carroll is published by Bantam