At home with... Sean Moncrieff

Broadcaster, author and journalist Sean Moncrieff has had a pretty colourful career to date. Having presented numerous groundbreaking television shows including The End, Good Grief Moncrieff, and Don’t Feed The Gondolas he’s now returned to his first love – radio. Dublin’s Newstalk 106 is his new home these days where he presents a weekday magazine show from 2.30pm 4.30pm.

Chez Moncrieff is a renovated cottage by the sea in Sutton, north Dublin, which boasts spectacular views of Ireland’s Eye and Lambay Island. Here he lives with his wife and four young children whose ages range from 2 to 12. Originally from Galway, Moncrieff reckons he’s lived in the house for about eight years.
“We ended up here pretty much by accident,” he says “We were looking out for a house and happened to be passing by it in a car when saw the ‘For Sale’ sign. We thought, ‘Ooh a nice little cottage beside the sea – that sounds nice’. It was tiny with just three rooms when we first moved in but it was all we could afford at the time. We’ve since done a lot of work on it and we reckon it’s worth about ten times what we paid for it.”
Revealing a hitherto unknown talent for DIY Moncrieff says he carried out much of the work on the house himself.
“I’m actually quite good at that kind of thing,” he says. “In fact close personal friends of mine don’t fucking believe me when I tell them that I built all the kitchen units from scratch. But it’s true and they haven’t fallen apart yet. I’ve always done things myself, mainly out of necessity or because I didn’t have the money. It has generally worked out quite well and I haven’t had many disasters. I’ve probably inherited it from my father who was kind of handy in that way.”
However, he admits his talents for getting down and dirty with a hammer and nails doesn’t extend to the garden.
“I am absolutely shite at gardening,” he says. “In fact the hotpress photographer will not be let anywhere near the garden it’s in such a state. I just don’t have the patience for gardening. I’ve quite a big garden, which is a pain but everything we’ve ever tried has turned into a disaster. A few years ago we built an extension and the builders suggested laying that instant, roll-out grass which we thought was fantastic idea. It looked great but the week after that we went on holidays. It was the hottest spell in years and we came back and it was completely yellow.”
Working from home much of the time Moncrieff has built an office in the back garden where he says he likes to escape the “chaos” of the house.
“It also has a pool table in it,” he grins. “I’m absolute rubbish at pool but I think it’s good to enjoy doing something that you’re actually no good at. I had this vague idea that I’d practice and be able to go into pubs and embarrass other people but it hasn’t happened.”
Music clearly plays a big part in Moncrieff’s life and his large collection of CDs takes pride of place in the living room.
“I know everybody says they like all sorts of music but I actually do like a wide variety of stuff,” he says. “I go through different phases which probably reflects my age. I went through a jazz phase recently, a kind of an Ella Fitzgerald phase. Then I went through a punk phase. The most recent album I bought was Oi Va Voi, a band from London of Jewish extraction. I bought another album recently by Terry Hall who used to be in the Fun Boy Three and The Specials. He’s done an album with this Arabic guy so I must be going through some sort of world music phase at the moment.
“And yes I do have them filed in alphabetical order. I know it might sound anal but if you want to find something you want to listen to, you have to have some vague idea where it is. It drives me mad if someone takes something out and puts it back in the wrong spot.”
Moncrieff says his listening patterns vary depending on the time of the day and the mood he’s in.
“If you’re in the house during the day and you need to tidy up, or paint a wall you need something lively to get you going. Elvis Costello and Talking Heads would be favourites for that. I’m always burning compilation CDs for the car as well, and lately I’ve got into downloading MP3s, mainly for the kids who are at a stage where they hear a song on the radio and they want it instantly. Personally I think the sound from MP3s is a bit ropey so I won’t be transferring my collection to an Ipod just yet.”
Is there anything in his collection of particular sentimental value that he would rescue in a fire?
“Not really, most music is replaceable but I have an early Doobie Brothers album called What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits that I had on vinyl when I was about 14. I managed to get a Japanese copy on CD which I suppose is quite rare.”
Surprisingly for someone who has appeared on the box so regularly in the past, Moncrieff says he doesn’t watch all that much TV at home.
“I just don’t seem to have the time these days. I’ll probably watch some European Championship games but I’m one of those occasional football fans, the kind that Eamon Dunphy always gives out about. We do have a wide-screen TV and a DVD player but I’m not into watching movies on DVD to any great extent. For some reason it always seemed strange to collect films and watch them over and over again. I know a few people who do that and you ask them how many times they watch them and they say ‘once’ and then they put them away and forget about them.”

Moncrieff goes out weekdays between 2.30pm and 4.30pm on Newstalk 106. His next book Stark Raving Rulers is due in October

[photography: Emily Quinn]