The Keane Edge

Sitting in the Westbury Hotel, waiting for Lorraine Keane to arrive, I’m feeling more than a little aggrieved. Truth be told, there’s been a lot of silly messing around in the lead-up to our planned encounter. I’m supposed to be interviewing the former Xposé presenter about her autobiography, but her publishers firstly failed, and then apparently refused, to hand over an advance copy.

I was meant to get the book last week, but it never arrived. Then I was supposed to have one on Monday, and do the interview the following day. When that copy didn’t materialise, the interview had to be postponed until today. I don’t mean to whinge, but it’s now Thursday, November 11, and my son’s fourth birthday party is happening in Galway this afternoon. I was already on the train to Dublin this morning, when the word came through that Lorraine was feeling unwell and the interview had been cancelled. The train was well past Athlone, so there was no turning back for me. Several tense phone calls later it was agreed that, provided her doctor’s appointment went well, the interview would go ahead at midday – an hour later than scheduled. And as I sit here brooding, I think: even if she does make it, I’m going to be under serious time pressure to get back, even to catch the candles being blown out. And I still haven’t even seen a book. AARRGGHH!!!
Her autobiography could be a tell-all. Or it could reveal nothing that we don’t already know. I have absolutely no idea. The papers have been full of speculation about its contents – understandably given her sudden departure from Xposé in April of last year – but I’ll have to go on what I already know. First coming to public prominence as an AA Roadwatch presenter on RTÉ Radio in the mid-‘90s, Keane was one of the original Irish media babes. Extremely easy on the eye, she soon graduated to the small screen and, having done a few automobile related shows with the national broadcaster, made the move from RTÉ to TV3 to front a new showbiz and celebrity show, Xposé. She had been a constant presence ever since, until last year that is, when she departed the TV3 scene suddenly and somewhat controversially. A regular glossy magazine cover star, she’s happily married to musician Peter Devlin, with whom she has two young daughters. While we’ve met socially on various occasions back in the ‘90s, I haven’t spoken to her in some time.
Keane arrives at the appointed hour, carrying shopping bags, and looking absolutely radiant. When I walk over to greet her, extending a hand to shake, she pushes it aside and gives me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Hey there, Olaf – I haven’t seen you in ages!”
Charm offensive, you might think. But it’s just Lorraine. With all my fuming over the non-appearance of her book, I’d forgotten just how genuinely lovely she is. She’s that rarest of breeds – a TV personality with a personality. And a warm and endearing one at that…
Turns out she really was at the doctor’s (to ward off a potential throat infection in advance of her appearance on Brendan O’Connor’s show on Saturday night). Her book is being serialised in the Mail this weekend, and it’s a strict term of the contract that no outside journalist sees the book in advance. Which, of course, makes sense of the previous intrigues. And she’s genuinely upset, and hugely apologetic, when I tell her about my son’s birthday party.
Suffice to say that my inner ice is well and truly melted by the time the interview begins...

OLAF TYARANSEN: Unfortunately your publishers wouldn’t give me an advance copy of your book. I don’t even know its title.
LORRAINE KEANE: It’s called Working The Red Carpet. It’s a play on words, the word ‘working’: working as in ‘slogging’, and working as in ‘posing’, and I suppose I did equal measures of both over the course of the last eleven years, or more. I mean, 18 years I’ve been in the business so far, almost 19 years now.
And are there any great revelations in your book?
I hope so! Yeah. I hope it’ll entertain you, because it’s funny. It’s a kind of behind-the-scenes, access-all-areas account of my life in the entertainment industry working for TV here as an entertainment correspondent – and also the access I had to celebrities. So it’s one of those kind of fly-on-the-wall accounts, which I think is going to be very interesting for people. It’s never as glamorous as it seems, but I put down the nitty gritty and tell it as it is, because I believe in being honest.
Is there anyone who might be upset by it?
Mick Hucknall doesn’t come out of it too well. But his ego is so large I don’t think it’s gonna bother him that Lorraine Keane from Ireland said he was not very nice. Obviously I go into a bit more detail in the book. The other people that really disappointed me, surprisingly, include Daniel O’Donnell, but you’ll have to buy the book to read that one! I’ve probably upset hundreds of thousands of mammies around the country more than I’ve upset Daniel, 'cause he’s still selling records. Who else… there’s Dannii Minogue, who was anything but pleasant. But I have read interviews with her over the last year where she’s admitted to having been quite difficult during periods of her life where she was unhappy personally and professionally, and unfortunately I must have bumped into her then.
Somebody once remarked that the worst thing about being famous is that you’re expected to be in a good mood all the time.
No, I don’t think so. I think if somebody’s taking the time to ask, which is what you’re doing with me today – and what I did for the likes of Dannii or Mick Hucknall or Daniel O’Donnell – they want you to promote whatever it is they’re trying to sell. I’m talking to you at the moment because of my book. So I think there has to be some sort of basic manners and a bit of gratitude, and I just think it’s easier to be nice. We all have bad days and I’m not saying for a moment that we should all be smiley happy faces, absolutely not, and that’s what this book is about actually: it’s bursting that bubble of a perceived notion of ‘it’s all so fabulous’. I poke fun at myself just as much as I poke fun at the people I interview or the encounters that I’ve had. But I still think that there’s no need to be rude, especially when somebody’s being really nice to you. If you, in the course of this interview, ask me something that really pisses me off then my mood might change, you know? I’m just warning you (laughs). If you turn nasty on me then I might get a bit grumpy and hold back. But that’s never the way I approached interviews, so they were just being a pain in the ass a lot of the time.
Your dad was in a showband.
Yeah, yeah, and still is. The Indians! They’re the longest-running showband ever in Ireland, so he’s very proud of that. 40 years next year and they’re still going strong. I think it’s the way you’re reared as well. Like, I’m one of seven children, and if at any stage of my career I got the slightest bit uppity, the legs would be taken from under me in one fell swoop.
It can easily happen, though, when you’re young, and start to get a little bit well known in the media. Speaking personally, I probably went up my own hole a bit in my mid-twenties.
Yeah, Olaf, you did! I remember that (laughs).
Thanks!
Weren’t you naked or something at some stage?
I posed naked in Hot Press when my book The Story of O was published.
That’s right! Excellent! (laughs). I loved that. I was thinking about that on the way in, actually. See you made the right move – you went naked in your twenties. I went naked in my thirties after two kids. Recently for the ISPCC for Barry McCall’s book of photographs (Pho2ography). I was just delighted to be asked because I’m in very good company.
Actually, I saw that picture. You were lying on a couch.
Yeah, it was a good position to lie in, so you don’t see much.
You could see your bum! But it looked pretty good.
Thanks, but I should’ve done it in my twenties! (laughs)
So you’re not prudish, obviously?
No, I’m not, but I’m also not an exhibitionist either. I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m a mother of two. I probably wouldn’t mind embarassing myself, but I’d be very conscious of embarassing the people who love me, because they’d probably get embarassed more easily.
Speaking of embarassing the people you love, what’s your take on what happened to Neil Prendeville and the fact that he allegedly exposed himself on a plane back from London?
Oh, it’s just desperate, isn’t it?
I actually feel quite sorry for him.
I don’t know, I feel sorry for his children and his wife and his family, but I don’t know the details. I don’t really want to, to be honest. But I think it’s an awful shame because it’s bound to affect him personally and professionally. It’s a mess.
The media are really going for him.
I think they’d go for anybody in those circumstances. When you’re in the public eye that’s one of the things that you have to put up with. It can be very, very difficult, especially when it’s a personal lambasting – that’s the bit that’s really bad.
The media turned on you a little bit in April of last year when you apruptly left Xposé.
I don’t think so. I just think that the papers were speculating, which is what they do, and they wanted to believe that there was a bigger story than there was. But personally, I don’t see what was so unbelievable about the fact that I want to be a mother and spend more time in that role. I hope to God that in all the years, and all the interviews that I’ve done, that people have realised that I’m actually a normal person who is so privileged, to have two healthy babies. I’ve always said it.
Is that why you left TV3?
Listen, even Michael O’Doherty said it to me recently, because he was going back through old interviews that I’d done for VIP. He said that I’d said on three occasions, that it was a struggle, but as long as the balance is right, then I will continue to work as hard as I’m working – but as soon as the balance tips in the wrong direction then I will pack it in. And those were my words: “I will pack it in”. And that’s what happened. The balance just got completely skewed on that show, because it’s so demanding. I’m not intending to stay away from the business forever, but I just needed to be a mom and I needed to enjoy the fact that I’m not just Lorraine Keane the TV presenter; I’m also Lorraine Keane the mother, the wife, the daughter, the sister, the friend, the auntie. Being 90% Lorraine Keane the TV presenter, and only being 10% of the other stuff was making me miserable.
It was reported that there was a big row when you announced you were leaving TV3.
I don’t think they wanted me to go, which was nice. I was there for eleven years, but I have no enemies there. And then when I decided to write the book, there was a little bit of paranoia, maybe, about what was in the book. But everybody in TV3 knows that I would never be unnecessarily nasty to anyone. The one person who did make comments about the book and being nervous about its contents doesn’t know me, and he was the only person in there who didn’t know me so I thought that was a bit bizarre. But that’s fine, too.
Who was that person?
Ben Frow. He came across from the UK, just before I left, to become the Director of Programming. And I’m kind of hoping that maybe he was misquoted, or that what he said was taken out of context. I haven’t spoken to Ben since. I have spoken to David McRedmond: he’s the CEO of TV3, he’s a friend of mine, an absolute gentleman, and I have absolutely no hard feelings.
Did you write the book yourself?
Yeah, every single word! Two fingers on each hand. I’ve been writing for years. I got the book deal because John O’Connor, the publisher at Blackwater Press, contacted my agent because he was reading my column in the Sunday World. And he wanted to know did I write it myself. And Noel Kelly, my agent, laughed and he said, “Of course she does!” Because I’ve been writing for years – for TV, press and radio. And he said, “God, she’s actually very funny!” And that’s where he got the idea for me to write a book. We met up and struck a deal. And that was great because it justified my taking the whole summer off and going to France, because at least I wasn’t really off – I was working in the mornings, writing from there, so it was great.
Was there much taken out?
I gave them a lot of stuff and actually they edited out very little, which I was really happy about. They completely corrected my grammar and punctuation, which was really embarrassing because I call myself a journalist. But otherwise very little was changed.
Was it heavily legalled?
It was legalled, yeah. It had to be and, again, there was very little taken out. Because I kind of dug my heels in, and I hope it doesn’t backfire.
How do you mean?
If I had to change some parts of the stories then I’d rather have dropped the whole story. Because then it’s not interesting anymore. There has to be stuff that people will go, “Oh God!” or whatever.
Was it an emotional experience writing the book?
You’re the only person who’s asked me that. Writing it was emotional. I read recently about people talking about getting their first book and it being a very emotional moment. That wasn’t the slightest bit emotional for me – maybe because I wrote it myself. There are a lot of ghostwritten books, and maybe when you see your book and you haven’t been typing every single word with two fingers over the course of six months, then maybe it is a bit more exciting! But by the time I got it, I was like, “Yeah... next!” I didn’t think I’d be like that. I thought the box would arrive and it’d be like in the movies, and I’d get the blade thing and I’d open it, and sit down and hold it and smell it and flick through the pages. But that just didn’t happen for me.
What’s your opinion on blogging?
I don’t blog. I might have to blog to sell a few books. If you see me blogging in the future you’ll know that it’s just because I’m trying to sell my soul!
What’s your take on the Price Waterhouse Coopers email scandal? The young accountants sending around comments on the looks of their female colleagues?
I read that yesterday, and maybe I’m too accepting – but I just thought that was kind of normal. I wouldn’t be offended. Would you? Well, you’re not a girl (laughs). But I don’t think the girls would have a problem with it. Not all of them.
They were all extremely pretty, too.
Yeah. Beautiful girls. I mean, there have been times where I have been subject to sexism of sorts, but I just thought that story was making a big thing about something that was kind of normal. I don’t know exactly what was said. Was it offensive? I mean, they were a bunch of eejits, but they’re lads and that’s what lads do. That’s testosterone for you. If they were saying anything about the girls that was derogatory or questioning their abilities or saying, “you only hired her because she’s got big tits,” well, then I would be absolutely offended and say that person should definitely be reprimanded. But I didn’t get that from it.
Are you on Facebook or Twitter?
No. Although loads of people I know are. It’s something I’ve been told I should do and maybe if I did it I’d see the point, and maybe I’d like it. So I don’t really feel like I’m in a position to comment because I haven’t ever done it. I know lots of intelligent people that are addicted to it and think it’s great fun so – I don’t know. For me, a big move is I’ve got my own website for the first time, and that’s launching next week – lorrainekeane.com.
It’s going to be kind of like a magazine, so I suppose I will have a blog. It’ll be tips and advice for fashion and style, and also like in my column, a diary of events and information.
Is there any more TV work on the horizon?
If there was something I could share with you, I wouldn’t be allowed. That’s the nature of the business. You have to wait until it’s actually happening, because the big reveal is part of the whole thing. I was offered a couple of things this year which I turned down just because I didn’t feel they were me. It’s really weird because when you say I’m working on “projects” – in inverted commas – I’m always conscious of other people reading it like I would read interviews and kind of go, (disbelievingly) “Yeah right!” But in all seriousness, yes, there are some interesting ideas in the pipeline for next year. And Romy, my baby, is four and started school in September. The work on all the book stuff will take me, I suppose, up until about Christmas. And then I’m going away on another trip with Trócaire at the beginning of December.
You went to Zimbabwe for them.
Yeah, Zimbabwe and Mozambique last year. I found it very, very tough. It was something that I’d wanted to do for a long time. I kind of liked to talk about the fact that someday I’ll do it, but I was scared shitless. And then when I took control over my own time, I’d no excuse any more. Emer Mullins of Trócaire got in touch with me and I said 'yeah'. Because they felt I could make a difference and I’d no excuse anymore. So off we went.
What was it like?
It was extremely difficult. But we got great coverage. The radio stations here were fantastic. Derek Mooney and Tom Dunne and Ryan Tubridy all supported me and gave me airtime to create awareness of Trócaire’s Global Gifts campaign and the money that’s spent through donations from Ireland. And while I was out there I had a cameraman with me, so I produced and presented my first documentary. Not knowing where it would land – we figured we could put it on the Trocaire website if all else failed. But Eoin Ryan of Nationwide on RTÉ took it and aired it in its entirety. And it raised about €500,000: the phones were hopping afterwards. So it was great.
Will you be working with Trócaire again?
I’m going to Haiiti. The problem with the trip this year is that I know what’s in store. Last year, I knew it wasn’t going to be nice, but I was kind of excited and proud of myself that I was finally doing this. Whereas now, I’m kind of dreading it. But if you can do it, then you should do it.
How would you describe your job at the moment?
Well, I own me. I just feel very liberated. I’ve always been a journalist, and a broadcast journalist for most of that. I suppose I’m an author now, but that sounds ridiculous. I don’t think I’m worthy of that title yet. Maybe after my next book (laughs). How many books do you have to write before you can call yourself an author? Maybe it’s just me, and the way I am, but even as a TV presenter I don’t really take that too seriously. I keep thinking that one of these days, they’re all going to cop on and realise – and I’ll be caught out (laughs).
What advice would you give to younger women trying to break into TV these days?
Just work hard, and don’t be afraid to work for free.
Jesus! You’re sounding like Bill Cullen there!
It’s true, though! I did, and it’s in the book. And I still do. There are times when I go, “Yeah, that’s worth doing.” And I’m not just talking about charity things. I think you just have to put the work in and be persistent. And be nice about it. In the last few years there has been a huge appetite for more kind of tabloid journalism and sensationalism. I don’t think that you have to go down the nasty route. If you’re good at what you do, I don’t think you have to be rude to get on.
There’s certainly no shortage of bitchy journalists out there.
Women in particular. You can talk about it being a man’s world and the glass ceiling, but if we’re not going to support each other, it’ll always be that way. I’ve always been a woman’s woman. I suppose it’s because I’m one of six girls. I’ve got five sisters who I’m very close to. And then working in TV3, and even in AA Roadwatch, I was also working with a lot of females. I just think women are amazing creatures, I think we’re fabulous. I do! I think we’re brilliant. We do so much with multi-tasking and we put so many demands on ourselves because we’re trying to be all things to all people.
Did you get burnt in the crash at all?
What? Oh – that crash (laughs). I suppose for me it’s a time when I decided to do less, actually. And I feel very privileged to be able to do that. And sometimes I feel guilty about it – for about five seconds. The reason I don’t feel guilty about taking time for me and my little family is because I worked fulltime for 18 years, and I clocked in and clocked out and took 20 days holidays a year. And that’s fine – everybody does that, and some people do it for the whole of their lives. But I got the chance to jump off because of my husband Peter’s work.
How’s it going with The Devlins?
He’s still got the band and they still have a good following and they’re doing a lot of soundtrack work in the States and things like that. But he’s off doing a lot more work for TV himself in recent years. So in our situation, financially, it gave me the chance to take a break. I took it with both hands because Romy was two when I left TV3 and in no time at all she’d be four and starting school. So it was a real now or never thing. And I’d thought about it for six months. I was really unhappy for six months.
Any regrets about leaving Xposé?
Even now, talking to you about it, it feels right. Like, the last few weeks coming up to the deadline for the book were quite stressful. But I own my own stress now. I’m used to having a boss and clocking in and clocking out. And that’s still great. But now I can say “no” (laughs). I won’t do that until Thursday! But to answer your question about the crash, myself and Peter never lived that kind of high life. We’ve been invited to wonderful parties and places, and we’ve accepted some fabulous invitations over the years, but we never let on that we could reciprocate in any way. So when we were lucky enough to be offered a seat in a private plane or a lift in a helicopter, at times we would accept that. But the most we could do the next day is send a thank you card (laughs). We would entertain at home a lot, and we don’t let on to have more, or be more, than what we are. So in that way, life hasn’t really changed too much. Because it wasn’t fierce fancy to begin with.
What’s been the lowest point of your life?
Probably my parents separating. I was 18 when it happened. People would say, “Oh, it’s easier when you’re older.” Because we had an incredible upbringing. And I love my parents equally. They’re great. And dad worked so hard, and still does, outside of home with the band to not only rear and educate, but actually spoil the seven of us. We had an incredible upbringing. The material end of things is irrelevant, really, but we had everything. And then my mum worked equally as hard, with absolutely no help, raising seven children. Even dad would say that. He did very little of that; he was of that generation. So the separation was very hard. But I don’t want to comment too much on it because it’s not my place. It’s their relationship. And they’re friends. They’re both very young still and they’re alive and they’re happy.
Given that you’re married to a working musician yourself, might similar problems arise in your own relationship?
No, because they’re completely different men and they’re completely different generations of men. Peter is a new man. He’s hands-on and he does just as much with the girls. Probably not so much around the house, but that’s alright (laughs).
Presumably your relationship with Peter, as well as your girls, was a factor in your decision to leave TV3?
It’s all that’s important at the end of the day, and that’s what was happening with that particular day job. Because it was six days a week. It was evenings, it was weekends. And it was being high glam all of the time for those six days a week, evenings and weekends. Full-on, non-stop. It was making me sad, it was making me cross. And I don’t want to break-up with Peter. I want to do my best for the whole of our lives to stay together. Because he’s the best in the world, and I don’t want to ever forget that. And you can when you get tired and stressed, and then you start blaming and it all gets really messy. And I just don’t want that to happen. So now it’s a lovely comfort and relief because I feel in control of my own destiny now, both personally and professionally. Actually, professionally, I haven’t a feckin’ clue! Apart from the fact that I know I have the book and further opportunities with Blackwater Press, which is wonderful. And Garnier have just renewed my campaign for the second year in a row, which is fantastic.
Do you have a motto in life?
Yes. You’re gonna think I’m really religious or some kind of Mother Theresa! There but for the grace of God go I (laughs)…