ON THE COVER:
She took a huge chance leaving her fulltime role in TV3 and an even bigger one when she took over the reins at Evoke.ie, but Sybil Mulcahy believes it was the best move she ever made – so much so she’d encourage other women to do the same
SYBIL MULCAHY on why women must believe in themselves more.
I t was September 2016 and Sybil Mulcahy was standing at the school gates when she got a phone call ‘out of the blue’ from her former TV3 colleague Paul Henderson, now the CEO of DMG Media and founder of women’s lifestyle website Evoke.ie.
‘He would have been in TV3 sales when I was a presenter. But I hadn’t talked to him in years. I thought he was looking for TV3 gossip,’ she grins. This was because Sybil, 43, had recently – much to everyone’s surprise – left TV3, now Virgin Media, after some 16 years. One of the station’s most experienced presenters, she had done stints in news, showbiz and even fronting her own show.
‘They asked me to go back to Xposé and I said no. I was too old and not interested. I was interviewing proper people who had medical conditions, who were politicians. It was like The Late Late Show during the day.’
Instead Sybil took redundancy ‘on condition I’d stay on as freelance so I
had the best of both worlds’, she explains. ‘None of the other presenters could believe I had walked away,’ she says, of her shock departure in 2015. ‘Everyone thinks it’s the dream job being on the telly.’
When she broke the news to her then boss Andrew Hanlon – who has since left Virgin Media for a job as CEO of a Nigerian TV station – ‘he was surprised and I was surprised. I started to cry, thinking, “Am I actually exiting?” But I had ticked every box on Xposé – the Oscars, red carpets around the world, I met Tom Cruise, Beyoncé, Bill Clinton, Reese Witherspoon. But how many red carpet events can you go to? After a while I was thinking, “Ugh, Heathrow again.” And I had three kids.’
Sybil has no regrets. ‘Pretty soon after that they started getting rid of all the presenters,’ she says – including her close friends Aisling O’Loughlin and Lisa Cannon. ‘I was able to get out on my own terms with a package.’
But that day when she took the call at the school gates, Paul Henderson wasn’t looking for gossip. He was looking for an editor at Evoke. ‘We met in Avoca in Monkstown and when he offered me the job I nearly fell off the chair. I had no digital experience at all.
‘I said I’d have to think about it. I had such self-doubt and I agonised, thinking, I don’t know if I’d be good enough. I should have said yes straight away without thinking about it,’ she muses now.
‘I feel like I’m at my peak now. A lot of women in their 40s are at their peak. They’ve been through it, they’re experts in their fields. We have to stop doubting ourselves. I’d like to see more women my age working in digital.’
Evoke’s offices in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, are around the corner from where Sybil grew up, the youngest of seven children. These days home is Killiney, south Dublin, with her husband John Prendeville, an engineer, and their three children, Hugh, 12, Genevieve, 10, and six-year-old Michael, who are all still in primary school.
Her father Michael Mulcahy is still a practising psychiatrist and as the youngest of the large, overachieving family, Sybil was ‘completely spoiled rotten. I still am – everyone thinks of me as the baby. My uncle John Mulcahy, who died in September, was the editor of the Phoenix magazine. My sister Orna Mulcahy works for the Irish Times and my cousin Nick Mulcahy is editor of Business Plus magazine. One half of the family are journalists, the other half are all doctors.’
Sybil ‘didn’t get enough points for medicine – and I’m squeamish’. Instead she studied arts in UCD, followed by a Hdip in Communications from NUIG, and began her TV career in San Diego, where she lived for five years in the 1990s. ‘I was a reporter on an American public broadcasting station,’ says Sybil, who was also in a long-term relationship with a local called Rob, who asked her to marry him.
But when TV3 launched in Dublin in 1998, she saw it as her chance to get home.
‘I got a job at TV3 three months after it started. I started as a tape editor on a breakfast show, then I quickly moved into the newsroom as an assistant producer. Then I became a news reporter, then entertainment correspondent when Lorraine Keane went on maternity leave.
‘Then I was offered Xposé though I was reluctant to take that because I was a news reporter and I thought, “How are we going to fill five days a week with showbiz?” I did that for two years, then I moved to The Morning Show and did that for five years. Then I was moved to Midday as Elaine Crowley’s co-presenter. Then I was offered my own show called Life. But they didn’t have the finances,’ she explains – and Life was axed after one series.
It was through a cameraman friend at the station that she met her husband John – on the night of his 30th birthday in Searson’s pub on Dublin’s Baggot St. He left his own party so they could have a cosy drink together in the Burlington Hotel. They married in 2004 and live with their three children in leafy south Dublin.
‘We used to live where I grew up but Dublin 4 was out of the price range,’ she says. ‘I grew up in Ballsbridge so I’m a townie. I always thought Killiney was the sticks. But we’re right beside the park, we have a huge garden, the kids have a treehouse in the garden and they love that.’
Her mother was disappointed when Sybil left TV3, saying, ‘You won’t be on the television any more!’ But Sybil knew the time was right.
‘When I looked around I saw every good presenter had left. I was like, “That’s the sign”. They started to all go and get other jobs – behind the scenes with government, in radio, they went to all kinds of different places. I would think, another good person’s left. Why am I still here? But I’m still in touch with loads of people in Virgin Media and I’m on every couple of weeks. I’ll get a call saying, “Can you fill in tomorrow?” When I do Ireland AM I’m up at 4am and I’ve still got to do a full day at Evoke. I’m fairly grouchy by 5pm. But it’s good for the brand so that’s why I do it. You’re still relevant.’
Aside from the 24-hour nature of digital news, Sybil often attends events and launches in the evenings too. ‘I always thought I worked hard, but I would say now I put double the work in. I would be at my computer every morning at 5.40am and publishing all day. It’s constant. Even if it’s 11pm, I’ll have to update a story or else it will bug me. I’d say some of my team think I have OCD.
‘When you’re the editor, when your name’s over the door, it’s hard to not check all the time that you haven’t missed anything. If I see we don’t have a story, even if I’m down the country on holiday or in a spa, I will be asking them, “Where is it?” I probably wreck their heads. But the site is growing and you have to keep a standard.’
Of leading her team she says: ‘One minute I was a TV presenter next I was handed 13 people to manage. Of course it’s tricky. It was in the beginning.’
Sybil has ‘never been on a laptop so much in my life’ which has not gone unnoticed at home. ‘The kids say, “Why can’t I use my iPad if you’re on your laptop?” I say, “I’m working” and they say, “Well you’re always working.”’
Her nanny Laura, who has worked with the family for 12 years, does the school runs and keeps things ticking over while John and Sybil earn a living.
‘When I come home the six-year-old runs over and gives me a big hug. My daughter could say, “You need to sign this note” or “you put the wrong sandwich in my lunchbox”. My eldest might say, “Where’s my Xbox controller? You keep hiding it!” It’s a full on onslaught. And then you’re trying to get them to do their homework,’ she sighs. ‘People say you can have it all but you actually can’t. Something slides along the way.’
How does she deal with working parent guilt? ‘I bring them out somewhere where they fleece me for clothes, video games. I’m a sucker. The shopping trolley will have 20 things in it. I’m sure a lot of working mums do the same because you’re trying to compensate for not being there at the school gates.
‘That’s one of the regrets I have – that I’m not at the school gates every day with the mums. You miss all the coffee mornings, you miss the hugs. But then I can buy them what they want. ➤
“THAT’S ONE OF THE REGRETS I HAVE – THAT I’M NOT AT THE SCHOOL GATES EVERY DAY”
Though I’m not buying them a pony – there are limits!’
As for making time for her husband, she laughs, ‘How do you make time for yours? How does anybody make time for their husband? We try to go for dinner every three weeks. At the weekends we get a takeaway and just relax, sit down and have a bottle of wine in the kitchen and talk about just normal things. We try and go away for a weekend together three times a year. Or else it just doesn’t work,’ she says.
‘But the weekend is all kids, being taxis to hockey, rugby, golf or whatever it is. The kids are full-on and we’re working all week. We are absolutely so wrecked by Saturday night. But these are the things you do if you want to send your kids to private schools,’ she adds, estimating that once all three are in secondary school the fees will be some €19,000 a year.
‘I push the kids as well – they do everything. And everything costs so much now.’
Sybil took the job at Evoke in October 2016. The site will celebrate its fifth birthday in February and last April took Media Brand of the Year 2018 at the Irish Media Awards. ‘Evoke is Ireland’s premier website for showbiz, fashion and beauty. I firmly believe no one can touch us for a female-only mobile site. We’re miles above the competition,’ says Sybil, proudly. ‘This month is our biggest month ever, we’re going to reach 1.2million women this month.’
The demographic is women aged between 25 and 50 and Sybil is delighted that the site’s growing online presence has allowed her to hire some heavy-hitters in the worlds of fashion and beauty. ‘Fashion editor Corina Gaffey just joined the team. She has worked at the Irish Times, she styles Amy Huberman and Vogue Williams, she works for Hello! magazine. Our beauty editor Laura Bermingham is the most influential beauty journalist on Twitter. Our readers know when they come to Evoke they’re getting credibility and experts.’
As editor-in-chief, Sybil’s biggest challenge is ‘balancing editorial and commercial – trying to please both’, she says, of keeping advertisers happy while maintaining journalistic standards. She also needs to maintain relationships with her old pals.
‘Our readers love Irish celebrities and that’s where I would come to the fore, I suppose. I know so many people within the industry and I would have a lot of contacts. If I want to know something, I’ll just ring my friends.’
Many of her friends are happy with the publicity but some are a bit more circumspect. ‘It can be tricky,’ she admits. ‘It’s a fine line. I have to explain myself sometimes when I’m ringing them. When I’m on the set with the other presenters, it’s a bit like, “Are you going to write about this?” But I’ve loads of stories I would never air.’
Sybil’s ambition is to ‘keep making Evoke bigger and better. Keeping a high standard, fostering the talent of the journalists who are there.’ She encourages other women to have a mid-life career change – or to at least explore other possibilities within their industries. ‘You need to diversify,’ she advises. ‘You can’t just be a one-trick pony.’
“OUR READERS KNOW THEY’RE GETTING CREDIBILITY AND EXPERTS”