Des: I’ve no regrets
Host ‘thrilled’ to have quit role & says ‘there’s more to life than TV’
BY SPORTSCASTER Des Cahill said he feels “thrilled” to be finished presenting The Sunday Game.
The RTE presenter quit the GAA show a year ago in a shock move, but he insists he has no regrets.
Des, 64, said: “I felt The Sunday Game was broken. Initially they’d show one game, then they started showing two.
“And then it grew more ambitious, and in my time...we started showing every single game.
“And there was no time, and the lads had things to say and they had no time, everyone’s frustrated.
“They might say something really interesting and there’s an obvious follow-on question and I’m being told in my ear ‘move on, we have to move on to the next match.’” Des tells Lucy Kennedy on Living with Lucy how finishing work after midnight then getting up at 4am for early radio shifts took its toll. He added: “The body doesn’t understand... that was tough. So I feel thrilled I’m finished. “Life has far more things in it for me, and just being famous or being on the television isn’t the only thing. “Some of the letters I got after I finished by the way, oh my God. Saying that you were part of our family for 15 years, every Sunday night we sat around. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Des recalls stints on the road with Jack Charlton, revealing the straighttalking Geordie could be “cranky” but he was also “great craic”.
And he opens up about the drowning accident that claimed the lives of his father’s first wife and two of their four children.
Dubliner Des tells how he found out about the multiple tragedy when he found a schoolbag tagged Micheal Cahill in the attic. He revealed: “It wasn’t spoken about – I now realise that was because my father wanted us brought up as one family. “But I thought about that, suppose it was you, at what age would you say it to a kid, it’s heavy stuff.” He recounted how as a cub reporter he met two journalists who had covered the tragedy, and one told him his dad had been drinking whiskey as the recovery operation unfolded. Des said: “That kind of shocked me because my father was a moderate drinker but obviously the horror of it all... it must been horrific for them all.” Living with Lucy is on Virgin Media One tonight at 9pm.