It’s beginning to look a lot like…

The past year has been helter-skelter for the hosts of Today with Maura and Dáithí as they balance family life and career. Donal O’Donoghue catches up Dáithí Ó Sé and Maura Derrane

Dáithí’s kingdom comes

“When Mícheál grows up I hope that he gets a real job unlike his father,” says Dáithí Ó Sé, one-time teacher, bouncer, boatman and circus ringmaster and latterly co-host, with Maura Derrane, of Today with Maura and Daithí. He also helms The Rose of Tralee and a clatter of TG4 documentaries that have taken him up and down the cultural highways and byways of the USA. Right now, he’s on the road home to Galway, two shows in the can and fast approaching the town of Mallow. “I’ve just demolished a sandwich,” says Dáithí, who reckons by 8 o’clock he will be tucking his four-year-old into the leaba with his home-made stories. “Next year, I’m going to be more selective about what I do,” he says. You say that every year Dáithí! He laughs. “I really do want to be around more at home for Mícheál who would notice if I was away for the night so I don’t want to do that any more. We do 165 Today shows every year which is a lot. It was a big year for Rita and me at home with the young fellow starting school in September and there are swimming and set-dancing classes for Míchéal once a week, with hurling starting in the New Year. When Míchéal Óg started school his father took him along on the big day. “He was quiet the first day and the first two weeks he didn’t play with any of the other kids but then none of them were mixing much. Now he’s part of the gang and loves it and now when I drop him off he’s straight down the yard and doesn’t look back. Even though he’s an only child he is very social, spending his summers with his cousins in America. He has the skip of innocence that you see in children and I only hope he hangs onto that as long as life will let him.”

So he takes after his father then? Ó Sé laughs. Just 42, the Kerryman seems to have been around forever, from cutting his teeth in continuity and weather forecasting on TG4 to hosting the Today show. Next year will mark his tenth year as host of the Rose of Tralee and he won’t have a bad word said against it. Then again, you wouldn’t expect him to, after all it pays the bills, but more than that he seems genuinely wired into this uniquely Irish celebration, his easy patter and self-deprecating shtick is just what the gig needs.

As it is with the Today show, where Ó Sé has been the yin to Maura Derrane’s yang for the past seven years and counting. “The guests who leave a lasting impression on me are those who come on the show and tell their life stories, baring all about what they have gone through and still keeping a positive outlook despite all,” he says. But it is a show of light as well as dark, and for five evenings this week, there will be a special Christmas edition featuring five celebrity chefs.

So what is Dáithí’s speciality in the kitchen? “Eating,” he quips. “But I do make a lovely pandy which I learned from my mother. What you need are some nice floury spuds, boil them and peel when still hot. Then put them back in the pot, add a small bit of milk and chopped onions, a slab of butter and season with pepper and salt. Mash this up and then fry with butter until brown on both sides. And that is my speciality!”

He has yet to make pandy on Today. “Don’t be giving anyone any ideas,” he says. “I’m quite happy to have Paul Flynn, Domini Kemp and all those other chefs to be cooking for me. But I do cook on Christmas Day and like last year we will have smoked ham and steaks. Also parboil some Brussels sprouts, then fry them up with some streaky bacon and add a pepper sauce to that. As for my favourite meal of all, it has to be bacon and cabbage. I know it’s as country as you can get but you can’t beat some smoked bacon with the flavour going through the cabbage, some floury spuds with butter, a pint of milk and away you go.”

Ó Sé will visit the Kingdom over Christmas to see the mammy, dine on bacon and cabbage and probably sink a few pints. But mostly it’s all about time with the family before Today goes back on in January. As he talks, with the lights of Mallow receding into the rear-view mirror, all talk turns to home and how next year he and Rita and Míchéal will have “a real family sun holiday, just the three of us in Portugal or Spain, on the beach.” It may also be the year in which the workaholic Kerryman eases back on the throttle, but I wouldn’t bet on that. Dáithí might joke about not having a real job but it really brings home the bacon (and cabbage).

Maura: The seven year itch

“There was a time when career was everything for me,” says Maura Derrane. “It’s not any more. Once you have a child, everything changes and while career is part of my life, it’s not my whole life. Right now, the show is enough for me, especially with Cal starting school next September. There’s a lot going on and also I have to balance with John (her husband, Fine Gael TD and envoy to the US, John Deasy), as we can’t be both away. So yes, John won’t be going outside the door this Christmas! (she laughs) Men have to go out for a pint with the lads whereas women don’t have to do that, they just settle into life with the kids.”

Yet, like her Today show co-host, Dáithí O Sé, it’s hard to imagine Maura Derrane totally settling into a life of domesticity. On the day we spoke by phone from her home in Dungarvan, where she was with her four-yearold son Cal, it was hard to determine which of them was more excited about an imminent trip. “I’m off to Lapland in the morning with Cal,” says Maura. “It will be his first time and probably his last time too. It’s also my first time and I’m very excited about it. It’s going to be really magical and Cal can’t wait to see Santa’s little helpers.”

Derrane, who grew up on Inis Móir, is an Irish speaker and Cal too has a few words and is able to count as gaeilge. “Like me, Cal never wants to go to bed,” she says. “He’s a little devil and will still be up at nine o’clock. He has never gone to bed early, and I don’t think he ever will. My mother tells me that I was exactly the same. Cal reads stories to me at night and also he corrects me if I make a mistake.” As if on cue, Cal pops into the