Brendan Courtney As Keys to My Life returns, Claire O’mahony meets the genial host
As he returns with the new series of Keys To My Life, Brendan Courtney tells Claire O’mahony why he thinks we are so interested in watching wellknown people revisit their former homes
There comes a moment in each episode of Keys To My Life which presenter Brendan Courtney characterises as unique. In the course of the show, where wellknown Irish personalities revisit places they used to live, they’ll realise it’s o en the rst time they’ve been back in decades. “It’s that moment when they walk into a room because it takes them right back,” says Courtney. “You see an emotion come over them and a memory. e one thing that they all say is ‘I really wasn’t expecting to feel like that there’.”
e series burst onto screens last year, with a revelatory look at the bricks and mortar that shaped the lives of celebrities, including footballer Frank Stapleton and newsreader Anne Doyle. is time round, the ‘national treasures’ revisiting their property pasts include Mary Coughlan, Christy Dignam, Linda Martin and Sharon Shannon. “What links all rst four shows is that music kind of saved their lives and they all say that, which is interesting; that they had this talent or access to music that took them out of themselves and away from the hardships that they went through,” says Courtney. He acknowledges that some of the stories relayed in the show are at times tough, but always fascinating as well as positive. “ere’s always triumph over adversity; they’re all still going, they’re all still working.
ey’ve been through it and they’ve come to the other side and they’re happy with their lot now, which I think is really important,” he says. In unpicking Keys To My Life’s appeal, there are several factors that make it compelling to watch. First of course, is our innate curiosity about the lives of others; Courtney wrote the format for the show based on his own childhood inquisitiveness. He recalls making his Holy Communion in an o -white suit (“I looked like Joe Dolan”) and going to a rarelyvisited aunt’s home, where he used the upstairs bathroom. “I went up, and I came down and I said to my mam, ‘ eir duvets match their curtains’,” he recalls. “I was a real nosey kid and I would have a root in everybody’s house. I’m fascinated by people’s homes and it’s just always interested me because you get a real sense of the person.” Being curious, he believes, is a personality trait endemic to this country. “I always say to foreigners, if an Irish person is asking you where are you from and how you are, they’re not being friendly. ey’re being nosey. We’re really nosey and we love having a look around people’s houses.”
ere’s also the rags to riches aspect of the show, which is always enthralling, and the fact that getting on the property ladder is a national obsession, even as many struggle to get a foothold. “It’s so depressing,” observes Courtney. “I did three series of is Crowded House (the RTÉ 2 TV series) which is all about that. at was about millennials trying to get out of the family home and we actually stopped that a er the third series because we couldn’t help anyone.” And while viewers might think they are already familiar with the lives and careers of the people on the show, Keyes To My Life manages to present some fresh insights. “It’s a new way to nd out stu about people we know or we think we know. But do we know them?” Courtney asks.
He has become friends with everyone who’s appeared on the show. “I think it’s my age and my experience,” says the presenter, who turns 50 in June. “I just don’t talk that much – unbelievably now – but I take a step right back. O en I ask the director to stop, leave them, we have all day to do this. Let them come to it in their own time. You kind of feel that as well, I think. e show never feels forced.”
Of the new crop of celebrities, he describes Mary Coughlan as a national treasure. “Mary’s story is not an easy one to tell but it gets really good, like it’s really dramatic.
ere are divorces and there’s Sinead O’connor and headlines and texts being leaked to the papers.” Of Christy Dignam, he says it’s impossible to walk down the street with him without the singer being accosted by fans and well-wishers. “Christy is just the king of Dublin.” Sharon Shannon is “absolutely the best in the world at what she does. And she’s really humble and really sweet.” Linda Martin, meanwhile, is “just amazing. Linda is probably the one person that people will be most surprised at.”
When people come on the show, he thinks of it as like having them over in his own house, so that they can feel comfortable and relaxed. “We really hope that people see it and think ‘ at’s something I wouldn’t mind doing’,” he says. He’d do it himself, although he admits that there is one house – where two of his sisters died in infancy – that he would be hesitant to revisit. “at would be weird,” he says. “But I would go back. I can’t ask people to do it and then say ‘No, I wouldn’t’.”