The popular presenter is back with a new documentary about her beloved rescue puppy. Andrea Byrne chats to her
In a new documentary, Lucy Kennedy invites viewers into her home to watch as she and her young family welcome Riley the rescue dog. She talks to Andrea Byrne about adopting a canine companion
They say you shouldn’t work with children or animals, but Lucy Kennedy has chosen to do both for an upcoming TV project. “ey say you should never work with puppets either, but I have done that too”, she laughs, recalling her rst TV gig with the foul-mouthed Podge & Rodge. Lucy, her husband Richie, and their three children, have recently added to their brood – welcoming a beautiful Golden Labrador called Riley, that they adopted six months ago. The whole adoption process and Riley’s integration into Lucy’s family is the subject of her new TV project for Virgin Media. “On top of writing my third children’s book (The Friendship Fairies), presenting breakfast radio (Lucy co-presents the breakfast show on Classic Hits), filming Living with Lucy (the long running TV show that sees her move in with a celeb) and being a mother (Jack, 11, Holly, 9 and Jess, 4), I decided, let’s rescue a dog”, she laughs heartily. “I had been working with Dog’s Trust, and Paws Animal Rescue for pretty much ten years. In October, Milo’s Mission Rescue, (a small self-funded rescue centre based in Wicklow) put up a post of a black Labrador in a crate. She was about to give birth. I said to the kids, ‘That’s it,’ so I contacted them. I did want a puppy. If my kids were older, I would definitely be up for adopting an older dog, but with Jess being quite small I couldn’t take the risk. I begged them to consider us. We were put on a list. There were eight puppies and we were one of the eight families.”
It was love at first sight, she recalls. “She fell asleep on my son’s knee. I’d like to think that she picked us as much as we picked her. She is honestly, up there with giving birth and marrying Richie, the best thing that has ever happened to our family. She has brought so much happiness and joy, and has brought a sense of responsibility to the kids; feeding her, filling her water bowl, picking up her poop, walking her. And Jess, our little fouryear-old, her confidence since getting Riley is
It was love at first sight, I’d like to think that she picked us as much as we picked her
unbelievable,” Lucy enthuses.
While Lucy has filmed in many homes over the years for Living with Lucy, this is the first time she has opened up her own home to the cameras. “Hubbie will not be making an appearance,” she says of Richie, who is consistently camera-shy. “That is why we work. I answer the door to the postman with a ‘Daaaadaaaaa!’. I don’t think there could be two of us like that. He is the opposite of me. So it’s just myself and the children, where they are making an appearance in the more home video stuff. They are little so I didn’t want to put a professional camera in their face. Anytime you see them it’s my very dodgy camera skills.” Puppies require a lot of work, more than most realise, so how has Lucy enjoyed that side of being a dog Mam? “Not that much. The first week, I didn’t sleep. I was so worried. She came crate-trained at night time. I treated her like a newborn: my husband just kept saying, ‘Luce, she is a dog. We love her but you have to stop this.’ She was asleep and I was pacing. I felt this extra responsibility because she was a rescue. I wanted her life to be amazing. I panicked around her for about a week, but I’m grand now. I am so excited to go home to see her now.”
It’s just before 11am on a Wednesday morning and Lucy has finished work for the day. She and her radio ‘husband’ Colm Hayes, have recently moved from Nova to Classic Hits, and present a breakfast show Monday to Friday from 6am to 10am. “Well, as you may know, I am very fond of talking, and it’s with Colm Hayes, who also loves to chat,” she says of the mammoth daily task of filling four hours of radio. “We’re great pals in real life too. Classic Hits is great. It’s nice to talk to people nationwide now.”
After broadcasting from a make-shift at-home studio during lockdown, Lucy is delighted to be back in an actual radio station. “I was broadcasting from my dining room for the last year. In the middle of the traffic, all you can hear is ‘Mam I’m doing a poo!’” she howls. “It’s nice to leave the house every day. So weird wearing make-up and a bra. The last year has been a blur, really. People were talking a lot about lockdown fatigue and I really did get fed up. For the first lockdown, I treated it like Christmas. Very excited about being in my pyjamas all day and drinking wine in the evenings. Second lockdown? Nope, didn’t click, I was done. And then home-schooling with the three of them there. Painful! Poor Jack, who is 11, was faced with his mother who just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry son, I just don’t understand your homework. ’i know you’re in 5th class, I know it’s embarrassing, but I just don’t understand,’” she says, again with that bold laugh, which she herself has likened to a donkey in labour.
Lodging with/living With Lucy, whatever permeation it takes (subject to Covid restrictions), will return filming in June. To say Lucy is excited is an understatement. She enjoys it as much now as she did ten years ago when it first started. The public do too. Lucy’s unfiltered and carefree approach makes it the perfect escapist TV. “I think people love the programme because it is completely and utterly genuine. The interviewees can breathe, you really get to spend a long time with them. When the English celebs or American celebs meet me, I’m gonna take a photo of the shock when they realise that I am ‘Lucy’, the presenter. I usually rock up in trackies. I don’t really care about my appearance. All those reality stars are used to polished presenters like Holly Willoughby, groomed to within an inch of their lives, and then I rock up having not brushed my hair, probably lost my luggage and usually dying to do a wee.”
Lucy is very generous with her time and even though our interview has gone way over the allocated time, we continue talking about the merits of our furry friends, particularly for a family with young children, and how they become such an integral part of the family so quickly. “This documentary is not about discouraging people from buying dogs, but rather to make people consider adoption, because I know first-hand what kind of doggies are in these rescue centres. They are beautiful. People’s perception is that dogs in rescues are damaged. They’re not. In the last couple of weeks, I have been in buckets of centres and I’ve met all breeds. Everyone loves cockapoos and they are in rescue centres,” Lucy says, keen to debunk the misconceptions about rescue dogs. “It’s a broad documentary but the heart of it is the message that, if you are thinking of getting a dog, just look at adopting first, and then by all means do what you want to do. It’s just to show people that there are plenty of Rileys out there.”
If you are thinking of getting a dog, just look at adopting first