Donal O’donoghue talks to the Virgin Media journalist about motherhood, finding love, and hosting The Tonight Show
News anchor Claire Brock once considered a career in acting but journalism ticks all the boxes. Donal O’donoghue talks to her about how 9/11 changed everything, motherhood, finding love and hosting The Tonight Show
Before interviewing Claire Brock, I googled the news anchor’s name. First out of the internet soup was ‘Claire Brock, Actor’. Could this be the same person? e image certainly matched. So did the details, sort of. Listed among the broadcaster’s TV shows were such primetime dramas as News at 8, e British Masters and 3News at 10. Which just proves you shouldn’t be placing all your trust in what you unearth online. And while acting has played its part in the evolution of the broadcaster (of which more anon) there’s no doubting her professional priorities. Brock’s Twitter biog is precise and to the point: ‘Journalist, News at 8 anchor.’ Sin é. Until now.
The week a er we spoke, Claire Brock hosted e Tonight Show, replacing Ciara Doherty who is on maternity leave. It was an open secret for some time that the Dubliner was short odds for the gig, a broadcaster who has worked across radio and TV in a variety of roles, including researcher, producer, presenter, reporter and anchor. Now she is on Virgin Media’s agship news show, caught up in a ding-dong between Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton and Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin about the housing crisis. roughout, Brock stays cool, calm and for the most part, collected, even as she stirs the pot. If that’s acting, it’s pretty impressive.
“Am I looking at you or am I looking elsewhere?” asks Claire as we both grapple with the peccadilloes of communicating by Zoom. It’s the Friday before her o cial debut on e Tonight Show (she has popped up to host the show in the past) and her focus, unsurprisingly, is on imminent role. “I’ve always got a buzz from news, which is all I have ever done,” she says. (I don’t mention her online acting résumé). A whistle-stop tour of her career suggests as much: the story of the graduate in journalism from DCU, who dived straight into her career, working seven days a week on TV and radio (freelancing Monday to Friday with TV3, weekends at East Coast FM). For years, it was a hectic carousel: 98FM, Q102 and Newstalk, UTV Ireland, before returning to TV3 and now Virgin Media News.
And yet there is an earlier de ning moment. On September 11, 2001, Brock was working at Boston University’s campus convenience store (on college placement from DCU), when news came through about what was unfolding in New York. “I never had huge ambitions in journalism even though I loved TV,” she says of the person she was. “So what happened that day was an awakening for me, a jolt of a terrible, frightening reality. It brought home what was happening in the world, the bigger picture. I was 21 years old, fresh in every sense of the word, and not really knowing where I was going or what I was going to do. But that day changed everything for me.”
Claire Brock grew up in the leafy Dublin suburb of Glenageary, the middle of three. Her father was an architect, her mother an interior designer and while her two siblings would go on to pursue careers somewhat akin to their parents (her sister is an architect, her brother in real estate), she chanced a di erent path. “I was incredibly shy as a child but when I went to drama classes from the age of seven or so, I absolutely loved it,” she says. “I felt I could express myself. I never did team sports in school so maybe acting was how I faced my fears. Later I would do youth theatre which all helped to bring me out of my shell. And I suppose there is an element of performance that goes with working in news.” If the events of 9/11 awakened Brock to the big picture, cutting her teeth in TV as a reporter with TV3 News showed her the day-to-day reality. e rst news report she ever led for the station was from the streets of Dublin during the giddy days of the 2002 World Cup. “Someone wondered
aloud if there might be a baby boom on the back of all the excitement about the World Cup, so I decided to ring a few pharmacies and ask if there had been increased sales of condoms. Turns out sales had in fact risen dramatically so I went out onto Gra on Street and did a vox pop. Now I’m wondering what on earth I even asked those people? So that was my rst ever news story: not some major political scoop but condoms and the World Cup. Yet it’s all part of life and news too.”
It sure is. At DCU, Claire also met Trevor Hogan, a handsome Tipp man who would go on to play rugby for Munster, Leinster and Ireland. “He surprised me,” she says, citing how rst impressions can be so wrong. “You tend to put people into boxes don’t you? Here was I, this young Dublin girl starting out in college and here was this handsome rugby type and he surprised me with his passion and his intelligence.” On St Valentine’s Day in their third year of journalism, and still just friends, Trevor sent her a card with a message in shorthand. “I never fully gured out what it said,” she says. A er ten years of dating, and the usual ups and downs, they got married in September 2013.
Like his wife, Hogan wears his heart on his sleeve, outspoken about social issues, passionate about causes. In 2011, he travelled to Palestine and joined the Freedom Flotilla in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. When the MV Saoirse was boarded by Israeli security forces, Hogan was detained for six days. “I was really worried,” says Claire. “I was in the news room that day and there was pictures coming through on CNN of Israeli commandos boarding the boat Trevor was on. I was producing a news bulletin for TV3 and it was all so surreal and frightening. I still had to do my job and turn that bulletin around but looking back now, I wonder how I did it.”
Yet as she says, appearances can deceive and I imagine there’s steel in Claire Brock: someone always ready to get out there and give it her best shot. “I don’t see myself as hugely ambitious, but I probably am,” she says, having a brief conversation with herself. “Maybe it’s not so overt and I do have a strong work ethic.” She and Trevor now have three children: Pearse (5), Eve (4) and Ruby, who will be 2 later this summer. “I have had three children over the past ve years but I’ve always found Virgin Media to be an incredibly supportive workplace,” she says. “ere have been great opportunities. Not that it should be any other way, but it might not always be like that elsewhere. And it shouldn’t a ect what you do and how you work.”
In her school days, Brock attended a Gaeilscoil (her grandmother hailed from An Daingean), but rarely uses Irish any more, the cúpla focail only surfacing when she is giving out. “I don’t know where that comes from,” she says and laughs. “Trev says to me ‘When you’re using Irish it doesn’t always have to be tar anseo!’ and I’m thinking how does that happen?’” She was also a crammer in school and still is, a trait that gives her producer some anxious moments. “I just like cramming,” she explains simply, with that winning laugh which pops up a lot, like when she explains how she changed her rugby colours when her husband moved from Munster to Leinster. “I got a bit of slagging from that at home, with my mum being Munster and dad being Leinster.”
Now Trevor Hogan works full-time with Leinster Rugby as the club’s provincial talent coach. At home, parenting duties are shared. “Trevor has done bed times with the kids for as long as I can remember, because I’ve always done the news in the evening,” says Claire. “Five years ago, he was thrown right into that with the baby and now three children in, he’s a pro and would have been in any case.” She wants to get back to running but between work and family, the only exercise she does now is “pushing a buggy up a hill” or going for walks with the kids at the weekend, while downtime is a decent TV thriller like Unforgotten or Line of Duty.
In a recent interview, Claire re ected that the past year has shown her the possibility of a simpler life. “It put so many things in perspective, valuing the important things like your health and your family, even if it can be tough at times. We have a lot of possessions we don’t really need and we have a lot of worries that in the grand scheme don’t really matter that much.”
Yet I suspect she worries regardless. “When the opportunity arises, I like to prove to others, and to myself, that I can do the job well,” she says, seeking to clarify her comments on ambition. No need. While acting is not part of the deal, Claire Brock has proved herself in just about every other aspect of the job.
When the opportunity arises, I like to prove to others, and to myself, that I can do the job well