Life is looking good for Brendan Courtney. The TV and radio host recently bought a home in Wicklow as his broadcasting career continues to soar, but he didn’t always have it plain sailing. In the past, Brendan has faced heartache in both his personal and professional life, between the death of his dad Frank, his sister Deborah’s cancer diagnosis, and not feeling confident in his TV career. Fast forward seven years later – Brendan will soon be living next door to his now recovered sister, and he is one of RTE’s best loved presenters. Here, he chats to RSVP about swapping the city for the country, a new season of Keys To My Life and why he finally feels all of his hard work has paid off.
You recently bought a house in Wicklow, will you miss living in Dublin city?
I’m a Dub through and through, but I had a big birthday quite recently and I just thought, “I can’t grow old here”. It’s an apartment, it’s wonderful, I love it and I’m very lucky, but I thought I should try to futureproof my existence in some way. I’m moving to be close to my family. In 2017 my dad died, and that same year my sister Deborah got lung and brain cancer. She was very, very sick and has two small children. I bought the house next door to her. Renovating it has been an amazing challenge. I’ve loved every second of it, I haven’t found it stressful at all, but it cost so much more than I planned to renovate it. The house to buy was €295000, which is very affordable these days because it’s a small house in Wicklow. But I would say the renovations have cost the same. It’s eye-watering. I’m very lucky I could sell an apartment I had in London, which I bought 20 years ago. It was very expensive to keep it up and I air bnb’d it when I wasn’t there, but then it was costing me €2,500 a month and it was killing me. I was getting upset about it. I persevered and sold it, and when I got the keys to my new home, I realised that something came out of my time spent in London – where I went through a break-up, and was in and out of work – and now I have a house of my own. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
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You are good friends with Hugh Wallace and Dermot Bannon, have they been around to take a look at the house?
Full disclosure, Dermot’s right-hand man is my architect. I am mad about Dermot, he is amazing, but we would never work together because we’d kill each other [laughs]. Of course, RTE begged me to do a documentary about it and I was like, “No way”.
Hugh Wallace also said he’d never put his house on show on TV.
He and his partner Martin had a proper derelict home, it was literally a pile of rubble. I make television and I know how it all works. You have to have jeopardy, a moment where it falls apart. That is stressful enough without showing everyone on telly. So I said no. I did share some stuff on Instagram and I didn’t realise how interested everyone would be. The kicker is the builder said to me, “Oh you’ve got people looking at these videos,” so he’s been amazing ever since! [laughs].
You mentioned there your sister Deborah was very ill, how is she doing these days?
She’s absolutely great. I actually said to her the other day, you’re not special anymore, shut up! [laughs]. I’m very close with her. We thought we were twins growing up until she made her Holy Communion. The same year that my best friend dropped dead of a brain aneurysm, Deborah got cancer, then dad died and it was like, “Woah, what the f**k is going on here?”. Deborah was very sick, God love her, but now she is remarkable. She is back driving and back working, and goes back to the oncologist every six months. She is so lucky.
That must have been very hard to deal with, have you ever had any brushes with your own health?
I had an upper body DVT when I was 40. I thought I had a sprain in my arm and then found out it was a blood clot. I went to see my dermatologist with my swollen arm and now every time I see her she says I’m so lucky, that I should be dead. I remember being in the hospital and I went to see a joint specialist, who told me to see somebody quickly. So I went to the Mater and the guy who did the ultrasound told me I had a nine-inch blood clot, and not to move. I had been to the gym three times with a blood clot! They never got to the bottom of why I had it. I never spoke about it publicly, I don’t know why. I think I was in shock.
You’ve started filming a new season of Keys to My Life, can you tell us anything about it?
We’ve got a really exciting episode coming up with Jim Sheridan. I really liked him. I have fallen in love with Niamh Kavanagh, she is just the nicest person. I knew her before to say hi to, but nothing else. Now I know she is just this incredibly positive human being. Tony Holohan is on the season too. I’m so grateful for Keys to My Life. I always expect it to be the last season, because that’s just life in television. You film something, it ends, life moves on, it’s grand. When you get the phone call to say we’re going again it’s like, “Really?” I guess that comes from being a little bit superstitious. I always try to be optimistic, but because I’m freelance the glass is usually half empty rather than half full. You have to be prepared. What has now happened with Keys to my Life, which I’m so grateful for, is that we’ve tipped into Who Do You Think You Are? territory and people want to do it because they know it’s an homage, it’s respectful and it takes them through their lives. People are now approaching us to do it, which is great.
Who has been a standout guest over the years?
Aine Lawlor is amazing, she is the broadcaster. I remember being so nervous the first morning going to meet her, because I was going to be interviewing her for five days. She’s from Artane, where I’m from, and my sat nav actually took me to my childhood home. It hadn’t changed at all. Two of my sisters died in that house, so my family had a really traumatic childhood there, when I look back. I eventually drove up to Aine’s home and told her I was a bit nervous to interview her, because she’s Aine Lawlor, and she told me, “I could never do what you do”. That was the nicest compliment I ever got.
The public love seeing you on television or listening to you on radio, would you ever consider hosting the Late Late Show?
I vehemently and aggressively feel that the next host of the Late Late should be a woman. I think Deirdre O’Kane should be doing it because she is brilliant. Now if Deirdre turned it down… [laughs].
Well you have experience of chat shows, having hosted The Brendan Courtney Show for TV3 back in the noughties.
I was in my 30s, living in London, flying back home to record it and then flying back to the UK. I actually hated that show, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I wasn’t ready for it. My opinions weren’t fully formed. I was doing a fashion programme for BBC and [producers] kept pushing me into comedy and I didn’t want to do it. When I joined RTE Radio 1 to cover for Ryan Tubridy and Ray D’Arcy a couple of years ago, it felt different. I was ready for it and the feedback was so positive. I’m very confident in what I do now and I’m not ashamed to say that. What I do very well is listen. A lot of people don’t, and it’s a great skill to have. I’m confident in how my voice sounds and in what I’m saying, but I wasn’t confident when I did that chat show. I just wasn’t in the zone.
A lot of people thought you might have replaced Ryan Tubridy over Oliver Callan on the radio, was that ever a possibility?
I was never spoken to about that job, it was never offered to me. Oliver was there five years before me, he deserved that job. People were telling me, “You should have got that job,” and I was like, “I never went for it!” I’m back covering now for Oliver and Ray and it’s all back to normal. I’m not staff with RTE, I just invoice them for the work I do. People would probably be surprised at how poorly I’m paid but that’s okay, I understand how money and these things work.
You’re in a good place at the moment between your career and new home. Do you feel a newfound appreciation for life when you look back at all of the hard times you overcame?
I recently brought one of my good friends over to see the house and she told me, “You’ve never had anything handed to you, you’ve worked hard and hustled and this is a real example of that”. I feel like I’m in a “moving forward” stage as opposed to a “gratitude” one. I mean, I’m very grateful. I check myself all of the time – I have a great job and I own a home. I’m very thankful for those things and they didn’t happen by mistake. I worked hard for them. I also think – and it’s hard to get to this point – I deserve it. Life is good.
This interview first appeared in the November 2024 issue of RSVP Magazine.
English (US) ·