RTE Guide* Circulation: 84018 Saturday, 16 January 2016 Area of Clip: 124500mm² Page: 12,13 Page 1 of 2 COVER STORY WATCHIT! Nationwide, Mon, Weds & Fri, RTEOne f |~p One of the most familiar faces on RTIi,Anne Cassin overcame Guest childhood shyness to carve out a successful career as a TV and radio personality. of the Donal O'Donoghue meets the Nationwide presenter at home NATION // I ook at these shoes”, says Anne Cassin. “They must be four inches at least!” iHThe co-presenter of Nationwide is sitting in her living-room: hair made-up, warpaint on and styled to the nines. “I need to get a photograph of myself glammed up like this”, she says, dispatching daughter Heather to do the honours. Away from the TV cameras and microphones, the mother of three is usually a jeans and runners type, someone keen to dispel any notion of celebrity and wary of being seen as too big for her boots. So Anne is curious about what you might ask (‘Nationwidel Nationwide! Nationwide!’ she suggests) and hopes we won’t portray her as some sort of super-mum. Today the ‘not super-mum’ is at home: an airy semi-d with wooden floors and walls of whites, creams, and red. In front of a comfy L-shaped couch is a monster TV and on one wall floorto-ceiling bookshelves painted a jaunty green (“Don’t ever order your paint online!”). I nose among the titles, a mix of fiction (Roddy Doyle, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, Hilary Mantel), nonfiction (Antony Beevor, Joe Simpson) and sport, including Cork hurling/football and Roy Keane (husband, Donagh McGrath, is a Corkonian). Elsewhere arc images of her regular holiday haunt, Dingle, a photo-montage of hubby competing in the Frankfurt Ironman and out back, in the garden, a “walking man” post from the Wicklow Way. It is an appropriate totem for the woman who co-presents (with Mary Kennedy) the popular and prolific (143 programmes last year) Nationwide. Anne flanked by daughters Ellen The magazine-style show has made Cassin ‘kind and Heather with the Guide crew of famous’ across the country. “The feedback is always positive and complimentary”, she says. “People don’t say mean stuff to us”. Not even on Twitter? “I don’t put up anything that is too personal”, she says. “In any case my audience are not the Twitter generation but I have a very low profile really and I live a quiet life. I’m constantly asking people why they watch Nationwide and a lot of the time it’s as an antidote to the news or because people see their own lives reflected in it”. Cassin and her co-host occasionally suggest ideas for the show. “You can have influence but not power, but I love that autonomy”, she says. This week, she helms a show celebrating the Irish dancer and choreographer, Breandan De Gallai (one of her suggestions). Among her highlights from last year was a Burning Man-style ritual staged at Derry’s Waterside and a yoga session (she is a yoga practitioner) in the wintry outdoors of the Hell Fire Club in the Dublin hills. “I liked them because they were both so different from the usual”, she says. But most of all she just likes RTE Guide* Circulation: 84018 Saturday, 16 January 2016 Area of Clip: 124500mm² Page: 12,13 Page 2 of 2 sitting down with ordinary people in their homes I was too was five of us and why wouldn’t she be cross? and listening to their stories. 66 Sometimes 1 would wonder what mum would do Cassin is a good listener - and questioner (at one in certain situations”. At her wedding in Croatia in point I wonder who exactly is doing this interview'). knotted up as a person 2004, Anne paid tribute to her mother. “For some It wasn’t always so for the Dubliner, who grew up to do acting reason, and I’m not a bit superstitious, I felt my on a farm in Balrothery in the north of the county. mother’s presence, or maybe her absence, very She was the eldest of five with three younger acutely that day and got teary a few times”. brothers and baby sister, Lillian, who arrived She says she doesn’t make New Year nine years after Anne. She says she was lonely as resolutions, yet in the same breath adds that she a child. Why? “Because we lived on a farm”, she aims to cut back on the wine and chocolate and says quickly and then considers this. “No, that’s run more often. “1 like it because you just have not fair. 1 w'as just crippled w'ith loneliness as a to put on shoes and go out the door”, she says. very young child and became a reader as a result. She also has not lost her love of reading (a longterm My dream as a kid w'as that we’d live on a road favourite novel is Brides head Revisited by and I’d have a next-door neighbour as a friend. Evelyn Waugh) and is a member of a book club. I had quite a sheltered upbringing and I was just Next up is Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, very shy: it’s not any deeper than that”. Medication and Music by James Rhodes, but Her late mother, Nancy, ran the farm and the with Nationwide producing three one-hour home: her father, the veteran actor and director Following school, she studied communications documentary programmes to mark the 1916 Barry Cassin (still going strong at 91 years young) at the College of Commerce in Rathmines (fellow Centenar>' (Cassin, Mary Kennedy and Bryan was often on the road. “I think my mother was my alumni included Bryan Dobson and Teresa Dobson will be presenting), she is immersing father’s rock and he was for her this glamorous, Mannion) and later joined Dublin pirate station herself in everything you need to know about the creative type”, she says. Was he a major influence Radio Nova (Dobbo was there ahead of her). None Rising. on her? “How do I encapsulate that influence, which of the Cassins followed their father onto the stage 'Lucky’ is how she describes herself, but of is still very real, in a sentence?” she asks. “He is but during her time at Nova, Anne completed a course there’s more to it than that. A few' years 91 and a quarter and we celebrated with a meal. He year at the Oscar School of Acting. “1 discovered back, talking about her dad’s lust for life, she lives in my head sometimes. When I’m saying a line then that I was too knotted up as a person to do said that “People die a little bit at the prospect for the camera I’m wondering ‘Is my diction clear of retirement”. Did I say that?” she asks. “Well I acting”, she says. “I couldn’t let go. Maybe 1 was here?’ or ‘Am I overusing my hands?’ and his voice sometimes wonder about retirement and whether too young. I was 20 or so. I wanted to express is there sitting in the back of my head”. a bit of energy, a bit of hunger, a bit of curiosity myself and I believed that I wanted to act. Maybe In the early days, Anne was her father’s constant fall away when a person retires. Of course, I’m I didn’t have enough confidence or self-belief but companion as he travelled to shows in Dublin and not thinking of retirement but it’s coming down critically, I didn’t have the need to do it. You will around the country. “I was the director’s daughter the line”. In that case, she’d like a bit of what find that with actors: there is a need in them to so I was given a certain leeway but 1 was a good her father has. “I had a conversation with dad do it”. kid”, she says. “1 was silent during rehearsal. just before Christmas and he said to me, in all Anne Cassin started in RTE in 1988 where she Occasionally, I’d be allowed backstage during a seriousness, ‘You know', I’d like another job!’ Just met her husband-to-be in the newsroom. She performance and I’d sit there and watch and listen to be thinking that way and have that hunger! I w'orked across radio and television, from sport and I’d be able to recite chunks of the actors’ lines. think that is great”. I can still smell the greasepaint, and see those actors to politics to news. She was also a presenter on acting. I have retained from those years a great Capital D, Crimecall and The All Island School regard for performers, whether singers or dancers Choir Competition before replacing Michael Ryan or actors or whatever. Performers have to reveal as co-presenter of Nationwide in January 2012. vulnerability”. “I consider myself very lucky”, she says. Luck, On the day we met, Anne’s two daughters, Ellen though, usually happens through hard work. She (16) and Heather (10) were at home: making chews over this. “Well you’re absolutely right”, coffee and being all-round helpful to the covershootshe says. “I do w'ork hard and I’ve been open crew. Their brother Joe (15) was nowhere to the odd opportunity that is thrown your way. to be seen and the girls were back to school the When I was asked to do sport first, I thought ‘Holy following day.