Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh said she feels no guilt about replacing Mary Kennedy on Nationwide, admitting she felt lost without a ‘big gig’ for years.
The presenter, who joined the station aged 19 admitted she found herself worrying she would ‘rot away’ if she didn’t bag a new job soon.
Speaking ahead of her first Nationwide debut on Monday, alongside co-presenter Anne Cassin, she said: “I’d be lying awake, going, ‘Am I any good? Have I anything to offer?”
“I was lost. Lost in my job, lost in everything. Where was I going? What were my goals? I had RnaG and at the time, I had the master’s.. which complimented that, and I used a lot of material from it on my show, which was great, but I was still lost.”
She added: “Where was I going? It was everything. The age I was at. The age my face was at!
“My face was never a big deal, and then all of a sudden you’re looking at it, you know, and you’re at an autumn launch of the station, and all the females are under 30, or in their early 30s all of a sudden, and you’re in there and you’ve never noticed it before, and then you go ‘Whoa, where am I going?’ and it’s scary and horrible.”
She also admitted when she had times she thought "To hell with it”.
Blathnaid, 49, who made no secret of going for and missing out on the Dancing with the Stars presenting gig in 2017, added: “You could go two or three days where you’re going, ‘Oh my god, oh my god, am I going to rot away?’
“And then something always comes up. I am always on the lookout.”
Buzzing for her new gig, which will see her busier than she has been in awhile, she said she has been putting in hard work in the form of 6am workout sessions with her hubby Ciaran Byrne.
She told Life Magazine: “I won’t lie, I’m getting fit for this gig.”
However, despite Mary Kennedy openly speaking out her disappointment at her imposed retirement, she said she feels no guilt about taking over her role.
She said: “Ah no, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I haven’t done anything. You know, I don't know how I’m going to feel when I’m retiring.
“Like, I have ideas now, at 49, of what I’m going to do when I retire, but maybe Mary did too, and maybe when it comes to it, it sort of feels different.
“I think she will miss it, obviously, but I also think that Mary, maybe two months into her new life, she will say: ‘I have freedom’, and that has to be a lovely feeling.
“I think, in fairness, there’s always somebody else there to take your gig.”
“I saw it in the paper that Mary [Kennedy] was leaving, and I emailed the head of news and he immediately reacted.
“A few days later I did a pitch, and I went over-prepared: face on, hair done.”
“My pitch was a little different, in the same sense that I was saying what I could bring to it, and also, maybe, where you could go with it, and they liked that.”
