IT WAS MID-MORNING on 22 June 2023 when Richard Downes, the editor of Prime Time, walked into my office and, unusually, closed the door behind him. I knew whatever he was about to say wasn’t going to be good. He’s an upbeat guy, so the closed door and serious demeanour didn’t augur well.

Prime Time has several meetings each week, with three of those being pretty much set in stone: Monday at 11am, when we look back at the week that was and look ahead to the coming week; and morning meetings on both show days at 10.30am to map out that night’s programme.

When Richard walked into my office that Thursday, we had already held the planning meeting and decided what we were doing.

“You know that plan for tonight?” said Richard. “Well, it’s all going to change. We’ll be doing a large part of the show about RTÉ.”

“RTÉ? Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know the detail,” he said. “All I know is that a big story is about to
break, and it’s not going to be good.”

As he went to leave my office he turned back and said, “Keep this quiet for now.”

“Will do,” I replied, my mind racing, wondering what the hell this could be about.

I love the high you get when big stories break late and the running order is shredded. There’s nothing quite like it. However, the thought of a late-breaking story about ourselves made me feel queasy.

I had the same sense of dread I feel if I’m worried about something in my personal or family life. But today it was about work. And I sensed it was going to be bad.

As I sat there staring at the walls of my office, I knew that in a few hours’ time I would be on television talking about a story that would have huge ramifications for lots of people I knew well. But that’s the job.

I was due to record the promo for the radio show, so I headed over to the Radio Centre, about a five-minute walk away. Everyone I met was behaving normally, and why wouldn’t they, but a voice inside my head was shouting, Don’t you know a massive story is about to break about this place?!

On the way back to Prime Time after recording the promo, I bumped into a colleague I would trust with my life.

“There’s something big about to break,” he said.

“Really?” I said, acting surprised.

“Yeah, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big.”

The office of my co-presenter, Fran McNulty, is beside mine. He’s an exceptional journalist, as well as being a lovely, decent guy, and always seems to know everything going on at work. Since I had now heard about the looming RTÉ story from someone other than Richard, I figured it was okay to check with Fran, the oracle of all RTÉ knowledge. I stuck my head into his office and mentioned what the guy from radio had said to me.

Fran said he hadn’t heard anything, but that he’d make a call.

A few minutes later he called my mobile from next door to say he had just been told that the rumour was correct and that something major was about to break, but no one seemed to know what it was, or else they weren’t saying. Clearly, the story was being kept to a very tight group of people.

“Can you talk?” It was Richard calling. I was in the hairdresser’s at lunchtime, getting a blow-dry. It’s just easier to try to look presentable, so I always try to get to the hairdresser’s before presenting Prime Time.

“The story is about to break, and it’s about payments to Ryan Tubridy. We’re having a big meeting in twenty minutes.”

Payments to Ryan Tubridy – how bizarre, I thought. It was the fastest blow-dry ever and I raced out of there and back to RTÉ.

I arrived back to work as the entire Prime Time team shuffled into a large meeting room. As people were walking in, no one spoke. Inside the room, the atmosphere was tense, almost funereal, with a sense that this was both huge and really bad. Everyone squashed in around the long, rectangular table, no one knowing what the full story was. We were just waiting for the hammer to fall.

‘Miriam: Life, Work, Everything’ by Miriam O’Callaghan has just been published by Sandycove, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK, and is available at all good bookshops now.