After co-presenting RTÉ’s Nationwide for nearly 30 years, award-winning broadcaster Mary Fanning has officially hung up her microphone. But while the journalist and producer is retiring from RTÉ, she has no intention of being put out to pasture. Fanning, who lives on a farm near Monasterevin, Co Kildare, with her husband Larry McCormack, turned 67 yesterday.
She had been granted a two-year work extension by the national broadcaster. From reporting on the kidnapping of Shergar in 1983 to interviewing Gerry Adams within the confines of the Section 31 broadcasting ban, there’s little she hasn’t seen over the years. Read more When asked how things could be improved in RTÉ, she said it can be too Dublin-centric.
“With Nationwide , I have always been a passionate advocate of rural Ireland – I understand it. I am not woke and I speak my mind. I understand farming and horses, my husband and I have bred some fantastic winners.
But we never did it with an ego, we were always grafters,” she said. She said working on Nationwide , which has sometimes trumped the Late Late Show and Dancing With The Stars in the ratings, has been “the greatest privilege of my life”. Fanning started out at the Tuam Herald in 1979 before joining RTÉ in 1981 as a cub reporter.
During her career, she has covered some of the most memorable stories in Irish history. She worked for three years in Midlands Radio before rejoining RTÉ in 1996 to work on Nationwide . The Cork-produced show ha.