Laura’s Big Breakfast 

While most people were working from home, Laura Woods was setting her alarm clock to 5am to go to work on Ireland AM. She was glad to have that bit of routine in the midst of the pandemic. She speaks to Jennifer Stevens about broadcasting from her kitchen, home schooling and what she’s looking forward to most this summer. 

While everyone was working from home, we really relied on our TVs for entertainment, news and a bit of normality in a world gone mad. Ireland AM has been running for so long on Virgin Media TV that it’s like having an old friend in the house with you while you have your early morning coffee and get everyone ready for the day. The show must go on as they say and, with very strict safety protocols in place, on it went through multiple lockdowns. 

Presenter pods were created to keep teams separate and safe and that’s how Laura Woods found herself moved from her Weekend AM crew to presenting mid-week with Alan Hughes. That meant working some days from the studio, which was a nice bit normality for the TV presenter, and some days broadcasting from home, which presented some unique challenges. 

“On the days that we're not in studio, we Skype it. Our timetable changed at Christmas, on lockdown three, when we were put into presenter pods just to ensure the safety of staff and to reduce the number of people in studio at any one time. I went from working with the weekend gang on Ireland AM, where I’ve been for six years, to working midweek with Alan.

“I've been in Virgin for 10 years, and of course, I knew Alan, but not well because, ironically, anytime I would have been working on Ireland AM midweek, most likely I would fill in for him, so we were like ships in the night. We never really got the chance to work together before, but we’ve been happily side by side for the last five months now. 

Presenting during the week has been a change. The content is a little bit different on the weekday show to the weekend, and obviously, you're anchoring a three-hour show with just one other person as opposed to a few of you doing it, but it's been really enjoyable. You just have to embrace the change. I feel so lucky to have been able to keep working through all the madness.”

On the days that Laura is not presenting the show from HQ in Ballymount, she dials in from her home studio which is actually just a little tidy spot of zen in her busy family kitchen. Aware of the viral videos of kids bursting into live TV interviews, she employs a strict security regime to keep her two boys out of the room. 

“I always Skype in from the same place. There’s just a fireplace and a bit of art on show and that can never change because it's just carnage behind the camera. My husband is my technical adviser and my chief of security, so he sits at the door and blocks the boys from coming in for seven minutes.

My youngest son, Alex, joined in for a Zumba lesson one day, but he kept jumping into the other room to try and see himself on TV. It was so funny. I kept trying to explain that we're live, so every time he left the room he wouldn’t be on TV. It's been a bit manic with everyone working from home, but thankfully we’ve had no major mishaps. They boys are so used to it now, they’re not that interested. Usually, they're just watching cartoons. God forbid they'd actually turn their mother on to watch. I suppose they know what their kitchen looks like, they don't care,” she laughs. 

Laura has a good routine set up and like most people she says that everything is easier now that the boys are back in school. Becoming a teacher is definitely not something she’ll be doing anytime soon. 

“Last year, I was still working at the weekend, so actually home schooling worked fine during lockdown one because I was here Monday to Thursday. Mark would take over on Friday while I was in studio. I think we can all agree that they're never going to be home schooled again by choice. That's a unanimous decision on the part of the students and the múinteoirí. This time around, in lockdown three, I felt that we struggled a bit. 

“Home schooling was tough. I think all parents started out with the greatest of intentions and in the extraordinary times having that focus of home-schooling children was a great distraction for so many of us. But then I started to realise we're just being too hard on ourselves. We can't do everything. If we didn't get the phonics or we didn't understand the maths homework or struggling with something else, so be it.

“The day they went back I was absolutely thrilled. It was the first time since Christmas I had the house to myself. I sat down with coffee in the chair I am in now and I exhaled. This is magnificent, I thought, and then Mark came in the door saying, ‘morning, I’ll have a coffee with you’. I looked at him and said, ‘actually would you mind not’. Poor man, but I just really needed some quiet time.”

Laura has lots to look forward to this summer. There’s a family break to Kerry booked with friends, some work projects and a return to swimming her regular set of lengths in the local pool – exercise that is good for mind as much as her body.

“Last summer we hadn't organized anything. Mark has a lot of family in Spain and we go over to see them every year. So we had flights that we couldn’t use and that meant that we were very last minute with our staycation planning. We didn’t organise it particularly well and obviously it also happened to rain the week that we went away so I came home a bit beleaguered. By contrast, friends of mine who had been more mindful in their planning had an absolute ball. I’m much more organised this time and we have our accommodation booked since late last year. 

“We have to support the hospitality industry. They've just been decimated this past year and a half. We work with lots of brilliant chefs from hotels up and down the country and they're just beginning to appear again on air. You can tell from the viewer reactions that they're absolutely delighted to see them back. 

“I’m also really looking forward to the pools opening up. I'm not a gym bunny but I am a member of a club that has a 50-meter pool and swimming has always been my comfort and the way I clear my head since I was tiny. I love just swimming lengths and lengths and lengths. Mark always says, ‘do you find it a bit monotonous? I don't see the attraction’. But I never shut up. I talk for a living. I never stop and when I’m in the pool, no one can talk to me. It's so therapeutic. You can get into the pool in terrible form and half an hour, 45 minutes later you get out and you're just in a better place. It's a bit of a reset, I suppose. Your head is just clear, and I really miss that.”

The other thing that Laura is really looking forward to is restaurants reopening. We are chatting the day after her birthday when she had a couple of friends into the garden for a drink for the first time in months, which she loved, but she’s ready now to get back to nights out when someone else does the cooking. 

“I just had the girls to the garden for the first time and it was so nice to have a glass of wine and a chat and a laugh with them. I’ve really missed that, and Mark has missed his friends too. We’ve done things like use some of the brilliant restaurant boxes over lockdown which was great to do and helped support local restaurants. They were lovely and they definitely made things like special occasions that bit more special, but I think when everything re-opens I’ll go straight into town for dinner. I’ll probably go to Peploes which is one of my favourites.

“I’ve really missed Dublin city and when the 5k opened up we put the boys in the car and went to walk the streets of Dublin which was lovely. We just got a takeaway coffee and went to the playground in St Stephen’s Green, but it was so good to be back. I’m ready now for a bit normality. I think we all are.”