'I lived my dream': Gay Byrne reflects on life and regrets
In May of last year, Gay Byrne made a surprising admission that he regretted the length of time he spent working for RTÉ, to the detriment of family life.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1, he said he should have taken more time off work to be with his wife, Kathleen Watkins, and their two daughters.
He told Ray D'Arcy: “I have great regrets. I have only brief little snatches of memories of Crona and Suzy growing up, and I regret that.
"Thank God they were girls because if they had been boys it would have been very serious.
“But, generally speaking, I regret now the amount of time I gave to this place.
"It was an awful lot of time and I should have taken time to do other things and I had the opportunity to do other things but I was dedicated to the place.
“It took time and most of my energy and a lot of hours. Now, we went away on holidays, of course, and the girls had a wonderful life growing up, of course.
"They benefited from my being their father and Kathleen being their mother.
Nonetheless, I regret that now when it’s too late that didn’t force myself to take the time off and do some of the things I would have liked to have done.
He also regretted continuing to work on his new show, Once More With Meaning, after he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and said he should have taken time out “to nurse myself.”
He only took a week off before returning to work.
Despite those regrets, Gay revealed he also felt lucky to have been able to do what he did in his career.
He wanted to be a broadcaster from his early teenage years.
“I got what I wanted from life. I ended up being what I had wanted to be for the time I was 14 or 15 years of age.
"To how many people in the world is that given?
"That they end up doing exactly what they intended to do? I lived my dream."
