By Niamh Walsh

Copyright evoke

Canadian-born broadcaster Alison Curtis has certainly put her stamp on Irish radio. The presenter of Today FM’s eponymous weekend show Breakfast With Alison Curtis, the chatty and affable Alison has the honour of being the station’s longest serving female presenter.

Alison arrived in Ireland 16 years ago, ostensibly on a sort of a gap year. Just under two decades later, she has forged a very successful career on national radio, and married an Irishman with whom she shares teenage daughter Joan and two cats.

A few years ago, she even became a bona fide Irish citizen.

In fact, so embracing is Alison of her Irishness, that the annual National Ploughing Championships – which begin in Tullamore on Monday – is a checked date on her annual events calendar.

‘Last year was my first year to emcee and my mind was truly blown,’ Alison tells EVOKE.ie. ‘The scope of it is just insane, like it’s so huge.

‘I was really surprised and delighted to be a small part of it and we had a really wonderful three days down there last year.’

While Alison immersed herself in the quintessential cultural aspect of the annual Ploughing Championships, she is also astutely aware of the broader economic impact of farming on the Irish economy.

‘I understand how important it is, especially given the challenges in farming,’ she says.

She is returning this year at the helm of the National Brown Bread Baking Competition. Despite knowing practically nothing about the intricacies involved in the making of brown bread, Alison last year indulged herself in the yeast and flour-raising craft.

‘I’ve become really invested in all of the contestants, all eight of them, and they’re really, really loving people,’ she says. ‘You have to appreciate that what they’re doing is special and can be tricky.

‘You know it can be slightly stressful at home, let alone doing it on stage in front of people. My job really is to keep it moving along, and keep them comfortable and chatting, and maybe even talk.

‘We talked a lot about their own personal lives, not even just necessarily about the baking, because you’re doing something live that can go wrong, and you’re doing it in front of a pretty large audience.’

To the enormous credit of the bread-baking brigade, their tent at the Ploughing Championship is arguably one of the most popular events over the course of the week.

‘The competition is fierce,’ laughs Alison. ‘It draws a lot of people to the tent.

‘I just loved learning a lot more about the history and the significance of it all, even just the history of brown bread and Irish culture.

‘It’s a really lovely thing to be part of, I’ve been looking forward to it for months now.

‘I actually wanted to experience the culture of the Ploughing itself, it’s just huge, and it’s so significant to thousands upon thousands of people. ‘It was a real eye-opener to walk around and see all of the different facets of people’s farming life and how huge agriculture is in Ireland. I just enjoy meeting so many people, people whose lives are just so different to mine. I do really love seeing how active and proactive and involved so many young people are with very different things.’

While Alison, who was raised in Rochester, New York, may be a city girl at heart, her husband is immersed in the great outdoors as he is a successful landscaper.

Alison met Anton Hegarty, bass guitarist in Future Kings Of Spain, many years ago when he was performing at a show in Whelan’s. They married in 2007 and now live in East Wall, Dublin.

View this post on Instagram

‘My husband came down one of the days as well and I met up with him at the end and he was like, “Jesus Christ, this is crazy”,’ she laughs. ‘He’s a landscape gardener so there were definitely exhibitions that he was interested in as well. But there were so many people that were really young, like teenagers, there. It is really big.’

When she’s finished overseeing the brown bread proceedings, Alison will turn her focus to Ireland’s foremost radio broadcaster Pat Kenny, with whom she will now go head-to-head in a weekend radio ratings war.

It was announced last week that Pat would be moving to the weekend slot, taking over the Saturday and Sunday morning reins from current host Anton Savage.

Breakfast With Alison Curtis has proved the popular with listeners, with the North American native growing a loyal audience over the years. Alison is the longest-running female presenter on independent station Today FM since moving to Ireland in 1999, while Pat has been a stalwart of Irish radio for over 40 years, with numerous radio and television shows to his name.

But Alison’s breakfast show has proven itself to be a heavyweight too, and is a huge hit with Irish listeners, who tune into the show in their droves. The latest JNLR radio listenership figures showed Alison knocking her presenting competitors out of the park, with figures revealing a regular audience of 189,000.

Now Curtis’s Saturday and Sunday shows are set to clash with broadcast titan Pat.

‘I’m really looking forward to going-head-to-head with Pat at weekends,’ Alison says. ‘I’ve been up against Anton Savage for the past few years and we’ve consistently had far more listeners.

‘So with Pat moving to Anton’s slots, I’ll be up against Pat now, and to be honest, I’m really relishing the challenge.’

Alison’s listenership presently wallops her Newstalk rival Anton Savage, with his show attracting an audience of 139,000, some 50,000 less than Curtis.

While Alison may have her hands full with the Ploughing and gearing up for a new career challenge, she is also a fulltime mother to her teenage daughter Joan.

‘Monday is piano day and we could be swimming on Tuesdays, so I’m just like every mom, running around here, there and everywhere with the children,’ she reveals. ‘But I don’t mind at all, I’m very aware of just how fortunate I am.

‘Now they’re in secondary school, it gives me the opportunity to do lots of different things across the week, which I love doing like interviewing different people for podcasts, or writing articles and other stuff.’

View this post on Instagram

While Alison has done her fair share of television, she says she harbours no desire to make the move to full-time TV or, indeed, to a rival radio station.

‘I love Today FM, they gave me a shot on-air years ago and look, here I am, still there, the longestserving female presenter, which is something I am very proud of. I very much hold my own on the show so I love it here.’

While she may love her job and her adopted country, Alison still keeps a close watchful eye on happenings across the Atlantic. Her native country of Canada has been very much in the global news due to US president Donald Trump’s flex against his neighbours.

Trump has said on many occasions that he would like to annexe Canada into America and incorporate the land of the maple leaf into the USA. Alison, a proud Canadian, is bemusedly aghast at the mere suggestion.

‘My god, could you imagine? No, just no way in hell,’ she says defiantly. ‘I live here but I’ve got a huge family and friends group in Canada and they’re all fired up, as is the world.’

Alison says that her Canadian kinsfolk may be of a laidback nature but the thought of becoming the 52nd state has raised their patriotic heckles.

‘Canadians are known for being really passive, but from an economic point of view, and from a kind of commercial point of view, they’ve gone solid tilt and are getting rid of American products on their shelves,’ she said. ‘They are like, “we are not taking this crap”. It’s just so bizarre.’

While she has solidarity with Canadians, she says her home now is very much in Ireland, an ocean away from Trump and his territorial takeover plans.

‘I’m over half my life now here,’ she says. ‘So I’m settled here and I really love our life, I just couldn’t imagine even moving. I couldn’t imagine moving my daughter even to another school, let alone another country or continent. She’s so happy where she is and I do appreciate for kids that sort of continuity when you’re growing up is really important. So I’m staying put here in Ireland.’

Alison Curtis will be at the National Brown Bread Baking Competition, supported by Euronics in association with the National Ploughing Association and the Irish Country Women’s Association, at the National Ploughing Championships from September 16-18