Sister-in-law will cook Christmas dinner for me (and my eight kids)

SHE’S one of the country’s busiest broadcasters but it promises be a lazy Christmas Day for Miriam O’Callaghan.

The Prime Time presenter is leaving the stress of Christmas dinner to others - for the first time in nine years.

O’Callaghan and Belfast-based husband Steve Carson will join relatives to celebrate the day – and for a change mother-of-eight O’Callaghan has managed to avoid the kitchen.

‘This year will be the first Christmas in a long time when I won’t be cooking Christmas dinner – we are all going to my sister-in-law’s place,’ Miriam said.

She said it had been a very long time since she had avoided having to do the cooking for the family on Christmas Day.

‘I think the last time was when I was pregnant with Jamie, my nine-yearold, who was born in February.

‘I had a placenta previa [a condition where the placenta blocks the uterus], so I was stuck in bed and a very nice friend of mine cooked our turkey. So this Christmas will be a really lazy one,’ she told the RTÉ Guide.

Miriam, who has four children in their twenties from her first marriage to journalist Tom McGurk, and four younger sons with husband Carson, is one of the busiest presenters in the country, hosting current affairs programme Prime Time on RTÉ television and a weekend show on Radio 1.

Miriam, 55, and Carson have operated long distance for the past two years thanks to Carson’s job at BBC Northern Ireland as head of productions.

The couple only see one another weekends. Miriam, who has previously hosted RTÉ’s New Year’s Eve coverage, is under no pressure this year over Christmas or the New Year as she has no TV commitments.

The broadcaster told the Irish Daily Mail it was possible to juggle both parenthood and a profession, but that her children were the driving force in her career.

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