This week Breifne Earley was joined by Paul Kilgallon, an overweight guy who went through a personal transformation from 21 stone (295 lbs / 133 kg) to 12 stone and a professional journey which has led to him opening his own fitness business, Fit Kicks, a new gym in Mohill, Co. Leitrim.

He talks about not being too unfit to catch his 2 year old child when playing and realising that he needed to improve his fitness and starting by walking, leading to jogging before an opportunity of a Community Employment Scheme with Leitrim Sports Partnership saw him get more involved with the fitness world.

Paul talks about his experience of being overweight, a regular gambler who enjoyed the occasional pint of Baileys, and how these problems came to a head when an innocent neighbour was killed during a driveby shooting involving Dublin drug kingpins and himself and Martina, his now wife, moved to the north west to create a more suitable home for their young family.

Losing his betting shop assistant manager job in 2009 while Martina was expecting their first child, left him in a scary situation not knowing where his next pay cheque was coming from. Dealing with the problems of unemployment, being overweight and the all too easy access to gambling all led to a bout with depression and generally being unhappy.

Looking back from his current situation of owning a double unit fitness suite in Mohill, Co. Leitrim, he credits the employment scheme with giving him the encouragement, experience and enthusiasm to forge ahead with his own company at the end of the three year scheme with the Local Sports Partnership.

This week Breifne is joined by former Irish Athletics manager, a veteran of 5 Olympic cycles, Patsy McGonagle fresh from the launch of his new book.

The Donegal man shares his experience of growing up in Ballybofey with a strict pharmacist mother and an army officer father. Like most Irish families his Mother ruled the roost and he shares tales of his school days in Donegal and Derry where he discovered his love for Athletics, which would become his life long passion.

Becoming a father and marrying his sweetheart Rosaleen while studying physical education teaching in St. Mary's, Twickenham proved challenging for the young couple but it would help form the resilience and determination that would see him lead the Irish athletics delegation to 4 Olympic Games (Sydney, Beijing, London and Rio), 6 World Championships and a total of over 68 international meetings. A record for any manager in Irish Athletics.

The medals earned on his watch also make impressive reading with no less than 49 medals secured by Irish athletes in that time with Sonia O'Sullivan and Rob Heffernan's Olympic medals top of the pile.

He shares his experience of the Irish sporting boardroom and how politics can affect the world of elite sport both positively and negatively and outlines his thoughts on where resources should be directed to ensure future successes in the sport.

He also outlines the changing face of his own life having, like most fathers, missed out on stages of his own kid's lives he's now making up for lost time as a devoted retired grandfather.

Patsy discusses the various athletes he worked with over the years and how prioritising developing good working relationships allowed Irish athletes to achieve a higher standard within their own disciplines.

Through the entire conversation Finn Valley AC was never too far from his thoughts and the fantastic facility in Ballybofey is a testament to his never say die attitude and his ability to bring an entire community along with his dreams.

"Relentless: A Race Through Time", Patsy's book, with Chris McNulty (Hero Books, €20) is now available on Amazon and Kindle.

This week Breifne Earley is joined by Michelle O'Donnell, an inspiring lady who decided she needed to change certain things in her life as she approached the half century point in her life.

In October 2018 she decided to set herself a bucket list of challenges which she would attempt to accomplish to celebrate her 50th Birthday which actually occurs today.

The list includes learning new skills such as the piano, visiting tourist hotspots at home and abroad, running a marathon, kayaking and swimming, experience a live comedy show as well as attempting to make new friends by getting people to join her to mark each item off the list.

Already mostly through the list with a few months to do to complete the year, she's danced with Nathan Carter, been sung to by Derek Ryan, climbed Scaffell Pike, night kayaked, run a half marathon and reconnected with an old school friend.

Originally from Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, she has been settled in the rural countryside of County Leitrim for the past two decades and with her children now reared she decided to do some things she'd always wanted to do but just hadn't quite managed to find the time for.

You can find full details on Facebook on Michelle's "50 Firsts by Shelly".

This week Breifne is joined by environmentalist, marine biologist, surfer, author and baker Finn Ní Fhaoláin to talk about her life long travels and her portfolio career.

Growing up as the child of creative parents, moving between Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Monaghan and Sligo before settling in Bundoran, Co. Donegal.

After running down a blind alley into her college years from her leaving cert which turned into a gap year, she found her route into the world of marine biology, the joys of learning mathematical theorems in both the English and Irish languages.

She talks about hounding businesses for part time jobs, requesting work each and every week until they offered her hours. How she ended up spending months researching corals off the coast of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean.

While stuck on a floating town for her day job, she found both fitness and food which became her first foray into the world of blogging. The joy of this endeavour lead to her first cook book, Finns World, to suit her celiac inspired gluten free requirements.

Finn details how a number of world's collided to see her collection of recipes become that book over the course of just over a year.

Ní Fhaoláin talks about how applying for and accepting a food course in St. Angela's in Sligo brought her to live in Bundoran, where she managed to continue her love of surfing and the town where she's made her base for the last three years.

Finn finishes the hour by talking about the future, her self predicted mid life crisis, her new gluten free bakery "Milish" and what opening her own business means for her future.

After a prolonged hiatus the weekly show is back with Breifne Earley joined by a motivational and inspirational guest to talk about their own life and times.

This week Breifne is joined by a League of Ireland veteran of 20 years, Raffaele Cretaro. Mostly associated with Sligo Rovers after 17 years playing for the Bit O'Red, he's currently plying his trade at north west rivals Finn Harps.

The conversation includes talking about spending the summer of 1990 in Italy soaking up Schilacci's skills, the importance of fast food in his family's life in Tubbercurry and how he ended up at Sligo Rovers as a teenager.

The Italian descendent discusses the perennial debate about choosing between football and other sports before delving into the lessons learned from sojourns at Galway United (2006) and Bohemians (2010).

Having missed out on an FAI Cup in 2009, the hurt at watching his former team-mates lift the trophy in 2010, fueled his ambitions and a return to The Showgrounds for what would become the golden period for Rovers with a league title to go with another two FAI Cups and a Setanta Cup title.

Raff discusses losing the 2010 League title race when at Bohs and not making the same mistake in 2012 with his hometown club. He scored the opening two goals in that crucial decider against St. Patrick's Athletic but wouldn't have wanted anyone but Mark Quigley stepping up for the last minute penalty, hat-trick opportunity or not.

He goes into detail about the feeling behind scoring the winning penalty in the 2011 FAI Cup final shootout.

Off the field, Raff talks about the development of the league since his debut almost 20 years ago and credits Sligo Rovers with the development of facilities over this period to become the best club ground in the league.

He details the perils of playing in the league with 40-42 week contracts for a single season the norm for most clubs and players, players being forced to sign on for social welfare in the off season and the uncertainty that creates.

Raff also goes into the details of how he left Sligo at the end of last season and how despite the results this term, he's enjoying his football and working with Ollie Horgan. He's particularly excited about the opportunity to bring his coaching experience to Ballybofey and Harps in a small way with the first team there and wouldn't rule out management or coaching in the league in the future.

He looks back at the recent fixture between the two sides where he captained the away side in The Showgrounds and takes pride in his input with a number of his former U19 players having stepped up to the first team in recent years.

Finally Cretaro talks about the future and how this is probably, definitely his final year as a League of Ireland player.

This episode was a particularly pleasing one and a perfect way to restart the show after a lengthy hiatus. A true icon who needs no introduction in the North West of Ireland.

This week I am joined by Clisare who talks about her rise to the top of the Irish YouTube community.

During our conversation Clisare shares stories about how she was inspired by Jenna Marbles to create content in a similar fashion, starting with a video recreating a music festival in her house as she couldn't afford a ticket to Oxygen, how living with a decision as a 15 year old to adopt a ill fated nickname which she then couldn't change has become her identity to millions of people who have seen her sketches online.

Clisare talks about how she made the video 'Shite Irish Girls Say' simply to make herself laugh and wasn't sure about whether anyone else would even find it funny before it simply took off and pushed her unexpectedly into the limelight with national radio and press coverage and she became a national figure overnight with 700,000 views on her video within a matter of days.

She shares the story of how at that time, due to her inexperience, she failed to really capitalise on the coverage but through persistence and dedication she has managed to keep millions of people across the globe laughing at her antics, including hilariously posing as 'Ireland' to suggest to her friend 'America' that maybe Donald Trump just isn't the right guy for her.

She also shares the constant online grief that came with The Donald's supporters becoming aware of her comedy.

The nature of her content has constantly evolved as she herself has grown over the last 6 years and topics like World & Irish Politics and the Irish Language feature albeit usually with her own unique comedic twist.

It's hard to imagine that any Irish person who's been on the internet in the last six years hasn't seen her face in her comedy sketches, her Irish bucket list series or dissing Donald Trump's boyfriend potential.

What next for Clisare? She recently made her live comedy debut, which she recorded and featured on her channel despite not having watched it back herself, and she has signed up for another go at the live comedy world in the not too distant future, her podcast "Storytime" is booming and the creator has plenty of other projects in the pipeline into the future.

You can find Clisare all over the internet

http://www.youtube.com/Clisare

http://www.facebook.com/Clisare

http://www.Twitter.com/Clisare

http://www.instagram.com/clisare

Snapchat: realclisare

Storytime Podcast Link

Video: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmgo4q_gbWJvfcYSNFUZcSg

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/clisare

Irish Model & Author Alison Canavan joins Breifne Earley to discuss her career, life and overcoming addiction to inspiring and motivating others through her work.

Over twenty years since she lied about her age to enter and win a modelling competition on Irish TV her career has taken her to periods living in New York, London, Paris, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Alison talks about the routine of working, casting, travelling and adjusting to life in the major fashion cities with just a list of appointments and a map of Paris before mobile phones.

Alison discusses the feeling of being judged on her appearance, the competition for work at the top end of the business, how being on the world stage eliminated the bitchy aspects of getting into the industry, dealing with rejection and the dark sides of the industry with alcohol and substance abuse, castings where the agents didn’t even look at her book, not fitting the criteria for shoots, being the worldwide face of Lux, seeing her face on beauty products in a shop in Cuba.

Alison shares how the fashion industry made it easier to get access to alcohol as a teenager, how self medication became a necessary device to function normally, how pharmaceuticals have become normalised in modern society and the dangers that poses, becoming a fully functioning alcoholic but still showing up for work despite the addictions, how she thought her situation wasn’t anything like the people around her at Alcoholics Anonymous and not able to identify which low point was her rock bottom.

Despite the glamorous lifestyle Alison led through her twenties she found herself struggling to make ends meet after the birth of her son James, back in Ireland, working within two weeks of giving birth and struggling between odd jobs and single parents supports her world had turned upside down.

Over the last seven years Alison has turned her life and career back around through taking personal responsibility for her actions and deciding her path forward.

Alison explains her love of education and self development, her strong interest in meditation and spirituality, how she struggled as a single mum to deal with the experience and couldn’t find a book or manual to help her as a mum look after herself, resulting in her first book ‘Minding Mum’ and how she is now enjoying the freedom that comes with finally leaving her drinking days behind her.

It's a very exciting week for the Breifne Earley Show as I'm joined by an old friend, TV Presenter & Actor Laura Whitmore, to talk about her eclectic career in a rare long form interview.

Laura talks about her life and career and why treading the boards as Cleo Morey in the stage version Peter James' Not Dead Enough isn't as much of a career shift as it seems, growing up in Bray, Co. Wicklow and going to drama lessons to survive being shy and finding her calling there.

We discuss her big break on MTV through winning "Pick Me MTV" and finding herself still working for them almost a decade after the year's contract expired. Laura talks about how her journalism degree and professional experience in radio was the key to taking that opportunity with both hands.

She also shares her experience of losing control as part of "Strictly", dealing with the tabloid media around her personal life, taking part in the bushtucker trials on "I'm A Celebrity", how real life doesn't really compare with social media and how important it is not to give away all of yourself and to protect yourself and your privacy.

Laura explains how nice it is to have songs written about you, how obvious it is that people assume she's had a relationship with every man she's pictured with or linked to, being star struck by Gay Byrne and Glen Hansard while taking Coldplay and P Diddy in her stride, learning by doing on stage with her leading man Shane Ritchie and the pressures of the business side of the theatre and being responsible for putting bums on seats, her love of Murder She Wrote.

Laura also reveals to Breifne about meeting the nicest people on the street who continue to wish her well with "Aren't you doing great?", dealing with people's preconceptions about who she is, what's next for her and whether she'd be interested in progressing her acting chops into movies or busting out her singing voice.

To access the archive of episodes from the show, subscribe to "The Breifne Earley Show" in itunes or through your favourite Podcast Apps. (links below)

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-breifne-earley-show/id1075121394?mt=2

http://www.breifneearley.com/podcast/

This week Breifne is joined by the new director of the Sport Ireland Institute Liam Harbison.

He talks about how his father's love of sport didn't fall far from the tree. A fall from a horse during a holiday in Hungary at 19 resulted in the loss of feeling below the neck for a few hours until the pain and feeling returned.

The experience created an interest in the role that sports plays in rehabilitation, this led him to take on the role of manager of the Irish Boccia team, without actually realising he'd done so.

The unexpected qualification for the Paralympics saw the beginning of the High Performance programme which he led through to the World Paralympic Games in Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008.

Moving into the CEO of the organisation soon after the multiple medal performance in China, he was the Chef de Mission (Head of Delegation) for the London 2012 games where Ireland brought home 16 medals including 8 gold medals.

He shares his memories of those achievements and the people who made it possible. He explains why Ireland will never host an Olympics or Paralympics as well as looking forward to his new role and the unique challenges that comes with that.

(This interview was recorded before Liam started his new role)

This week Chef Neven Maguire talks about forming his love of the kitchen growing up in the border town of Blacklion during the troubles in the area. Being content with his life at home in Cavan with his wife Amelda and the twins. He shares about his worst nightmare of trying to add more restaurants and not being able to pour your heart and soul into it, turning down offers in London, Paris and Dublin over the years. How not getting accepted into his first choice course in college would turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

His first role in a Michelin star restaurant included emptying the bins, preparing the veg and scrubbing the cooker tops without pay, just for food. Getting his big break on RTE with prawn cocktail and desserts. The process behind his award winning and bestselling cook books. Neven shares his belief that food is the future of the country.

His cookery school, attached to the restaurant in Blacklion, mirrors his own view that it’s about people enjoying simple food cooked well. He talks about how his family are his biggest critics but also his best friends and offer the best advice. Neven outlines how important it is to have the strong hand of his wife on the tiller of the office side of the business while he does his thing in the kitchen.

He beams with pride talking about his wife Amelda and her Celebrity Mum of the Year award in 2015. His twins Lucia and Conor are the apple of his eye, he talks about spending as much time as possible with them and the happiness they bring into their loving home on a daily basis. Taking 3,500 bookings in a single week when they opened the diary for two years. His staff feel like part of his family, but the progression of staff through the business from the kitchen, housekeeping, the bar and front of house.

The importance of having a consistent quality offered each and every night. He talks about how the recession played a major role in the food industry in recent years. The lack of finance in most homes meant a higher volume of people cooking quality food at home and really appreciating the quality food available. Bad restaurants fell by the wayside and the quality establishments thrived through the worst years of the international banking crisis. The re-emerging competition across Dublin is both good and bad for the restaurant industry.