Just over 20 years ago I did my first “Food Matters” piece with Billy Mc Carthy on WLRFM.

Here is a piece I wrote about the first eighteen years of doing the piece which I wrote two years ago.

It was in June, the Tuesday after the bank holiday, in 1990 that I did my first bit of broadcasting for Waterford Local Radio.
The studio was at that stage on Georges Street, a handy stroll from the restaurant on Mary Street, and I have a happy memory of going down the first day and being amazed at how easy it all was.
There is no doubt that most of that was the great luck in finding a pleasant host in Billy Mc.Carthy who was and is the morning anchorman on WLR.
Right from the beginning I directed all my talk to Billy, who is as interested in food as I am, and depended on the easy conversational nature of our rapport to deliver my recipes and general chat about food. WlR soon realised that radio held few fears for me so I would often be called to give opinions about other subjects.
Live radio does have its drawbacks, there was a time in the old studio when I decided to tidy up some CDs balancing on a console, knocked them instead down on a control slide and knocked the station off the air for a long sixty seconds.

On an even worse occasion I gave out a recipe for a tomato and yoghurt salad which I had been serving for years. This time my tongue let me down and I announced to the startled people of Waterford that this salad from the Lebanon was called Lesbian Salad (instead-of course- of Lebanese Salad)
Billy laughed so much on that occasion (because, he said, of my immediate schoolgirl blush when I heard what I had said) that I had to extemporise for several minutes until he was able to talk again.

The original impetus to appear on the radio came from fear of poverty.
We had started the restaurant in October of 1989 and, after a lively start, we were by the spring of 1990 frighteningly quiet.
We were buried in a back street of Waterford (it was all we could afford) and not enough people knew of our existence to fill the premises.
We badly needed to advertise and the new radio station was an obvious outlet for us.
Advertising would have been very expensive of course, it was then that I got the notion of offering my services as a radio chef free gratis and, had no sooner contacted them, than I was down for a go.
Eighteen years later I am still having a go.

The effect on the restaurant was quite immediate.
The people started to trickle steadily in.

Waterford was a town without a tradition of eating out and my restaurant was one of the first non-ethnic in the town. People were not really sure what it would be like.
My entrance on to the local media and via radio into their kitchens made the whole prospect much less intimidating and when I went to see each table at the end of the night tended to be greeted like an old friend.

A little exposure in a small city has fascinating consequences.
The minute I open my mouth in Waterford I was-and still am- greeted with a recognising grin and the sentence; “I know that voice”!
This even happened when I rang Irish Rail enquiries and got a Waterford man on the line. I was once recognised by my voice in an airport in Brussels, to the astonishment of the Irish chefs who were travelling with me.
The initial radio exposure led to some television appearances, one of my great memories was during a series I did for RTE called Pot Luck, a short lived copy of Ready Steady Cook.
My luck was obviously not in for this series as I had an embarrassing run of losses on air.
After one of these I was walking down town from the restaurant when a lorry with a Dublin registration stopped in the middle of a flow of traffic.
The driver pulled up his handbrake and brought Waterford to a standstill as he put down his window and shouted at me; “You should have won that thing last night, you were much better than that other shagging eejit”!
(the other “shagging eejit” was Derry Clarke of l’Ecrivan, now holder of a Michelin Star)

But really it has been radio which has been my lifeline and it certainly played a great part in the success of the restaurant.

Just before I sold “Dwyers” the Ardkeen Stores (for whom I am a consultant) decided to start sponsoring the food piece (which we call “Food Matters”) and so I was granted continuity even after my raison d’etre was gone.

And my great hope is that as I now swing back and forth between Waterford and France the piece will continue.
We did several pieces from my sunny Languedoc terrace last summer and on the whole the good people of Waterford were pleased with a little vicarious sunshine in one of Irelands worst summers.

Long may they continue to be.