“Authenticity is the most important thing. If you are authentic, that’s where the connectivity comes.” On a high stool in the old canteen of RTÉ’s radio centre in Donnybrook, Dublin, Tracy Clifford is batting back a compliment in typically Irish fashion. I’ve mentioned that her candour has meant a lot to many women over the years – the 2FM broadcaster has spoken about IVF and endometriosis, and what it feels like to struggle privately while maintaining a public-facing career. Clifford has heard the compliment, but amiably deflected it, to talk about other people on air, and what she loves about hearing stories.
“I have read interviews or listened to podcasts or radio shows where someone is telling their story that is deeply personal. It might connect you to a person or help you deal with something. In my instance, it could be endometriosis. Or it could have been someone with relationship issues, who got married at 58. Hearing stories makes us all feel together and normal and that nobody is alone. Radio is a great friend in that sense.”
As chatty, likable and direct in person as she comes across on air, Clifford has fairly blown into the empty canteen today, her long fur-lined coat swinging, giving glamour to the cold day. It’s not long since the 10th anniversary of her radio show on RTÉ 2FM, an anniversary that matters deeply in the field she’s in. 2FM has a youth demographic: not many broadcasters become daytime music radio veterans on the station. “I feel very proud of it, for a show that is on a radio station that has had a lot of ups and downs over the past while,” Clifford says. “I feel proud as a female broadcaster, for a show that is on in the afternoons. It’s kind of unheard of in a very precarious market.”
Growing up in a housing estate in Finglas, on a “starting off road” with lots of young families, radio was a constant for Clifford – pop mattered to her and to everyone in the clan. She was “obsessed with the radio, obsessed with Top of the Pops”. Her U2 and Sade-loving parents were 20 when they had her. “We always say to each other that we might be in the same nursing home,” she says. “They could be 90 and I could be 70. I was surrounded by youth growing up. I had so many young aunties and uncles. My mam had 11 brothers and sisters. My dad has five. We all raised each other.”
Her father worked as a furniture dealer in antiques. When he’d drive her to school, they’d listen to 2FM and Ian Dempsey and Simon Young. “I fell in love with radio on the drives,” she says. At 11, she discovered the hits-repeating Atlantic 252, with its American-sounding DJs who were anything but; she wound up doing work experience there. “I couldn’t believe it was in Trim. They’re up the road in Trim in a dilapidated house,” she laughs. “Dusty Rhodes and Rick O’Shea. In Trim!” Then came the 1990s; electronica was breaking through. “It was Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers. Take That was our crush era. And Blur. And Bjork. We went to the first Point Oasis gig in 1996.”
Clifford was supposed to go to Maynooth University to study anthropology, English and geography. It didn’t work out that way. “I dropped out of college, didn’t tell my mam.” When her mother would walk into Blanchardstown Shopping Centre on a Friday, where Clifford was working part-time, “I’d hear the jingle of her keys and have to hide, like, ‘Sh*t, my mam’s here’”. Her friend, Newstalk producer Claire Darmody, told her about the media degree in Ballyfermot College. “Claire was like, ‘You’re a television presenter, a radio presenter’”. After six weeks, when Clifford broke the news, her mother was like, ‘Oh I knew’. Clifford soaked up the course in Ballyfermot College, then worked in East Coast FM, before skipping to Dublin’s Spin 1038, and then on to 2FM, where she has made the afternoon show her home. Her tones were distinctive, there was a clarity there, an authority and a kind of straightforwardness that made her relatable.
In recent years, that straightforwardness has changed how the public perceives her. Clifford has spoken publicly about aspects of her life that have been very hard. She and her fiance Mark met in 2017, when Clifford was 37. They went through the rollercoaster of IVF for several years, trying in Ireland and abroad. After a change of fertility doctors and new holistic therapies, Clifford was diagnosed with stage 3 silent endometriosis, which often affects fertility.
“IVF is hard on your relationship, it’s hard on your body, it’s hard on your job, it’s hard on your friendships,” she says. “When it fails, you’re back on the treadmill again. Age is not on your side. It’s a lot of pressure. You have to consider your partner. It can bring you closer together, or you become so stressed with each other.
“We might try again, I’m not sure, but the most important thing is – before you set off on this journey – is your relationship strong enough to survive a rollercoaster of emotions? And if it turns out that it’s not going to work out the way you envisage, are you happy together just on your own? We had to do a lot of work on that and we are. But we had to get there. Some couples aren’t – it’s so tough on a couple. I think I was lucky with that with Mark. Because I think I was pushing the family thing.”
2fm’s Tracy Clifford: Recruited from Spin 1038 in 2015, she is now a stalwart of the weekday schedule
The couple undertook fertility counselling and found it helpful. “We did it because I had to mourn a lot of things. I’ve done my mourning and we have a lovely life.”
Clifford didn’t tell people at the time she was doing IVF. “I told my mam after Prague. But I’m not very good with pity, where the head tilts. I’m like, ‘Don’t. I don’t have time for this’.” She did take some video footage of herself during that time. She hasn’t found herself able to look back on it yet. She’s not sure she will. The months where she was on medication were a blur. “Mark did the admin and injections. And he was really good like that. I mean, I’d be DJing the 3Arena opening up for JLS, something fun, and Mark would be there with the injection shot. Or Electric Picnic.”
The language around IVF was also hard to bear. “It’s a manipulating language,” she says. “It’s a service. Even the ‘Hey would you like some EmbryoGlue?’ The add-ons for IVF, the upselling: even the language of ‘EmbryoGlue’ means it’s going to stick. Yeah, I’ll pay for that. It’s manipulating language that’s selling you a dream. And then, when it doesn’t work, it’s, ‘Go again’. You’re like, ‘I don’t have the money’.”
What helped throughout the process was the red light of radio, signalling the mic is live, and the skills Clifford had acquired to force her mind elsewhere. “No matter what is happening in your life, that red light has to go on. It’s like a meditation. By three o’clock, when my show is over, whatever way I was feeling at 12 is gone. So you’re not spiralling, you’re not ruminating. The minute the red light goes on, you have to be in the zone.”
Share your experience of unsuccessful fertility treatment
On Thursday, Clifford presented The Choice Music Prize at Vicar Street for album of the year, which was won by CMAT. She thinks “there’s a real cultural nationalism” happening in Irish music. “It’s happening on a scale that I’ve never seen before,” she says. “You have your Fontaines, you have your CMAT, you have your Kneecap. At Glastonbury or Electric Picnic, a lot of people were there to see Kneecap as a moment of solidarity with Palestine, going with their flags, to pledge support. It was an opportunity to have their voices heard in a crowd. I think that’s amazing.”
Women who have worked in a career for 20 years carry such intellectual weight. I’m 45. There’s lots more I want to do
— Tracy Clifford
Those collective moments have become more important, she says, at a time when a younger demographic are “in the gym, having their matchas and not going clubbing”. “I think we’re crying out for that collective experience again, like at the Oasis gig where everybody was cheering for the same team at Croke Park.”
What’s coming next for Clifford? She doesn’t know and she’s okay with that. She has a healthy social life outside work – she has renovated her home in Crumlin with Mark. They travel, entertain, and appreciate the friends and family they have. “Working in a job like this isn’t my everything. My job doesn’t define me as a person. While having the job that I love is a gift, if it was to end tomorrow, you would regroup, have a think and move on, to the next thing.
“Women in their 40s are only beginning,” she concludes. “When my mam reached 40, was 40 old? With my peer group and women who I look up to in this media industry, I don’t feel like anybody in their 40s is past it. Women who have worked in a career for 20 years carry such intellectual weight. I’m 45. There’s lots more I want to do.”
Tracy Clifford presents the afternoon show on RTÉ 2FM from noon to 3pm.