{"id":237658,"date":"2026-01-10T10:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T10:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/237658\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T10:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T10:16:08","slug":"tanya-sweeney-being-around-more-pop-stars-meant-being-around-more-of-their-superfans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/237658\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanya Sweeney: \u2018Being around more pop stars meant being around more of their superfans\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nFrom an internship at MTV to working at record labels and interviewing A-listers as a journalist, I have had a ringside seat to the rise of the superfan. So much so that one of them inspired my debut novel&#8230;\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tanya Sweeney. Photo: Ruth Medjber\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TanyaSweeney-byRuthMedjber-@ruthlessimagery--8.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Tanya Sweeney. Photo: Ruth Medjber<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">An internship at MTV in London might sound impossibly glamorous to some: I\u2019m here to tell you that it was not. Back in the 1990s, I found myself working in the channel\u2019s communications department, and the job pretty much entailed being wedded to the photocopier or making coffee for higher-ups. But, occasionally, there were the moments of madness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It was also my job to \u2018man\u2019 the viewer enquiry telephone line. The queries ran the total gamut because&#8230; well, humans. It being the pre-Google era, it fell to me to find out how fans could write to artists, who directed which video, and how someone could become an MTV presenter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From an internship at MTV to working at record labels and interviewing A-listers as a journalist, I have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,12271],"class_list":["post-237658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tanya-sweeney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}