{"id":468212,"date":"2026-05-26T18:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/468212\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T18:26:10","slug":"my-childhood-with-laura-fox-i-didnt-have-an-ounce-of-shyness-in-me-growing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/468212\/","title":{"rendered":"My childhood with Laura Fox: ‘I didn’t have an ounce of shyness in me growing up’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAURA Fox spoke to the Irish Examiner just days after marrying her husband Brian Moran<\/a> in an intimate wedding ceremony in Dublin City Hall. What had initially been planned as the legal precursor to a full-blown celebration in Italy this summer turned into what she describes as \u201ca gorgeous day with close family and friends\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite being an only child until the age of seven, the 35-year-old TV and radio presenter who co-presented this year\u2019s Dancing with the Stars and currently hosts Ireland\u2019s Fittest Family and 2FM\u2019s Drive with Laura and Katja has always had a life full of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cMam had me when she was 19 and raised me as a single mother until she married and had Jack, Adam, and Heather seven, 10, and 11 years later,\u201d says Fox.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn those early years, we shared a house with her friend Catherine and her daughter, Karen, who was my age. The four of us were always together, and Karen was my best friend for the first few years of my life. The two of us even started school together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox was also close to her mother\u2019s younger brothers. She and her mother Carmel lived in Galway city and her grandparents lived in the nearby village of Moycullen. They had 11 children and the youngest was only five years older than Fox. \u201cMy uncles and aunts were always there for me,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of Fox\u2019s earliest memories involves her uncle Trevor. She says: \u201cHe was obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He had a towel with the turtles on it that he loved, and I puked on it when I was about three years old. Mam washed it but he wouldn\u2019t take it back. I still have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox remembers being a carefree child who loved animals: \u201cI was also a born performer. I didn\u2019t have an ounce of shyness in me and would put on shows for family, friends, and neighbours whether they liked it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

She loved living in Galway and still regards herself as \u201ca Galway girl\u201d.<\/p>\n

\" Laura Fox in 1991<\/p>\n

There was a two-year period when she and her mother lived in Naas and Fox says she \u201cprayed to God every night for one of two things. Either we would move back to Galway or I would get to meet the Spice Girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When mam told me we were going back to Galway, my hopes for meeting the Spice Girls were dashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Fox\u2019s mother married and the family started to grow, they moved to the village of Moylough in Co Galway, where Fox made many friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d hang out all day,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019d be out on the green playing football, soccer or camogie. I wasn\u2019t the best at sport, but I enjoyed the craic of it, and it was a way of spending more time with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sport played a big part in her social life right through her teenage years but gradually, discos and nights out became important too.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends and I loved our nights out,\u201d she says. \u201cBut the best part was getting ready. Discos would start at 9pm and we\u2019d start getting ready from 2pm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Fox in 1994<\/p>\n

“We\u2019d be lathering on the fake tan and doing each other\u2019s make-up while listening to whatever new CD someone had. Whenever I hear songs like Come With Me by Special D, I\u2019m right back in a bedroom with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox did not excel at school. She puts it down to her \u201cnon-existent attention span\u201d. Her mother worried about her grades but Fox says that she herself was \u201ca glass half full type of person. I\u2019d tell mam it would all work out in the end, and thankfully, it has\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fox suspects that one reason it did so is that she inherited a strong work ethic from her mother. \u201cMam always worked hard,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe used to be a physio\u2019s aide. Then, when my brothers and sister were born, she became a stay-at-home mam and when they got bigger, she ran a childminding service from her home. I learned from her the importance of working to get what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it took Fox a while to figure out what she wanted. She got enough points in her Leaving Certificate to study science but says: \u201cI don\u2019t know why I put science on the CAO form. I wasn\u2019t any good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she decided against studying science, her mother signed her up for a secretarial course in Galway. \u201cIt was 2008, I was 17, and I moved into the city to study for the part-time course, while working in bars and restaurants to make money,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Fox (right) and childhood best friend Karen on their first day at school in 1995.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thrilled to have a job, my own place and my own money.\u201d<\/p>\n

She lived and worked in bars in London for a while in her early 20s before returning to Galway once again. That was when she began pursuing work in the media.<\/p>\n

She says she had \u201calways loved\u201d radio. \u201cMy friends and I would listen to Love Hour on Galway Bay FM on Sunday nights. I could never believe that talking on the radio was someone\u2019s job, that they actually got paid for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She applied for and got an unpaid internship at Galway Bay FM, and from there she worked hard and \u201cannoyed people\u201d to give her opportunities before finally finding a pathway into radio and then TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it comes back to the lesson I learned from my Mam. Work hard and dig in. Nothing will be handed to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Fox is an ambassador for Kellogg\u2019s GAA C\u00fal Camps, the GAA\u2019s nationwide summer camps for children aged six to 13\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAURA Fox spoke to the Irish Examiner just days after marrying her husband Brian Moran in an intimate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[172173,71805,20645,51540,93,61,60,1786],"class_list":["post-468212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-my-childhood","tag-parenting-preschool","tag-parenting-school-children","tag-parenting-teens","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468212","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=468212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}