The Radio 2 DJ, 51, tells Michael Odell about the joys of being an older father

Dermot O’Leary: “I do truly believe the people who are successful are genuine”
DERRICK SANTINI FOR FABULOUS

Last year, after Phillip Schofield’s much-publicised affair with a younger former colleague, Dermot O’Leary stepped in as a presenter on ITV’s This Morning. Five months later Holly Willoughby also departed the show after a foiled kidnap and murder plot and so O’Leary found himself presenting alongside Alison Hammond.

“Now that was scary,” says the 51-year-old Irish-British broadcaster. “There was no get-to-know lunch [with Hammond]. No meeting. Just straight in doing two and a half hours of live TV. And to be honest, most people didn’t think it would work.”

But it did. O’Leary and Hammond enjoy a natural ease on screen. The show’s new permanent hosts have now been confirmed as Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard. O’Leary and Hammond will still appear on Fridays and provide holiday cover. But why do they complement each other so well? O’Leary thinks he has identified the magic ingredient.

O’Leary with his This Morning co-host Alison Hammond
ITV/SHUTTERSTOCK

“I think it’s that we are both from immigrant families,” he says. “I don’t want to romanticise that too much but it’s true. It’s not necessarily about being ‘the other’ but there’s something your parents instil in you if they’ve had to up sticks to give you a better life. There’s an implication of ‘you’ve got to earn this’. It’s no different from anyone else’s parents who have a good work ethic, I suppose, but that’s my slightly different take on it.”

His reputation for being super-keen yet straightforward and easygoing is what secured Colchester-born O’Leary a gig on BBC Radio Essex in the mid-1990s. And it was this same “boy next door” amiability that eventually landed him a presenting job on Simon Cowell’s TheX Factor talent show in 2007. O’Leary recalls that initial phone call with barely concealed horror.

“I said to my agent, ‘No, no, no, you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not that guy.’ But even as you say those words you know you want to. It’s just fear. It’s hard to stress how big a show The X Factor was at the time and it was quite overwhelming. As a kid we’d gather round the TV and watch the big Saturday night show like The Generation Game or Blankety Blank and 30 years later I’m the one on the screen in everyone’s front room. That was massive for me and actually I’m very proud of that. I wasn’t trying to be cool and I never wanted to be anything I’m not. Anyone on TV who is successful is basically the same person they are in real life.”

It just so happens we are talking the week after we learned the BBC news anchor Huw Edwards had been charged with making indecent images of children. And then of course we must consider the fate of Schofield. Are successful TV stars really always just being themselves?

“I’d never comment on anything I don’t know about but I suppose Huw Edwards is a newsreader,” O’Leary says. “I’m talking about more personality-based TV and in factual entertainment, documentary series I do truly believe the people who are successful are genuine. Everyone is allowed a bad day occasionally [O’Leary emails later to clarify: he is definitely not talking about Edwards here]. You don’t have to have a sunny disposition your whole life but I do think that’s why This Morning works. Alison is a genuinely lovely person and it’s basically two and a half hours of us improvising and flying by the seat of our pants.”

O’Leary is enjoying something of a career high. Quite apart from his TV profile, it is now 20 years since he began presenting his weekend show on BBC Radio 2. It is getting him talked about in the same breath as DJ legends such as Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker and Gary Davies. Well, almost.

“I’m not so sure because the thing about Radio 2 is you start as a whippersnapper and 15 or 20 years later you look around and you are still the whippersnapper,” he says. “I mean, come on. Tony Blackburn has just celebrated 60 years in broadcasting. That is a legend.”

When O’Leary first joined Radio 2 in September 2004 the thing he most enjoyed was hosting live sessions from unknown artists. Such as Adele, who sang Someone Like You for the first time on radio on his show (it has now been streamed almost two billion times) or Ed Sheeran or the Arctic Monkeys, who were also then largely unknown.

“That was our early remit — to break new talent,” O’Leary says. “And two times in particularI remember seeing the studio packed with staff because they sensed something special was happening. One was when Adele came in and the other was for Amy Winehouse. I think we had a pretty good track record of breaking artists but not everyone made it. For example, I wonder what happened to Dry the River or the New York Fund?”

Yes and what happened to the prelapsarian world into which O’Leary first broadcast? In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg was still a student at Harvard and had just launched The Facebook (it wouldn’t become Facebook until 2005). Twitter didn’t exist and the first iPhone didn’t appear until three years later.

“Yes, social media was the shiny new toy for a moment, wasn’t it?” he says. “When Twitter [now X] started and we all got drunk on it quite quickly and then it got taken over by maniacs so we all got off it as quickly as possible.

“It’s completely changed broadcasting and not particularly in a good way. The immediacy is good but with that comes a lack of thoroughness and fact checking. We are living in the apex of that storm right now and it’s not a particularly pleasant place to be.

“You have to be mindful before you speak because now you’re not even judged on what you say but on what someone else says. I find the soundbite culture very worrying. Vanessa Feltz [a guest on the show] made some lighthearted comment about singing at a musical and I got pilloried for laughing. That’s all I did. I laughed. Cue the outrage. It’s a terribly binary climate and it’s important not to be sucked in by that.”

O’Leary with his wife, Dee Koppang
CAN NGUYEN/SHUTTERSTOCK

His trick is to remain grounded by sticking close to a tight-knit circle of family and friends. At the weekend he and his Norwegian wife, Dee, are at home in Primrose Hill, north London, with their four-year-old son, Kasper.

“Maybe because live TV and radio are about instant gratification, the thing I find most relaxing is playing with Kasper and writing,” he says. “The discipline of creating characters and dialogue and stories takes me somewhere else completely.”

O’Leary is about to publish his seventh children’s book, an adventure involving a spy fox and a secret agent chicken set in the Second World War. It is called Spy Fox and Agent Feathers and it combines two of O’Leary’s great passions: Second World War history and kids.

“I do actually know quite a bit about the period but it’s not the easiest for 8 to 11-year-olds because the Second World War, however much you romanticise it, is pretty heavy.”

In the past O’Leary has been unusually open and honest about his and Dee’s journey to parenthood. Last time we met he spoke movingly about how they had prepared themselves mentally for not having children after years of trying. However, in 2020 Kasper came along and O’Leary expressed a nuanced view of the elation that followed being admitted to the parenthood “club”.

“As parents we were suddenly seen as socially valid. My thoughts are still with the people outside that club,” he said.

Are they planning more?

“You ready yourself for maybe not having a child so the fact we have one, that’s the win. I’ve got mates who either chose not to or can’t have children so you never take it for granted.”

On Saturday mornings he is on air at Radio 2 so on Sunday O’Leary cooks, takes Kasper to rugby and then to Mass. We are talking the day before the family go on holiday to their second home in Puglia, Italy.

“It will be all about eating well, swimming, reading, cooking, being in the moment,” he says. “We recently had a short break in Norway and I swam in the fjord every day. That works for me. I know I’m not the youngest dad so I try to keep physically fit and mentally sharp.”

How does he keep mentally sharp?

“Sounds like a load of old shit, doesn’t it? I guess it means to try and understand opposing points of view. It’s important because look where we are at the moment. Everyone is shouting at each other and no one is listening. My role model in that respect is Gyles Brandreth [an occasional guest on This Morning]. He’s 76 and still genuinely curious about people.”

When he returns from Puglia it will be almost time for Radio 2 in the Park, the station’s signature mini-festival, which this year takes place in Preston, Lancashire. O’Leary will be there DJing along with Tony Blackburn, Gary Davies not to mention Jo Whiley and Sara Cox. He is right. There is a definite Hotel California vibe to the station. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

“Who wouldn’t want to do this job for ever? People who love music working alongside teams who love broadcasting. As long as they don’t retire me. I’ll die at Radio 2 with my boots on.”
Dermot O’Leary is on Radio 2 on Saturdays from 8-10am. Radio 2 in the Park is on September 7 and 8 on Radio 2, BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer
Spy Fox and Agent Feathers by Dermot O’Leary, illustrated by Claire Powell, will be available in hardback, ebook and audio on September 12 (Hodder Children’s Books, £12.99)

Dermot O’Leary’s perfect weekend

BBC or ITV?
Shut up!

One Direction or Arctic Monkeys?
Arctic Monkeys

Theatre or cinema?
Theatre

Gym or country walk?
Country walk

Quiet night in or boozy night out?
Depends which night. Bit of both

I couldn’t get through my weekend without …
My morning routine with Kasper: cereal, more cereal, rugby practice then an hour of Mass. After that, a croissant because I’ve made him Catholic and guilty