Marian Richardson, an award-winning producer, presenter, journalist and actress, is the new producer and presenter of Playback.
Marian began her career as an actress at the age of ten in the RTÉ Television production of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. Since then she has appeared in a number of film and theatre productions and she presented the acclaimed pre-school television series, Bosco.
She worked as a journalist in the RTÉ Newsroom across all the main television and radio programmes including Morning Ireland, the News at One, This Week, the Six One and Nine News.
She also presented RTÉ Radio 1’s traditional music series Toss the Feathers and Sunday Folk and worked for many years with the late Ciarán MacMathúna on the Humours of Donnybrook. She also worked on the ground-breaking 1980s radio programme Women Today.
Among the major international stories she has covered are the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, the death of Pope John Paul II in Rome and the inauguration of Barack Obama in Washington. Closer to home, she has worked on every major news story to affect this country in recent years including General elections, Budgets, State Funerals, Tribunals, State funerals and the conflict in the North.
She produced and compiled the Millennium series A Giant at my Shoulder and more recently, was the series producer on Today with Pat Kenny and Drivetime with Mary Wilson.
She recently produced the CD of Joseph O’Connor’s Drivetime Diaries and has devised and co-produced, with Mary Wilson, two touring shows The Four Savvy Women Roadshow and Drivetime Diarists Live.
She is married to Michael Good and has two sons.
Playback is the 8th most popular radio show in the country and according to the latest radio listenership figures has an audience reach of 329,000.
RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday 13 November, 9.10am