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56 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 57
She had become the IT girl
for derivative and tacky
Irish television and she was
irrepressible
A
s one of Ireland’s most well known
and loved Broadcasters, Kathryn
Thomas presented the popular
‘Winning Streak’, hosts the iconic
‘Operation Transformation’ on RTÉ
One television, is a longstanding regular on RTÉ
Radio 1, is up for almost anything easy, and is
widely available to endorse upmarket brands.
But there’s even less to her than this suggests.
Carlow-native Thomas attended The King’s
Hospital school in Dublin, where for five years she
was in the same class as Leo Varadkar, as a
boarder. She studied English, Sociology and
Information Studies at UCD but left before
finishing, as she won a contract to present the
vapid children’s television programme ‘Rapid’
with Dublin GAA star Jason Sherlock, in 1999. It
was a predictable kidfest of bungee jumping, sky
diving and swimming with great white sharks.
She also took London Guildhall acting exams to
Grade 8 though there is no sign she has ever
worked as an actor. Thomas then worked on the
television series ‘No Frontiers’, which featured
stories about boomeranging in Australia, bungee
jumping in New Zealand, child tracking in
Namibia, and American football. Yes bungee
jumping again.
In 2005, Thomas won the ‘Travel Extra’ ‘Irish
Travel Writer of the Year’ award. She told the Irish
Examiner she had visited 82 countries via her
decade-long involvement plugging destinations
on ‘No Frontiers’.
In 2008, she won the Sony Bravia TV
Personality of the Year, though it is not clear what
direction that personality had taken her, at the
Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin, as well
as Best Female Presenter at the TV Now Awards.
Her personality and presentation were at
unprecedented levels by now.
In 2008, Thomas also co-presented ‘Winning
Streak: Dream Ticket’, an orgy of guileless and
avaricious consumerism, with Aidan Power and
then with Marty Whelan, oering prizes up to
€50,000. She left it in December 2011.
By Michael Smith
In 2011, she became the new presenter of
‘Operation Transformation’ on RTÉ One, and host
of ‘The Voice of Ireland’, the Irish version of ‘The
Voice’. She was already the IT girl for derivative
and tacky Irish television and she was
irrepressible.
In 2014 she presented ‘Music Passport:
Journey Through Genocide in Rwanda’ on RTÉ
Radio 1, a chilling account of the role music
played in the carnage that befell the country in
1994. Mick Heaney in the Irish Times described
is as “highly creditable”.
A return to form was when she presented the
2018 season of ‘Ireland’s Fittest Family’ on RTÉ.
The programme saw families across Ireland
compete in dierent witless adventure races and
Questioning the values of well
known Kathryn Thomas
Doubting
Thomas
Jgur with Kthryn
Peugeot with KthrynAudi with Kthryn
MEDIA
56 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 57
She was to be a ‘brand ambassador’ for
Peugeot in a deal arranged by Noel Kelly of
NK Management — she had previously held
lucrative brand ambassadorships with Audi
and Land Rover
fitness competitions in a psychotically
overcompetitive eort to win the title of ‘Ireland’s
Fittest Family’. In February 2012, she came third
in a poll to find Ireland’s most desirable
Valentines. The quality the young men of Ireland
were now finding so attractive was the same
thing that had led her to the earlier character and
presenter awards.
During Covid she hosted a staycation
programmed called ‘No Place like Home’. It was
the only programme title that hadn’t been taken
when she got to the registry of programme titles.
Phoenix Magazine reported that it came with
“Alan Partridge flourishes”.
She has hosted numerous live big national
events including St Patrick’s Day Live, the
opening ceremony of the Special Olympics World
Summer Games, Live from the Red Carpet at the
IFTAs and Telethon. She was a regular on the
comedy show,’The Panel’ with Dara O’Briain, and
became a man for a day wearing a prosthetic
mask on hidden-camera TV show, ‘Anonymous’.
She regularly covered for John Murray and also
fills in for Ray D’Arcy on RTÉ Radio 1. It is said she
literally changes colour to match the studio and
the missing broadcaster she is replacing.
Mick Heaney described her, though of course
he did not see it as a problem, as an
“unobjectionably upbeat travel presenter and
gameshow host”?
Her tone is always ‘boiled sweet’ and nobody
could mind that.
Her ‘Music Passport’ documentaries looked at
the importance of music in dierent cultures and
have taken her all over Ireland and as far afield as
Rwanda. She has hosted four seasons of radio
quiz ‘Before Your Time’ which pits the wits of old
age pensioners against a panel of students.
Thomas previously wrote monthly travel
features for the Star’s Chic Magazine and a weekly
column in the main rag. I couldn’t find its archive
but I did find the following synopsis of her Star
oeuvre — in the Irish Independent: “In the
meantime, I am just looking forward to keeping
the chair warm for Ray D’Arcy while he takes a
well-earned break”. Kathyrn kicked off her
column by congratulating TV3’s Colette
Fitzpatrick on her appointment at Newstalk.
“Congratulations to Colette Fitzpatrick on her
new Sunday morning Newstalk show”, she wrote.
I think she is a fantastic broadcaster and it’s nice
to have another female voice to boost the male-
dominated airwaves”.
Thomas also does regular contributions for the
Sunday Independent, Ireland’s largest
newspaper, covering voices it’s nice to have, and
fantastic things generally.
Following her success on ‘No Frontiers,’ she
wrote her first, best-selling book, ‘O the Beaten
Track’, based on her uninteresting adventures.
In 2018, she co-presented Arnotts’ Spring
Summer 18 Catwalk Show, “an evening of style
and elegance” with Miriam O’Callaghan, Kathryn
Thomas, Lottie Ryan and Yvonne Connolly”.
Appropriately, for International Women’s Day,
March 8. Conscience, you see.
With all this going on there was therefore no
surprise when Thomas, a Noel Kelly Management
client, was announced as co-host with Daithí
Ó’Sé of this year’s Rose of Tralee — for the first
time transforming the presentation arrangement
into an exciting duo, as opposed to an exciting
solo package. The Rose of Tralee itself is
intertwined with car brand sponsorship, with the
website prominently featuring a competition to
win a 232 Kia Ceed GT Line.
Thomas had recently run into a spot of bother
when an Instagram post, released on the same
day as RTÉ revealed Ryan Tubridy’s top-up
payments, pictured her standing next to a new
Peugeot 408, valued at between €40,000 and
€53,000. She was to be a “brand ambassador”
for Peugeot in a deal arranged by agent to the
stars, Noel Kelly of NK Management. Her own
“top-up”.
This also wasn’t the first time the presenter has
received cars from manufacturers — she
previously held lucrative brand ambassadorships
with Audi and Land Rover.
Her relationship with Audi dates back to at
least 2012 when she promoted the brand across
social media and attended its sponsored events
and showroom openings.
In return for this, she received a convertible Audi
A5, which she described as her favourite accessory
and which she praised for its Alcantara seats.
After her stint with Audi, Thomas — along with
Ireland’s celebrity élite of Amy Huberman, Brian
O’Driscoll, Dermot Gavin and others I can’t
remember — moved up to a more luxurious
brand, partnering with Land Rover, the nastiest
of overengineered twitmobiles.
As part of this partnership, Thomas received a
Range Rover ‘Evoque’ Plug-in Hybrid and later
took part in a controversial greenwashing
campaign that was criticised by the Advertising
Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI). RTÉ
refused to say if she had permission to front the
propaganda eort.
In a now-deleted sponsored advertorial
published by the Irish Times in 2021, Thomas
promoted the SUV for its sustainability and zero
emissions when driving in electric mode.
At no stage has she ever expressed serious
qualms about the message her fossil-guzzler
endorsements or indeed her travelshow
peripateticism propound for the climate.
This is not to say she has no conscience. She
did after all cry during the Rose of Tralee during
the performance of a contestant who had lost
both parents in the last five years.
And she’s had to deal with a lot of meanness
about Operation Transformation’s fat-shaming
though of course it hasn’t shamed anyone for
years. Years.
She told RSVP online:
“When the team looked into the criticism,
the majority of people speaking out against
the show hadn’t seen it for the last four to
five years.
Operation Transformation has evolved
and, yes, it was very weight-centric when it
started out, but we are going into season 16.
There are 373,000 people watching the
show on average, that is a 32.5% audience
share which is unheard of for any show in
Ireland, if not Europe. Those are the facts, so
the Irish audience wants to watch and
engage with the show”.
And that is that for Conscience.
It would not meet Village’s editorial standards
to refer to Kathryn Thomas’s private life but it did
feature for years in VIP magazine and the like,
before reaching a happy resolution and babies in
recent times. A cursory glance at the number of
editions of that magazine that feature the
presenter taking time out of her busy schedule
suggest that she must be the magazine’s biggest
ever draw. And again we refer to that character
that has eluded Village but was manifest in all
those personality awards.
Thomas revealed in 2015, that a series of
shooting stars inked on the inside of her lower left
arm were not tattoos but were in fact transfers,
as she was scared to get a real tattoo. And that’s
about it for what we could find.
Starlet à la RTÉ, 2023.
Earlier this year, she marked her sister Linda’s
upcoming nuptials with a gang of girls in Croatia
and after “partying with the rest of the crowd” in
Tralee, Kathryn attended her hen night in Dublin’s
Hard Rock café.
In February 2012, Thomas stormed the stage
during a performance by Alabama 3 at the 9th
Irish Film & Television Awards, and wagged her
finger at the rock band after they sang a song with
the lyrics “fuck the police”. She accused the band
of inciting people to violence. It is the only
interesting thing she has ever done.
Operation Transformation is back in the New
Year.
And since this isn’t enough now we have a
brand new series from Kathryn Thomas,‘The
Secret Life of Your Body’, as part of RTÉ’s post-
Tubridy autumn lineup .
Hold on to your organs, viewers.
