Nuala McGovern: how she landed the Woman’s Hour top job & her meet cute love story
Postcards From Midlife
Lorraine Candy & Trish Halpin
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
BBC Woman’s Hour presenter Nuala McGovern on how to enjoy an extremely stressful career, getting up at 5.45am and how she stayed sane during the toughest of times. One the eve of Woman’s Hour’s 80th anniversary Nuala, 54, gives us a peek behind the scenes and chats about her remarkable journalism career that landed her the job two years ago. In a rare interview, Nuala also opens up about her childhood growing up in a Dublin pub, the impact of witnessing the Twin Towers attack & the raft of other ‘history in the making’ moments she has had a ringside seat at. She also shares how she met her hubby, living in the now tips & why you’ll always find her on a dancefloor.
Plus: Trish & Lorraine’s list of new fun things to do with friends and 3 controversial novels to get your book club talking.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Morning listeners and young Trish. Look, I've got lots of news today from the Midlife Frontline. So firstly, news number one, hot on the hills of me padlocking my locker, padlock key to someone else's locker |
| 0:21.0 | and then getting it bolt cut in my mad midlife way. I've outdone myself again this week. |
| 0:26.4 | I popped up to the old in post locker, popped the vinted parcels in, put them all in the wrong |
| 0:31.1 | locker. Oh no, really? God. That's one of my worst fears. That keeps me awake at night. |
| 0:38.6 | What did you do? |
| 0:40.0 | Well, don't you worry about it because this is another midlife moment. |
| 0:43.6 | You phone the hotline immediately on the locker while you're stood there. |
| 0:46.9 | You've got to stay by the in-post locker. |
| 0:49.3 | And a lovely helper, a person, a human, talks you through it, unlocks all the lockers and you can redo |
| 0:55.2 | and she confirms that you've done it. And actually, in the little conversation we had where I was |
| 0:59.3 | apologising for being a dim nitwit, she said, don't worry and sort of admitted that it is |
| 1:05.2 | mostly midlife mums, because they're posting their teen stuff as I was who do this. she said I just talk them through and she said very |
| 1:13.5 | sweetly you've probably got a lot of other things on today. Oh I like that. So big up to the inpost lady on |
| 1:20.1 | the helpline. I know I've got I think it's because we're just so frantic all the time aren't we? We were |
| 1:25.0 | just kind of on fast forward and Actually, a couple of friends of mine |
| 1:28.1 | this week told me one of them got in the shower with her bra on the other day. |
| 1:34.0 | Hoping that would speed the process up. I'll get dressed before my shower. And then the other one, |
| 1:38.8 | this is really bad, and I have done this before, put diesel in her petrol car at the pump. |
| 1:44.0 | And she was just rushing because |
| 1:45.9 | she was going to see her old OAP dad and the teenagers and this. I mean, I don't know. |
| 1:51.2 | It's just, we just. That's not a simple hotline phone call. |
| 1:54.0 | There's no hotline apart from to the RAC and 500 pounds later or whatever it is. But I just |
... |
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