It’s hard to come away from a chat with John Creedon without feeling enlightened. For someone who says he struggled at school, he is a veritable fount of knowledge. Our conversation runs the gamut from religion and philosophy to psychology and politics, with a sprinkling of quotes by everyone from Morrissey to St Thomas Aquinas. The magpie brain is a trait that runs in the family, he says.

“My father had a huge intellect and a great appetite for stuff – not unlike myself, he wouldn’t have been a bad man at a table quiz, he knew a little bit about everything. He would have BBC Radio 4 and the World Service on next to his bed all night. I would say, ‘It’s your guilty conscience, Dad, you can’t spend time with yourself’. He’d say, ‘Arra go ’way you, do you know what you have, dear boy, elephantitis of the cranium, do you know what that is?’ And I’d say, ‘I do, it’s a swelled head’,” he says with that distinctive hearty chuckle.

The broadcaster, born and raised in Cork City, would indeed be justified in having a swelled head thanks to his growing list of achievements, but he is not one to bask in praise. When we speak, his book, An Irish Folklore Treasury, has just been awarded Best Irish-Published Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. He is genuinely surprised and moved by the huge response to the book, even if he is struggling to find the time to take it all in.

“There are three shops in Cork that I need to drop into on the way to work to sign books that have been left in for me,” he says.

‘Work’ is his evening show on RTÉ Radio 1, much loved by listeners for its warm and welcoming blend of chat and eclectic tunes. But it is in his continuing strand of RTÉ series travelling around Ireland that he has really found his groove and where he gets to satisfy his love of history, geography, folklore and the Irish language. It is an interest that has always been there, but one that was re-ignited when he returned to UCC as an adult learner to study for a Diploma in Local and Regional Studies.

“It was a couple of nights a week for a couple of years – I had to get my papers in and all of that – and I loved every minute of it. I was the first into the class and the last out every single time. I just couldn’t get enough of it,” he says.

While John’s motivation for doing the diploma was purely personal, it further fuelled his interest in the Irish language and in turn inspired the Creedon’s Atlas of Ireland series for RTÉ, in which he travels around the country delving into our folklore and linguistic roots.

"I know I’m coming down the gears when I’m identifying the birds and naming the trees … eventually even that shuts up and I just disappear into the cosmos. That is when you come back into town and you’re like, ‘Come here, I’ve got a brilliant idea.’" 

“I had no plan for it, it was only for my own interest. And then, on foot of the diploma, I loved it so much I enrolled in the classes over in the Irish department. Having let it lie fallow for 20 years or so, I had lost a lot of it.”

John is a prime example of how it is never too late to return to education. He previously attended UCC as an undergraduate, but he says it was an experience for which he wasn’t quite ready.

“I arrived up at UCC at 17, knowing nothing about university or what I wanted to do. I got two subjects right – English and Philosophy. But then I picked Logic and Italian, which were two really stupid subjects for me to pick. I didn’t speak Italian, but I was kind of good at Latin, so I thought I’d catch up. But I was lost in the first five minutes. That was the end of that. And, Logic? I’m one of the most illogical people you could meet,” he laughs. “I went to two or three lectures, but I started to drift within weeks.”

He then repeated French in his Leaving Cert, in an attempt to get the points for Law, but missed out by one point, and re-enrolled in Arts. His studies took a backseat however when life intervened, in a fairly major way.

“I was only there a matter of weeks when I discovered I was expecting a baby. That is when I quit and went to work.”

For John, his work has been a lifelong learning opportunity. Before getting into pirate radio and, later on, RTÉ, he had a string of different jobs, including as a librarian, a shift worker at Youghal Carpets, and a stint as a nightclub DJ.

“I was a dad at 20, so all of that part of my life was fast-forward. I have no regrets but at the time, it was 1979, it wasn’t a great time in the country economically. It was all about paying the bills, because before I knew what was causing it, I had four children,” he laughs. “The ’70s and ’80s were tough, I remember collecting timber out of skips and stuff to keep the place warm. I did any trick that was open to me, but I was fortunate because I was leaning in the direction I wanted to go.”

It is clear that his innate curiosity and hunger to learn fuels everything he does.

“I was always fascinated by the people who walked these footpaths before us, who are just beneath our feet … the Victorians and the Georgians – did they have Cork accents or what were they like? Every day when I cross Patrick’s Bridge, I wonder what’s in the slobs down there – murder weapons, swords, engagement rings? All of that is what got me back into UCC. It was brilliant. Sometimes it is when you come to something when you’re interested, when you want to know about it, that it’s marvellous.”

At 64, John may be nearing the traditional retirement age, but he is busier than ever. He says it is now time to take the foot off the pedal for a while and give himself some space for new ideas to percolate.

“You have to absorb as well as give out. Walking would be one of my meditations … if I go out the track in north Kerry or do a bit of hillwalking, I’ll be thinking, ‘I have to give Martha [his daughter in Australia] a call or send so-and-so a text’. But I know I’m coming down the gears when I’m identifying the birds and naming the trees … eventually even that shuts up and I just disappear into the cosmos. That is when you come back into town and you’re like, ‘Come here, I’ve got a brilliant idea’. I’m due a lot of holidays, so I’m definitely going to hibernate for January – go missing or just look out the window. That is the plan.”

John’s latest book, An Irish Folklore Treasury – winner of Best Irish-Published Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards – is published by Gill.

Photography: Clare Keogh