Dermot O'Leary says his Irish relatives have “very good-naturedly, beaten me up for being English,” a line that captures how the 53 year old still navigates the label even after years of talking openly about his roots. The presenter said the reaction has followed him all his life, and he is set to bring the same family story to Saturday Kitchen on One from 10am to 11.30am.
Virgin Media exchange
“Yeah, I always have done really. It's more of a big deal when you say over here (in Ireland), I don't know how you feel,” he told Brian Dowling and Katja Mia on Virgin Media. He added: “It's more of a big deal when you say it here. In the UK, people just go 'he's Irish over there,'” which turns the conversation into two different reactions to the same identity claim.
He was even blunter about the family ribbing that comes with it. “A little bit. I've had that all my life. Because you've basically been around cousins who, very good-naturedly, beaten me up for being English,” he said. “Until somebody else calls me English, then they beat them up. I'm joking but it's a little bit like that.”
Colchester and County Wexford
O'Leary was born in Colchester, England, to parents from County Wexford, and he said that background shaped how he sees himself. “It was always around, they (my parents) never forced me to feel Irish. I had an Irish passport since dot. I always consider myself Irish but not from Ireland,” he said, drawing a line between inherited identity and where he was actually raised.
He also described a childhood split between a small Irish community in Colchester and a weekday routine at a Church of England school. “Where I grew up in England, there's a small Irish community and we were very involved with them,” he said. “Then I'd go back to being a normal kid going to a normal Church of England school, then I'd come home and shut the door and it would be a bit like Ireland.”
Dermot's Taste of Ireland
The contradiction sits at the centre of the story: he says he is Irish through and through, but he also says he was born in England, never lived in Ireland and is “not from Ireland.” That is exactly why the teasing lands as more than family banter; it is the live edge of a long-running identity question that he keeps addressing in public rather than avoiding.
Dermot's Taste of Ireland has already aired for two series on ITV, with episodes focused on Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Kinsale, Wexford and Donegal. His Saturday Kitchen appearance from 10am to 11.30am on One should extend the same line of conversation: not whether he has Irish roots, but how he defines them when the people closest to him keep reminding him where he was born.
