I’d never cried during a live broadcast – then three poignant words had me sobbing | Adrian Chiles

I couldn’t help choking up when the writer Katriona O’Sullivan told me her life story. Now I’m on a mission to get everyone to read her memoir In more than 30 years of live broadcasting, I’ve only once sobbed on air. This was the other week, during a radio interview with a professor of psychology called Katriona O’Sullivan. That’s what she is now, a professor at Maynooth University in County Kildare. Before that, she was at Trinity College Dublin, where she also got her PhD. Before that, she was to be found on the access programme through which she got into Trinity. Before that she was living a life of chaos in Dublin, a single mother with next to nothing. She was in Dublin escaping an even more chaotic life in Birmingham, which had followed a childhood in Coventry, growing up in harrowing, grinding, distressing, miserable, terrifying poverty. No single adjective feels adequate here, so I’ve thrown in as many as I can think of. She’s better with words than me, as you’ll find if you read her memoir, which is called Poor. I’m buying so many copies of her book to give to people that she may soon have to write one called Rich. I’m on a mission to get everyone in t