Senior Integrated Producer: 8 questions with Eve McDonald

Get all your ducks lined up/get all your ducks organised/sort out your bloody ducks. 

I grew up in South Dublin on the edge of suburbia, with copy-paste houses on one side, and mountains, fields, streams, wandering cows and endless hide-and-seek opportunities rolling away from us on the other. I absolutely loved wandering off on adventures and testing the boundaries of my mother’s patience. And getting conjunctivitis from rolling down the muck piles. Yes, the muck piles.

Always on holidays, always with good wine, and always forget the name.

A vintage armchair I bought for myself years ago to celebrate getting a new job. It felt so indulgent at the time, and I felt quite guilty (for no reason at all – Irish Catholicism runs in my veins despite 25 years of atheism). But looking back it was such a small treat, and I love the chair; it still gives me so much joy. 

I’m proud of taking a punt at moving to the UK when I was in my twenties and had been given an ultimatum of redundancy from my job, or a transfer to London. I moved my entire life within four weeks, with one massive suitcase and nowhere to live (hello, hostel life). It was absolutely terrifying. But it opened up so many opportunities for me, and it scares me to think how different my life would be now if I’d never done it.

Is it trivia? Not sure, maybe it’s more of a fact. On average, men with a family earn 6% more than non-fathers, while mothers earn 4% less for every child they have. As a mother, the motherhood tax is a phenomenon that hides in plain sight, both pervasive and shocking the more you notice it.

Pretty sure it was if it could do my timesheets for me… we’re not that advanced yet, folks.

I love a client who takes the time to write a good brief – considering what it might feel like to read it for the first time.