Kim Lenaghan obituary: Broadcaster and food critic who championed Northern Irish cuisine

The daughter of the late Rex, an engineer, and Valerie Lenaghan, she grew up in Glengormley, east Belfast with a younger brother. She attended Glengormley High School and recalled a happy childhood. After graduating from Queen’s University with an honours arts degree in English literature and from the University of Ulster with a Master of Arts in marketing, she landed a job as a press officer with the Northern Irish Tourist Board in the late 1980s.

She left the board after six years and worked briefly in publicity at the Abbey Theatre where her natural ability as a broadcaster was spotted by RTÉ. She became a regular panellist on discussion shows and, having gone freelance, worked for a number of years for RTÉ and later for Downtown Radio where she had her own travel and entertainment show.

Warm and bubbly with a great sense of humour, she presented music and conversation programmes with a natural ease and versatility and for more than 12 years the Sunday morning programme, This New Day. Later, she embarked on television work with the series Country Times and Good Dog, Bad Dog; BBC Proms in the Park in Northern Ireland and the Balmoral Show. She was also the author of two books, A Little History of Golf, for Appletree Press, and Irish Superstitions and Lore .

In 2017, she married Andrew Jones, a London management consultant whom she first encountered at a chance meeting at Belfast City Airport. Three months later, they tied the knot at a private registry office ceremony in Chelsea. The couple loved entertaining and regularly hosted dinner parties at home in Ballyhackamore near Belfast, Jones sharing her love of good food, cooking and travel and introducing her to his own passion for cars. He survives her.

Source: Holiday News (holidaynews.net)

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