RTE legend Ronan Collins feared for his life after waking up unable to move his legs

Former radio icon Ronan Collins has revealed the horrifying moment he awoke to discover he couldn’t feel his legs.

The broadcaster – who stepped down from his RTÉ Radio One show in 2022 – appeared as the latest guest on Brendan Courtney’s Keys To My Life programme, which was broadcast on Sunday evening on RTÉ One. Back in 2017, Ronan faced a life-threatening situation after awakening to find his legs completely immobilised, reports the Irish Mirror.

“I just woke up and I couldn’t move my legs. It turned out that I had a cyst on my spinal cord and was affecting the messaging system from the brain to the lower half of the body. I ended up having emergency surgery, and I remember saying to them, is this going to work?

“And he said, ‘No guarantees, the nerve endings can die off very quick’. But I made a vow to myself that I was going to walk out of that place, and I did, with the help of crutches, and we got through all that, and it was an extraordinary time.”

Ronan explained how he had previously received a type 2 diabetes diagnosis following his admission that he consumed five litres of fizzy drinks daily whilst at work.

“Freelance status meant job security was never a given. If you were looking for security of tenure and a safe State job, mine wasn’t it. You were always on the edge, you know. You were only as good as your last programme.

“We just worked morning, noon and night, and I was drinking gallons of a certain fizzy drink, five litres a day and that led onto my 50th birthday and in the same week, I was diagnosed with type two diabetes.”

But he managed to get his health back on track as the country’s most listened to music show. During last night’s episode, Ronan revisits his childhood in Dublin’s Drumcondra with aspirational parents who didn’t want their son to go into showbusiness.

And he makes a tentative return to the impressive home in Dublin’s Porterstown, purchased at the peak of his broadcasting success, but then mortgage rates soared, and the mortgage spiralled out of control.

He also opens up about how grateful he was to have worked for RTE for nearly 53 years. In 2022 after 53 years on air, he made the momentous decision to hang up his headphones bowing out while still at the top in RTE.

“It was a big deal for all of us, you know, for my family and friends. I never came in and thought about the fact that there was over 200,000 people listening, and I did tear up, and actually stopped for about five seconds, and Woody (Ronan’s wife) is in front of me, and she’s just telling me to finish it.

“It’s great to be able to look back. It was unbelievable. I was hugely grateful to RTE. It gave me a fantastic life, a wonderful life,” he added.

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