Tulsen Tollett (49) is a current BBC broadcaster and lecturer at the University of Galway. When balancing a busy lifestyle with parenting and travel, he says that time management is the key.
“My wife works full time as well so we have a situation where it’s really difficult. I also teach in schools as well as the college. It just means that we put ourselves in the position where we try and work out in advance who is doing what,” he says.
“The job itself is great, doing all the different jobs is great. It’s making sure that you try and give 100% to each one when you do it, so compartmentalizing”.
Tulsen says that he began the first part of his sporting life playing soccer.
“Part of me wishes that I would have stuck with that because I quite enjoyed it and was reasonably good at it”.
However, he gravitated towards the popularity of rugby and began his professional career.
“When you get a thrill out of scoring tries, I used to watch the TV and think ‘that would be nice,’” he says.
His passion for television stemmed from the sporting side of broadcasting.
He says: “I used to see people on the TV, I’d go to matches and see people up close and crowds and I quite enjoyed the adrenaline rush from just watching matches, even at that young age. I really thought that could be something for me.
“That’s how I learned about time management.
“My parents were quite big on education – you had to be doing your education so that you could play sport – managing the training, school and grinds,” says Tollett.
Tulsen’s family are interested in sport, also, with all of his children playing sports.
“My son is in the Under-15 Ireland Team and we try and give children the benefit of your own experiences. But kids are kids and they take in what they want.”.
“If it was someone else who was saying it, it would make complete sense but doesn’t sound as good when it’s from parents,” he laughs.
Regarding his career, Tulsen puts an emphasis on the importance of curiosity and asking questions, progression over time and hard work.
“When I was playing, I used to go and do some of the co-commentating in some of the games if I had a spare minute here or there.
“From doing that, I wanted to progress into the role of being a presenter and doing different sports but you sort of get put into a specific area because of the particular sport that you play so people assume that that is all you know about,” he says.
“It does take a lot of time and a lot of effort”.
Tulsen’s broadcasting career began when he got the opportunity, after he had finished playing, to work in a reporter role.
“I went into a bit of presenting, in rugby to start with, and then from there I moved into television when I moved to Ireland”, he says.
“Then radio, doing different things gradually across different sports and then sort of snowballed from there so it just takes a bit of time”.
Tulsen’s advice for people working in the industry is to “work hard and ask questions”.
“There is a certain element of bravado in this industry where you think that you can do everything but sometimes you have to take a long, hard look at yourself and realise that you can’t do everything”.
“Perseverance is the key to it”.
