Part of the appeal of the bring Irish to the Irish experiment was undoubtedly the usual chance to see celebrities . . . even ones erring perilously close to the z-list . . .

getting drunk and daft; but in terms of the sexy agenda, it was the reassuring presence of Aoife Ni Thuairisg in front of the camera that brought in the bearla brigade. From occasionally limited resources . . . no romance and no celebrities behaving truly badly . . . Ni Thuairisg's relaxed presentation and barely concealed enthusiasm for the caper plumped it up into considerably more than the sum of its parts.

Sometimes, shows like this find their star in the most unexpected places: in the case of Ni Gaeilgeoir Me, the star was always out front.

They might still not be able to pronounce it, but this weekend, a hell of a lot of people know Aoife Ni Thuairisg's name.

In the Gaeltacht, they've known it for quite some time. She was born and reared in Indreabhan, a small village in the heart of Connemara. The eldest of Maureen and Paddy Joe's four children (her sister, Fiona, is expecting her first baby, and her two brothers, Douglas and Padraig Seosamh, live in the UK), she describes her childhood as "idyllic". "There was a real sense of community.

We lived in the country, by the sea. My uncle goes fishing so we always had fresh fish. You couldn't have asked for anything more. It was simple and at the same time really gentle."

Paddy O Thuairisg built fire engines . . .

"he used to bring bits of them home, it was brilliant" . . .

while Maureen stayed at home, full-time mother to four. In the summer, she was surrogate to many more.

As a Bean an Ti for Colaiste Lurgan, she oversaw hundreds of young interlopers while her own children were growing up.

"You always hear these coming-of-age stories from people who've been to the Gaeltacht, " Aoife says. "First kisses, ceilis, whatever, but for the Gaeltacht kids themselves, it was a similar coming-of-age experience. We went to the ceilis and took part in all the activities. Except, we did it every year."

School was local, at Scoil Shailearna and later, Colaiste Cholm Cille. She might have gone to college, but she knew a man in Fermoy who ran a mobile sweet shop that serviced local businesses and liked the sound of it.

At 18, she became an entrepreneur, running her own confectionery delivery service around businesses in Galway.

Amongst her clients was a spanking new office in Baile na hAbhann; the sweet-eaters within told her they would be soon starting up a television station.

They were in the middle of nowhere so she didn't believe them; she just kept supplying their sugar high. When the newspapers talked of grants and bills and broadcasting acts, she took her customers a little more seriously. She was still selling sweets when Teilifis na Gaeilge launched in 1997 and her sugar daddies suggested she did a screen test.

It didn't set the broadcasting world alight, but that first screen test was enough to secure her a place on an Udaras na Gaeltachta/Teilifis na Gaeilge-sponsored course in media studies in Donegal.

Three months later, she was back in Connemara for a second screen test in TnaG. It was something less than triumphant: when the camera stopped rolling, the director told her she was atrocious, that she had no future in television. She was on her way out of the studio in tears when the cameraman for the test, Traolach O Buachalla, caught up with her and told her she had the right stuff.

She chose to believe him and fronted her way into weather presentation in the fledgling station. Flitting between weather and continuity, she established herself as one of the 'TG4 Babes', an A-Team of attractive women with ambition, attitude and . . . by a happy coincidence . . . fluent Irish. Less flathiulach broadcasters suggest that the TG4 women are broadcasters by default . . . floating to the top of an extremely small pool by dint of their blas; tellingly, those small-pool broadcasters themselves question some of the babes' commitment to the propagation of the language. It's a barely winnable situation.

She'd been in TnaG for three years when she knocked on managing director Cathal Goan's door with a bright idea. "I know I'm the weather girl, " she told him, "but I'd like to make the first-ever retrospective documentary on this station.

And I'll need a helicopter."

One of the reasons she's still there is that he said yes. "They'll take a chance on you, " she says. "They're willing to give you a shot." They let the weather girl produce and direct that programme and since then, she has amassed as many production credits as presenting ones.

Paisean Faisean came along a year ago.

"It's not meaning-of-life television, " she says of the fashion-cum-dating show which somehow manages to combine the best bits of Blind Date with What Not To Wear and get away with it through the medium of the Irish language. It gifted her a nomination for an IFTA Television Personality of the Year Award at the end of last year; she distilled her delight by pointing out that with no chance of winning, she'd be having a few drinks and to hell with an unlikely victory speech.

She's a social animal, valuing her friends as highly as they value her. She is wellliked; the only (rare) gripe coming from colleagues who either complain that she lacks ambition or that she has guile disguised as a lack of ambition. Other (male) colleagues confess to a form of unrequited love. "She's almost too nice, " says one.

"I fear for her, I really do."

Her own paisean is for art . . . she paints and loves meandering through galleries.

She is a Jehovah's Witness, though prefers not to talk about her faith. She still lives in Indreabhan . . . next door to her parents now - and is looking forward to her wedding, in September, to Eoin Hanley, an engineer in TG4. After the honeymoon, there's a third series of Paisean Faisean. As to the next phase of Operation Sexy Irish, Aoife Ni Thuairisg is happy not to do a Grainne. "I want to work on interesting projects and at the moment, TG4 are giving me interesting projects. I think in the future, television stations will have to rethink presenters as brands . . . if you've a strong enough personality, you should be able to work across a couple of stations. A presenter should have a brand and a station should appreciate the kudos of being associated with that brand, rather than the other way round. That's the way it'll go."

C.V.

Occupation: Television presenter
Born: June 1977; Galway
Educated: Colaiste Cholm Cille, Indreabhan, Galway
Engaged: to Eoin Hanley, an engineer with TG4. They are set to marry in September
In the news: She presented the ratings-grabber, Ni Gaeilgeoir Me, on TG4 this week