"I was told that if I wanted a career in broadcasting I needed to get rid of the accent, get rid of my friends, leave the area I lived in, and move to the southside. I was devastated by that. I was about 19 or 20 and quite vulnerable and I carried that bad advice with me" Martin King

'So, when they raided, myself and two other guys jumped into the transmitter room," says TV3 weatherman and, apparently, rugged man of action, Martin King. "They were at the door, and they didn't knock politely in those days. They'd literally come through the plasterboard walls with sledgehammers in their hands. And then they'd take all the equipment. But what they were really looking for was the transmitter. I think the law at the time was that you couldn't have possession of a transmitter, and the one thing on the transmitter they needed was the crystal, which gave you your frequency. So one of us managed to get the crystal out and hide it, and then we sat and watched as the Post and Telegraph guys dismantled the equipment. It was mad stuff!"

This is a flashback to the last recession; a day in the life of TV3's swashbuckling weather man, in the days before legally independent broadcasters, when he worked in pirate radio. They say that businesses fermented in recession are world-beaters, and it's probably the same with broadcasters.

But how did the impenetrably bubbly Martin King, soon to be presenter of The Morning Show with Sybil and Martin, end up working in the slightly mad world of Irish radio pirates? "I wanted to be a football commentator," he explains, "and I thought maybe you started on radio, so I wrote to James Dillon at Big D. He interviewed me while he was on the air doing a show. 'Can you answer phones? How are you for making tea? Can people read your handwriting?' I was 14 or 15."

His hobby became a job when illness struck the family. "My dad was hospitalised. It was a very tough time for the whole house. It was depression and it affected him really badly," he falters a little, "I'm saying it to you and should feel comfortable talking about it and yet there's a stigma attached to it. Depression is something we've talked about on Midday [the daytime discussion show he co-hosted with Colette Fitzpatrick and Alan Cantwell], but it's still not easy. Anyway, he ended up getting hospital care. It happened in the summer holidays and I decided I wasn't going to go back to school. I was 15 and the eldest and I thought I should take on the responsibility of bringing home some money. So I took a permanent job at the radio station. Now, I went back to school some time later, but at the time I was determined to do anything to help my mother. [Big D] had no one to open doors, or answer phones overnight, so I did it. I met some great people. I made tea for some real hot shots! And I did it for 15 quid a week."

And then the fates put Martin King in front of a mike. "In a lot of cases the DJs weren't paid. They'd finish DJing at a nightclub at two, come in and present a radio programme at three, go home at five and then get up the next day to go to work. One night this guy didn't turn up, and the guy who'd been on before him had work the next day. He said: 'You'll have to go on.' So I gathered up some records, tied the bin to my arse and did it. The guy who ran the station was driving home from a gig and heard me. I'm sure he thought that there was a DJ gagged and bound behind me in the studio, but he ended up putting me on once a week."

After a time, King (the name is a legacy from the pirate days, when all DJs had secret monikers; his real name is Martin Boyle) moved on to present a show on Sunshine, a bigger and brasher pirate, filled with mid-Atlantic accents and established by former Radio Caroline DJs. "I learned so much there, but I also got some bad advice," he says. "I was told that if I wanted a career in broadcasting I needed to get rid of the accent, get rid of my friends, leave the area I lived in, and move to the southside [he's from Edenmore]. I was absolutely devastated by that. I was about 19 or 20 and quite vulnerable, and I carried that bad advice around with me. I never moved or lost my friends, but when I went to 98FM a guy there asked me why I was putting on an accent. He told me that my speaking voice was fine and to concentrate on what I was saying, not how I was saying it. So I did. The shackles of putting on this phoney mid-Atlantic accent were taken away from me and I became a better broadcaster."

In 1998, he was approached by former 98FM news man Andrew Hanlon, who was working with the fledgling TV3, who asked him whether he'd ever consider weather presenting.

"They wanted to do something different with their flagship news programme," King explains. "To try things that had been done in the American and Australian markets, but hadn't been seen here. They wanted the bottom end of the news programme to lean on the light side, with a light entertainment news anchors and a weather presenter who'd build in some light features but still be an information service. They wanted it coloured up. Or, if you like," he laughs, "dumbed down."

Initially, he turned down the offer. "But Andrew talked me round. In the first week I did a report in which I went out to meet a guy who was opening his ice cream stall for the first time, and I was wearing sunglasses and holding an ironing board. It was a bit crass, but it was just me making a positioning statement that this wasn't going to be like other weather reports.

"Then, after about a week someone contacted me to ask about the weather for someone's birthday party. I said happy birthday to them on the air and suddenly we were swamped with requests. It wasn't what we'd planned, but we went with it."

So Martin King weatherman of the people was born, conversing with his audience, sending out good wishes and good vibes, and even showcasing viewer-submitted photographs, all well before 'interactivity' became a media buzz-word. Does he ever feel too accessible? "People do feel like they can come up and talk to me when I'm out and about," he says, "The only time I mightn't want that is if I'm with my family. I mean, I might have been giving out to the kids, or receiving a telling-off from my own mother and father, and it's hard to switch from that to being Martin King off the telly."

There is a pleasing similarity between Martin King in the flesh and Martin King off the telly, however. He's warm and funny and talks excitedly of the "Brady Bunch-style" family he has with his partner Jenny, a photographer (three of the five children are from previous relationships).

He's enjoyed his time with The Midday Show in which he engages in surprisingly heated debate on the issues of the day, alongside the guests and his fellow TV3 hosts ("we've changed Cantwell's name to Rantwell!") but it's possible his new job might suit him better. In broadcasting terms, King is more of a lover than a fighter, and The Morning Show with Sybil and Martin, which he is to host alongside Xposé host Sybil Mulcahy, sounds much less adversarial.

"We'll be talking about things like parenting and relationships," he says. "They say that when poverty comes in the door, love goes out the window. Relationships are struggling. And we're conscious of all the troubles people are going through. TV3 hasn't been immune to pay-cuts and job-losses. People are losing their jobs and that unfortunate statistic means that more are watching daytime television. So we want to be as positive as we can. People are looking for inspirational television and we're hoping to offer some of that. We have a responsibility to our audience to treat them right."

And then he prepares to go collect his kids. The nine-year-old is set on an acting career, he tells me, and recently asked his teacher for a bigger part in the school play. He beams proudly at the thought. "No waiting around for a DJ not to turn up for him!"