King reigns supreme with Connemara roots!

‘Heart-warming’ is how CNN’s John King describes the outpouring of affection he’s received from these shores over the past couple of weeks, since the news network’s Chief National Correspondent confirmed that his family heritage is firmly rooted in Connemara.

While the bookies have been busy taking bets on when Joe Biden will touch down on Irish soil, anticipation has been building in Galway for the return of one of its own – the man who had the undivided attention of countless Irish households over the course of a painstaking US election count that gripped the world.

Speaking to the Connacht Tribune from his home in Washington DC this week, King says the response he’s had from Irish viewers has taken him by surprise, but provided some much-needed comic relief amid hours of gruelling live television coverage.

“It has surprised me, and some of it is my own doing, in that I responded to a ‘is John King Irish?’ Tweet. When I’m in the live TV craziness, every now and then when I have two minutes, I just look for comic relief. I was flipping through Twitter and I said ‘always’, so I decided to just type it,” he laughs.

“That’s just me trying to find 30 seconds of comic relief or normalcy or fun in the madness of the election.”

It was later that he told someone else on Twitter that ‘it all begins in Doonloughan’ starting a flurry of interest in the veteran journalist.

He has since revealed that his grandparents, Christy ‘Festy’ King and Bridget Joyce, were from North Connemara, making their respective journeys to Boston in the early 1900s.

Read the full interview with CNN’s John King in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now. Or you can download our digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie