Stephen Byrne: 'I never opened my Leaving Cert results when I got them, I ran home and put them in a shredder'

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A still of Stephen with his parents from his upcoming documentary.
A still of Stephen with his parents from his upcoming documentary.
Image: Stephen Byrne
Stephen Byrne: 'I never opened my Leaving Cert results when I got them, I ran home and put them in a shredder'
RTÉ presenter Stephen Byrne is currently resitting his Leaving Cert exams as part of a new documentary.
Fri 3:08 PM 27,861 17

BACK IN AUGUST 2009, Stephen Byrne had just started his career in RTÉ as a presenter when he ran home with his Leaving Certificate results and put them in a shredder.

He never read them. Byrne didn’t want to see how he had done. He says now that he had a really difficult time during his Leaving Cert, balancing a new job with study and coming to terms with his sexuality.

”[Working at RTE] was everything I wanted. I was a YouTuber before that but it was a big decision for my parents to allow me to work because they were very much focused on academia.

”Also I was dealing with so much in the sense that being in RTÉ, being in school, being on a football team, I hadn’t accepted my sexuality and I was in a relationship with a girl at that time as well. So that was weighing heavy on me.

”The Leaving Cert became secondary to everything else and a very negative weight on my shoulders so I just always felt that I had to go back.”

Byrne is best known for presenting TwoTube on RTÉ 2 and for his radio show on RTÉ 2FM every Saturday and Sunday.

Byrne is currently resitting his Leaving Cert and has reordered a copy of his results from 2009, which he plans to open alongside his new results this August as part of the documentary he is making about the experience.

Resitting the Leaving Cert was always something that Stephen had planned to do but never knew when the time would be right.

”I went to RTÉ and said, ‘look, I’m willing to do this to take a look at the system from the inside to see how much pressure we put on young people.”’

When the project got the green light Stephen began night classes but had to return to his local school – which he had left when he felt he was unable to come out – for the supplementary parts of the exams.

”Any projects and orals were done back in my old school, Clonkeen College in Deansgrange, so I was always among students.

”It’s funny when you go back and integrate yourself. You slowly regress back to who you were and start to worry about whether people like you or not or whether you’re cool.