Athlone man set to be be guest on Saturday's Ray D'Arcy Show

Athlone jockey Paddy Merrigan is due to be a guest on The Ray D’Arcy Show on RTE on Saturday night ahead of a TG4 programme on his story next week.

Merrigan is one of the guests on with D'Arcy on Saturday night, joining comedians PJ Gallagher and Katherine Lynch, This Morning's Alison Hammond, singer Brian Kennedy and Andrew Maxwell in a busy show.
On Wednesday night, on TG4, Merrigan will feature on the latest episode of the the award-winning Finné documentary series. 
On the documentary, Merrigan chronicles how he struggled with his mental health, his meteoric rise to fame as a jockey and his subsequent difficulties with the sport. 
Speaking to the Westmeath Independent recently, Merrigan said of the documentary: “I left myself vulnerable in this. I talked about my beliefs as being one of the best jockeys in the world. I talked about the worst day of my life. I talked about all the drugs I took. I talk about suicide, I talk about depression, I talk about the day I was going to kill myself. It has it all.”
Having made a big name for himself on the Irish and British National Hunt scene in his late teens and early 20s, Merrigan quit the sport in 2010 and in late 2018 found himself weighing 16 stone and struggling with his mental health.
It prompted a remarkable comeback to the sport that he is chronicling on a Facebook page 'Mad Merrigan'.
The programme will be shown on TG4 at 9.30pm on October 23.
This season of the Finné documentary series opened recently with the remarkable story of Mayo native Sophia Murphy's triumph over adversity as she came to terms with her father’s conviction in 2018 for her sexual abuse from the age of three.