I’m a bit like that. I’ll work very hard but at the end of the day, it should be fun, but I will take it very seriously. I think I’ve got middle child syndrome — you’re the serious one, the one that everybody depends on, so you know you have to do things well.” Retired State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy arriving to the trial of murdered schoolgirl, Ana Kriegel (Image: Collins Photo Agency) Dr Cassidy recounts many tragedies from both her time in Glasgow and in Ireland. I was familiar with many of the Irish cases, reminded of the faces we saw, of both victims and perpetrators, on our screens and newspapers at the time. There is one case that she recalls, in 1992, near Glasgow where the body of a young woman, a student, was discovered. One particular paragraph, where Dr Cassidy writes about the postmortem, carries great emotion evoking a huge sense of loss. The biggest compliment I got was people saying: 'You don't look anything like a forensic pathologist'. I'd go: 'Yes!' and 'What does a forensic pathologist look like?' People had this idea that you had to be some grumpy old man. That is just not reality. Dr Marie Cassidy is the fourth celebrity who will take to the Dancing with the Stars dancefloor on RTÉ One in January. Picture: Barry McCall, RTÉ

We meet on a sunny September Friday in London. Normally, the city would be full of traffic, noise and people but instead it's Covid-quiet. She is already waiting inside the trendy Mortimer House Kitchen in Fitzrovia, where we have arranged to have coffee. She's small in stature, immaculately dressed, and not at all as serious as you might expect of a forensic pathologist who has spent so much of her career facing death. It was only literally when I produced my book [Beyond the Tape], and they had a look at it and there was a sort of stony silence and I thought, ‘oh dear God it must have been really bad," she explained. People would come up and say: 'You are doing a great job. It is wonderful what you are doing. Thanks very much, you did the post-mortem on our Mary…' while I would be going: 'Oh my God, do I really need to hear this in Marks & Spencer?'"She became Ireland’s State Pathologist from 2004 until 2018, her image synonymous with breaking news of high-profile cases – a trusted figure in turbulent times. I was dropping big hints: 'Hello, see this little person in front of you? I'm the one who does all this, not that big, bulky man with the beard you seem to have every week on the telly.' At court, we heard the one version we had not heard before: the defendant’s. We could do no more. The jury had to decide. Gerald Barry was found guilty of the murder of Manuela Riedo. DNA at that time just wasn't quite there yet for that kind of material. It is now," she says. Cassidy cites a case she worked on in Ireland where, in 2007, five unidentified victims of the Stardust nightclub fire were finally successfully identified using DNA, some 26 years after their deaths.

Ireland's then State pathologist John Harbison got in touch with her about taking a job as his deputy, which she did in 1998. By the late 1990s, however, she had become disillusioned in Scotland. Her department was making changes and she wasn't happy with the way things were going. She never had any interest in bureaucracy; she certainly didn't want to spend all her time typing reports. It was time to move on. But that doesn't make good telly. It then became good telly once they had Silent Witness and CSI because they could make it glamorous. Suddenly forensics was becoming sexy and glamorous. I was like: 'Excuse me, I have been doing this for years …'" She investigated everything from road traffic accidents to gangland shootings but said the department started making changes and there was too much bureaucracy to keep her interested.It makes for grim though, alas, not surprising viewing. Cassidy revisits several other cases, including the 2013 murder of the mother of three Olivia Dunlea in her home in Passage West, in Co Cork. Marie Cassidy was born in Rutherglen, Glasgow, Scotland, in 1955. She is the granddaughter of emigrants from County Donegal. [2] She lives in London and is married with two children. [ citation needed]

Then there is the matter of eating after a post-mortem. "The smell clings to your hands," she says. "I remember being in Bosnia and we found a McDonald's in Sarajevo. We were eating hamburgers with a knife and fork because if you put your hand up to your mouth, you would have gagged." Cassidy dealt with her share of murder victims – mainly stabbings. Weapons ranged from a seemingly innocuous pencil to ornamental samurai swords (the latter, she says, were "a common feature on living room walls in 1980s Glasgow"). About your husband – you say he can get irritated about your cavalier attitude to your safety (in particular when you went to war torn Sierra Leone to work) – is there something in you that likes life on the edge? She has acted as a consultant to the television crime series Taggart. She also advised Irish crime writer Alex Barclay.Everybody was saying I’d be demented with boredom so I made a plan and decided that I was going to treat the first year like a gap year. So we moved house, I wrote the book, and I decided I’d start getting fit and looking after myself. Coming towards the end of the year I thought, “Okay, I’ve had the gap year, what am I doing next year?” And then the pandemic hit! I was quite delighted! I must be the only person in the world who is quite delighted that we can’t go anywhere! There are two old dears living next to us who are in their 80s and they are obviously shielding and they’re saying to me, “Why are you shielding? You don’t need to!” And I’m like, “I know, I know, but I just think it’s best for everyone!”[laughs] Pic: Lili Forberg for VIP Magazine