RTÉ PRESENTER RYAN Tubridy has spoken about his experience having Covid-19, saying that he was “very, very fortunate” in that he just had a “persistent cough”.

Tubridy, who is 46 years old, confirmed last week that he had tested positive for the virus. 

Oliver Callan stood in as host for The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio 1, while Miriam O’Callaghan presented the last two episodes of The Late Late Show. 

Returning to present his Radio 1 show for the first time since being diagnosed with the virus, Tubridy said he was “very, very fortunate”. 

“I should fill you in on that good fortune just briefly, and it’s not to gloat or anything like that. It wasn’t a particularly lovely thing to experience but I was very fortunate in the sense that I had this persistent cough,” Tubridy said. 

He added that he didn’t experience a fever or have any other symptoms. 

Tubridy said taking a couple of weeks to rest “was a really very, very good thing to do” and that he feels “on top of the world” today. 

[I'm] very healthy, very grateful and quite humbled by what happened, actually. When you’re told that your test has come back positive you think about a lot of things … you do reflect.

“I’ve thought about a lot of things, I thought about life, you reflect and you’ve time and you think about people who you love and loved and you think about how grateful you are for the great things that happen in life.”

Tubridy added that he is “thinking about all the people who are missing their parents and missing their grandparents because it’s not easy”. 

“It’s not easy to not be able to see them and hold them and touch them,” he said. 

Tubridy also noted that some people may be finding the current situation difficult. 

“The numbers of people that have died in the last couple of weeks are quite shocking and going through that is not easy at all, and not being able to go to a funeral is not easy at all, and losing your job, and being one of maybe 700,000 people who didn’t want to be taking a payment from the government but have to is not an easy thing to do,” he said. 

But I will say that in the middle of it all, watching from afar, there’s fierce goodness about the place. There’s a wonderful sense of commitment and patriotism out there. 

“I support the key is to overcome all of those difficulties which we will do together and it just requires a lot of kindness and a lot of patience and a lot of optimism.”