When interviewing a radio personality about her choice of attire, there’s one question that just has to be asked: ever gone to work in your jammies?

“I have actually,” 2FM’s Nikki Hayes confesses. “It was when I was covering the breakfast show. I woke up an hour before I was due to go on, and on a good day it takes me an hour and a half to get there, so as you can imagine I couldn’t think about what top would go with what bottoms – I just jumped out of bed, got my keys and left!”
Rest assured, she’ll be better dressed for the PPI Awards (Irish radio’s answer to the Oscars) which takes place this Friday. For the event, she’s planned an outfit which includes a pair of Jimmy Choos (“I bought them in May for €700, and they haven’t even left the box”) and a rather fabulous dress, too.
“I bought the dress in a little boutique in Wexford called Jolie. I went out of my way to get it from there because a lot of radio stations are in Dublin, and I would die if someone was wearing the same thing or something similar. I’d actually get so self-conscious I’d go home and get changed.”
Rest assured, she’ll have plenty of options to choose from, for Ms Hayes is a self-confessed shopaholic. She admits to spending 90% of her wages in Dundrum Shopping Centre, but there’s a strong possibility that the other 10% is spent lining the pockets of retail managers elsewhere.
“When I go home to Waterford, I don’t pack properly on purpose. That way, if I go out, I get to buy a whole new outfit – shoes, dress, bag, and even the coat sometimes.”
As any fashion conscious girl worth her own Prada purse will empathise with, she has a particular weakness for shoes.
“I’ve got hundreds. There’s a whole area in my house which is just full of boxes of shoes. I’m a real girly-girl when it comes to shoes. I’ve got Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos, all the designer stuff. And I’ve got so many knee-high boots, it’s just crazy,” she admits.
Fear ye not – despite having a tendency to glam it up, and a rather large collection of shoes, she’s far from a dolly girl. During the day, it’s all about comfort. She finds wrap dresses “particuarly helpful in hiding lumps and bumps, and making cleavage where previously there was no cleavage”.
Yet she still wears the foot-torture known as high-heels with the comfy outfits, simply because she’s adjusted to it.
“When I go for walks with the dog, I find my calves actually hurt in runners, which means I’ve obviously done damage to my legs from wearing heels constantly.”
Plus it’s not meant to be good for your spine.
“Ah but sure, you can be knocked down by a bus tomorrow. I look at it that way.”
Now there’s a lady dedicated to the cause.

Nikki Hayes is on the air Monday to Friday, midday to 2pm.