While she is currently working with East Coast FM, Nikki Hayes is likely best known for her long stint at 2FM in the early 2000’s.

After disappearing from the spotlight for a period of a few years, she recaptured public attention in 2023 when she appeared before the courts on charges of money laundering.

The case against her was dismissed on the grounds that the former DJ was a victim in the crime as much as a perpetrator, and that she had since turned her life around from the circumstances that led to her involvement.

Nikki Hayes pleaded guilty to possessing €10,000 as the proceeds of crime in a Permanent TSB bank account within the State on November 5, 2020. Photo: Collins Courts via the Irish Examiner.

In an interview with the Sunday Independent, Nikki Hayes, whose real name is Eimear O’Keefe, told of her lifelong struggles with addiction and the agonising journey up from rock bottom.

“I realized that I probably was born an addict,” she told The Anton Savage Show.

Ms Hayes said that while she began drinking as young as 11, the habit began to spiral out of control during the pandemic, when she was working for Classic Hits Radio.

"It would have been drinking till like 7, 8 in the morning; and then at the time we were in COVID, so I was broadcasting from home,” she said.

“I would be recording at maybe 11 o'clock in the morning, so clearly the effects were still there.

“I remember Andy, the PD at the time saying to me, ‘Are you all right, love?’ Because you could hear I sounded quite sleepy.

“I blamed it on sleep medication that I was on, which it wasn't, it probably was a combination of both."

'Immense guilt'

Ms Hayes went onto lose her job, her home, and contact with most of her friends and family before her sister convinced her to seek help through the charity Tiglin.

Now sober for eighteen months and one week, she said she still carries “immense guilt” in relation to her daughter Farah, who lived with her father during the height of her mother’s addiction.

“Even if I if think of her now, I feel like I'm going I'm going to start crying,” she said.

"She is the most important thing to me.

“I let her down in the most phenomenal, substantial way.”

According to Ms Hayes, her sobriety is “everything” to her these days.

Main image: Nikki Hayes (L) in the Newstalk studio with Anton Savage (R).