Bibi Baskin

Who is Bibi Baskin?

Olive "Bibi" Baskin is a former television and radio presenter for Raidió Teilifís Éireann. She is "RTÉ's legendary redhead". She has also been a magazine and newspaper writer and journalist.

Baskin left RTÉ in the 1990s, after which she headed to West Sussex, England, where she stayed for five years working on different projects and, while contemplating her next move, decided to write a book. A practitioner and advocate of Ayurvedic healing medicine and therapies, she visited India with a friend, and discovered a property in Kerala, which had been built in 1868 and inhabited for more than a century by the Raheem family, which she turned into a heritage guest house and hotel. Baskin has cited the diversity of Kerala with its different castes and communities, including Hindus, Christians and Jews, unlike her native Ardara, County Donegal, where, as a member of the religious minority, she experienced intense isolation, before attending a boarding school in Dublin.

Baskin is fluent in Irish and worked as a teacher of the language at the beginning of her career. She served as one of the judges on the 2008 RTÉ television programme, Fáilte Towers. She is a supporter of Plan Ireland, a national millennium development charity.