Bibi Baskin

Olive "Bibi" Baskin is a former RTÉ presenter, experienced in TV and radio. She has also been a magazine and newspaper journalist and writer. She is now running a heritage guest house and hotel in Alleppey, Kerala, India.

She left RTÉ in the 1990s. Several years ago she headed to West Sussex, England where she stayed for five years working on 403 different projects and, while contemplating her next move, decided to write a diary.

She always had an interest in Ayurvedic medicine and massage, and when a friend invited her to join him on a trip to Kerala she happily went along. She found a property overlooking a beautiful sandy beach whose house had been built in 1868 and was inhabited for over one hundred years by an Indian family called the Raheems.

She now runs it as a thriving hotel business and has installed a fifteen meter swimming pool on the grounds. She reportedly plans to introduce Ayurvedic massage to Ireland and also to promote Indian cooking.

She likes living in Kerala because it has many 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, as she explained in an interview with Hello! magazine.

She is fluent in Irish and worked as a teacher of the language at the beginning of her career.

She is currently one of the judges on RTÉ programme Fáilte Towers

Links

• Kerala Holidays