"I hated computer programming. We had a short placement at the end of the course and we had to look for a placement. Everyone was going to Digital and Thermo King and big factories where they thought they would get employment, but I went to the Connacht Tribune. I went to the late John O'Donnell, who was the Production Manager there and, although he told me they didn't need a computer programmer, he took me in and gave me a placement when I said I wanted to get into journalism. I owe that man a lot.

"I would have found it much more difficult to get into it otherwise. I got two or three articles published in the paper and then I worked for The Word, a freesheet entertainment paper, doing music reviews."

After a couple of years spent teaching English in Spain, Conor returned to Galway to do the postgrad in Journalism at UCG.

His placement for that course was also spent in the Connacht Tribune, this time in the newsroom. He later freelanced for the paper, while also teaching English.

"In 1996, I started in the Irish Times. Four of us were taken on in the same day to work on this new site, and none of us had a clue!" The Irish Times was the first newspaper in Britain or Ireland to have a website, and today Ireland.com has become one of the country's most-visited sites.

Since then Conor has become Acting Editor of the site, and has also become well known as the person behind Pricewatch, the Irish Times' consumer affairs page on a Monday.

"Pricewatch started as a very small thing. I was asked by the features editor to review some products, very simple ones, things like orange juice and sausages, for a few weeks. Then I was asked if I would deal with readers' queries, and now it's a full page in the paper."

As well as this, Pricewatch has become a regular slot on Today FM's Ray D'Arcy Show, and has lead to Conor appearing on the TV show ‘Highly Recommended'.

"TV is the least glamorous thing ever; it's a lot of standing around, waiting and being bored. It's bizarre really how many people want to get into it," he says.

Of the future, Conor says he would love to move back to Galway.

"I have a 16-month-old daughter and Galway is a great place to grow up and a great place to bring up kids.

"There's none of that nonsense about private schools that you have in other parts of the country, there's the prom, town is easy to navigate, and you're so close to Spiddal and Clifden."

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