Spin doctor

Paul McLoone has his own radio show – and no one's more surprised than he is. Happy to stay in the backroom with his production hat on, presenting his own show was never part of the plan ... until Tom Dunne left, he tells JIM CARROLL.

THE WAY Paul McLoone tells it, he’s the accidental radio show DJ. Sure, he had some form in this department before Today FM gave him custody of their early evening weekday show. There were a couple of outings “doing sketches and funny voices” on BBC Radio Foyle. A couple of music specials. Another stint “writing sketches and, yes, doing funny voices on the radio again” when he was producing Ian Dempsey’s breakfast show on Today FM.

But a full-time gig on the business side of the microphone? Nah, he reasoned to himself, not for him. He was happy to stay in the background as a producer.

“I genuinely believed that I was better at influencing presenters and as a sounding-board than trying to do it myself,” says McLoone. “I was quite good at asking questions and guiding ideas. Some would say that I was just annoying. Radio producing is a good place to be when you’re a mildly irritating person.”

After stints in one band (The Carolines) and co-managing another (Schtum – “they were halfway across America in a very nice spacious RV when they decided that they hated each other and didn’t want to do it any more”), he became a producer for hire. He “ferreted away with the Beeb” in Northern Ireland before coming south to spend five years getting up early to work with Dempsey.

After five years, though, the late nights and early mornings took their toll and McLoone went freelance. He worked with RTÉ Radio One ("I worked on Liveline, believe it or not") and 2FM – and was also busy as the singer with The Undertones.

Then, out of the blue, Today FM’s Tom Dunne called. “It was late 2005 or early 2006 and he wanted me to have a go with his show. It was meant to be a temporary thing. I came in and did the job a producer is supposed to do, saying you have to get rid of this and do more of that.” McLoone felt there was far too much non-music content on the show. “They were trying to inject funny stuff, side-kickery and talky content and I thought the audience was thinking ‘mmm, I just wish he’d play a record’. I went down the road of steadily bringing it back to just Tom and the music.

“As we set about this, Tom immediately set about turning me into his sidekick and that wasn’t the plan. I resisted, but it kept happening. It wasn’t necessarily the show I wanted him to be doing, but it was closer to it than it had been.”

McLoone admits the show did lose its way. “Musically, there was a certain lack of adventurousness in it. We were both guilty of that because we were both conscious of stemming a certain ebb that had set in which, yeah, pushed us towards the play safe option. Having said that, Tom’s enthusiasm for the show was on the wane and his departure to Newstalk was no surprise to me.”

After Dunne left, McLoone had a few options: he could hang around to see who took over or he could take over himself. “I had a bolt from the blue and decided I was going to have a go at this and see if I could run with it. I went to Today FM and asked could I have a crack at it and they said yes.”

These days, McLoone is the one deciding what to play and dictating the direction of the show. “There is a certain sense of being liberated because you’re not the guy having a go at the presenter for not playing this or not listening to that,” he says.

“You’re in the driving seat and, rightly or wrongly, you’re the one making such decisions as we should play more album tracks, we should broaden the agenda a wee bit to be more adventurous, we should not rely so much on the Radioheads and Stone Roses and we should definitely play more new stuff. I’ve developed a certain greed that I don’t want to go back to arguing the toss with some presenter. Now, I get to make my own mistakes.”

He’s particularly excited about how his job now involves coming across great new music on a regular basis. “I’m trying to play new music. I hate the term ‘cutting-edge’ because it’s such a bollocks term, but we are trying to be slightly ahead of the curve and the show has reawakened that thrill in me of discovering something new and exciting, like that School of Seven Bells album.

“Those moments are rare in everyday life because of the stuff you have to do to keep your head above water. But when you’re lucky enough to be in the position I’m in, those moments come more often because you’re exposing yourself to more new music. I try to listen to everything that comes in and get an idea if it will work or not.”

While he spends his afternoons listening to CD after CD after CD, McLoone thinks about who might be tuning into the show and what they’re after.

“I know that some of my listeners are not in the first flush of youth. It’s me when I was any age between 17 and 28 or 29, just before the crushing realities of life squeeze the passion for music out of you (laughs).

“It’s someone who knows about music, is enthusiastic about music, to whom music is important and that’s not pretentious. You’ll have a record collection and you’ll have some sort of discernment about what’s good. There is a space in their life which is just for music. I was very much like that and I think my audience, by and large, are the same.”

Paul McLoone’s show is broadcast on Today FM, Mondays to Thursdays from 7pm to 10pm www.todayfm.com