THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW- RYAN TUBRIDYsuggests we meet at a five-star hotel in Stillorgan, just up the road from RTÉ. Inside, the lounge is busy with business types and groups of women, catching up over €4 euro pots of tea, writes SHANE HEGARTY
The room is dominated by a large, blazing fireplace that is carefully scattered with Christmas decorations. It appears oddly artificial, like the studio set of a seasonal television special. Or like the cover of the Christmas edition of the RTÉ Guide, on which Tubridy was among those pictured in a kitsch 1950s set-up, yet looked more natural than anyone else in it.
He has texted ahead to say he's running late, "but I will be there". He has presented that morning's radio programme from Roundwood, Co Wicklow, doing it with a giddiness that always seems to grab him when his show hits the road. Once he's ticked this interview off his to-do list he will go to see his daughter in the school nativity play. He has wavered a little on the exact time that it starts, maybe giving himself an exit strategy from the interview, should he want it.
He arrives, very apologetic about the delay. We agree to have the pictures taken first. "The show was great this morning, Ryan," a woman shouts to him as we pass her in the corridor. "We had great fun. I'm so glad you liked it," he replies, deploying a grin while walking sidewards without breaking stride. It's a politician's trick, giving someone a moment without letting them take up his day. He's clearly a master at it, lessons perhaps learnt from a couple of years of pressing the flesh at the Rose of Tralee or from a political family (his mother is of the Fianna Fáil Andrews). Or maybe from how popping to the shops can mean several such encounters.
Except from teenage boys, who he good-humouredly calls "baboons" due to their general demeanour. From way off, he'll spot them, loose-limbed, excitable, gathered outside a shop, nudging, egging each other on ("Tell him he's shite"). Until eventually, once he's 10 yards passed them, one of them will yell after him, "Tubridy, you're shite!"
We find a private lounge for the interview, because in the tearoom some of the patrons would be too close to resist earwigging. And people will earwig. There is currently something of an appetite for his personal life, as there has been in the three years since the break-up of his marriage to RTE producer Anne Marie Power, with whom he has two daughters. His dates currently make national news. Occasionally, he hasn't helped himself, such as a recent "I love a girl who appreciates darkness" cover interview in the RTÉ Guide, for which he got an awful slagging.
"There have been two articles in the last 10 days saying Let's Find Ryan a Wife, one naming five girls, and marks out of 10 for suitability. Mad! That I laugh at, it's pure comedy." He tried to deliver a punchline himself when he asked a young model to accompany him to the Bond movie premiere in October, partly because they both agreed that her name, Laura Toogood, was to apt to resist.
It was a one-off, and he remains single, but he admits that he was also "curious to see what the reaction would be if I brought someone to something. And the reaction was, in my world, very large and interesting to see." She ended up being profiled in a national newspaper. "As an exercise in journalism-watching, I was quite taken aback that they were dying to know who was that and who is he going out with. I didn't know there was so much interest, that it was intense." He insists it was not a PR stunt; that there would be nothing for him to gain through that.
At the very least, though, it proved that his arm will offer a publicity boost to any ambitious young woman who attaches herself to it. "Well, now I know. Now I know what happens when I go somewhere with somebody. I never knew, because I never did it. If anyone benefits from being seen with me, well done to them, I can't help it," he says. "There is great naivety on my part I have to say. I mean I always say I am in a constant state of learning, but still I keep going.
"But if it was somebody else in the future, if I was to see somebody — and I very much hope to go out with somebody at some point — I would be careful because somebody else would be less able for it. And it would require more commitment, because if you're seen with somebody you don't want to play games with them or hurt them. And this weight of expectation on you, people are following you and your relationship asking 'well how's it going now, is it still there?'"
He pauses just a beat. "Do people really give a damn about this? Do they really though?" Here's the thing: they do. Almost everyone who knew I was interviewing Tubridy asked one thing: "Are you going to ask him about the marriage break-up?" He levitates a little out of exasperation. "Why? It's three years ago. Three years ago." For the usual reasons that the Irish love rummaging through the lives of others.
"I would challenge anyone to talk to their brother or sister or auntie or uncle or anyone who had been through a marital break-up and ask them how easy it was for them to discuss it with anyone. And then ask them how easy it might be to discuss it in a public form. Or to have it discussed. It's like a violation. It's such an intensely private scenario, and a very painful scenario and one that's nobody's business. But people still talk about it and they still add it as a tabloid line on top an article and it's a pity because it's private. Some things have to be off limits, some things have to be out of bounds and that's one."
We immediately reach the out of bounds marker when I ask him if any of his family first learned of the break-up through the newspapers. "That's too personal," he says, firmly but not angrily. "That's what I mean. The point I'm making is that I've never discussed it at any great length because it's not fair, there are other people involved, children and other people. It's not fair of me to discuss such a deeply intimate matter in the newspapers.
"And I hope that even by talking about it, it doesn't sound like I'm talking about it, if you know what I mean. That's behind a door. And I think it does come down to gossip, it does come down to squinting windows. People want to know more. My private life should be just that in some respects. And what I do is I present a TV show and a radio show. They're good, I enjoy doing that; I hope they're ok. Why do you want to come into the dressing room?"
It wasn't so long ago that the press focus was almost solely on his professional life. His had been a rapid rise; within 10 years he went from being Gerry Ryan's teaboy to having a daily Radio One show, a Saturday night chat show and a couple of years doing the Rose of Tralee under his cummerbund.
The step up proved painful, with criticism of his radio show coming even from Gay Byrne. Tubridy gets less stick now, growing his radio ratings as his competitors begin to leak a little, and on recent Saturday nights his TV show has battled gamely against the rating beast that has been the X Factor. "We had to run to stand still," he says. He still had half a million viewers each week.
He's not one of them; can seldom bring himself to watch it. "I sometimes get embarrassed. For me." His brother recently announced that he can finally watch him now after five years of glimpsing it through his fingers. "He said, 'You were too odd, too weird, you weren't great'. Which is bizarre, because you have half a million people watching you, if you're lucky, and all it takes is one to give you that little boost."
But there must be vanity, otherwise he wouldn't be in the job. "Absolutely. And ego. You have to think you're pretty cool, which is pathetic. I don't know, my feeling is this is all I can do. This is probably the only thing in the world that I'm halfway good at. I'm pretty bad in every facet of my life. I'm a pretty bad human being."
Does he mean he's a bad person or just not very good at doing things that most humans can do? "I think I've got more flaws than the average fellow. I think that I'm bad at fixing things in the house. I'm not great at paying bills. I'm bad at keeping an eye at myself. I'm bad at all these mundane elements of my life. And in other elements of it I'm pretty shoddy too. And when I'm in the radio or TV studio I just think I'm really happy and comfortable. In that red-lit moment of live, no one can get you. You are the beast and no one has a key to that cage. You're untouchable by people and life. And I like that, it's like scoring a goal. It's a very strange feeling."
If he could eliminate one flaw as a radio presenter, he says it would be to stop saying things that he believes are funny but nobody else does. It gives him "out-of-body" moments in the studio, when he looks at himself and thinks "what a tosspot". He has corrected other flaws, his biggest lesson being that the "conversation you have in the pub or at the breakfast table or in the back of a taxi is utterly allowed on radio or television, because that's human speak".
Occasional lunches with Gay Byrne, Gerry Ryan and Harry Crosbie act as extra-curricular lessons in life and broadcasting. "Gerry, Harry and Gay have what they call the grumpy men lunch and they invited me as an honorary grump. And we get on well. There is no initiation ceremony other than to come, drink a glass of wine and talk complete nonsense. But it's lovely because it's essentially three generations of broadcasters, and Harry is the arbiter, he's like Hans Blix coming into investigate the whole mess. And it's just three guys shooting the breeze, no shyness and very honest and everything comes out, whether it's about broadcasting, whether it's about private life. Everything is up for grabs."
Among the more valuable lessons was one delivered by Byrne after Tubridy told him how Christmas of 2007 had been a "pretty, pretty sad time", when he was alone, away from work, and with too much thinking time available. Byrne told him how, at the end of each Late Late Show season, his wife Kathleen would send him out for a few days of walking to get it out of his system.
"Gay said, when the lights go off and all that clapping and attention and your ego and everything stops and suddenly you're at home, in my case home alone, it's very quiet and very eerie and you've suddenly gone from full-on assault on the senses to thinking time. And thinking time isn't good if you're on your own, thinking about stuff."
Expect the comedown, Byrne told him, and manage it. "Because I worry about it, I worry about my children and their happiness and making sure everything is in order in the world. And their happiness is paramount."
Since turning 35 last May, he has undergone a bit of a reassessment. It wasn't anything as intense as an epiphany, but a "gentle realisation" that certain things don't matter. "Health matters. Beauty doesn't matter in physical terms, intellect matters. It's more interesting. Good conversation. Going for pints with your brothers. Being nice to your mother and sisters. Doing favours. Hugging your kids a bit closer if you've had a long day."
Is his self-awareness a sign of confidence born of experience? "Yes. When my private life became of great interest to people three years ago, it shook me to the core, and my confidence was rattled and it took a huge amount of puffing up my chest in the morning to get out there and do the chat show and everything. And I hid behind personas and all that, and it did me a favour, it was a help. But the confidence I have now is more natural, it's not being driven by an emotional vulnerability, it's being driven by an enjoyment of life."
He thinks it may have something to do with no longer being the new guy, with all that golden boy stuff attached to it. Certainly, in the seven years since I last interviewed him, there is less of the giddy ambition, the bouncy gait of a young man heading off on a big adventure. He is more introspective, and clearly more experienced. He still talks a lot, in an articulate but slightly breathless fashion, but he is more calculated, perhaps more tactical than before. He is more serious. And there is a toughness, although it coats a definite vulnerability.
Good ratings have helped the confidence, as has a new three-year contract. How much he'll earn he won't say, but it'll be public in a couple of years anyway (for the record, he earned €346,667 in 2006). He'd prefer it wasn't, but what can he do? It's public money. Was there pressure to take a pay cut given RTÉ's straitened circumstances? "No. I think the 3 per cent levy is enough, my contribution to the Government."
TUBRIDY SAYS HE LOVES IT IN RTÉ, and is working on a couple of projects that he hopes will stave off a tendency to get bored easily. He wonders if a growing exhaustion from working six-day weeks will gnaw at him, but says that high ratings prove there's room for two weekend chat shows.
He insists there was no tweak of envy when Gerry Ryan stood in for Pat Kenny on the Late Late Show, because he knew his Saturday night show ruled him out of the job anyway. He won't pretend that the Late Late Show doesn't play on his mind, but says that right now he'd be happy if he could take his show to Fridays and see the Late Late given to a "deserving host on a Saturday night, someone who isn't presenting a radio show five days a week".
The recent appointment of Claire Duignan as head of radio in RTÉ is welcome he says, and guesses a shake-up will come to the schedules. On a career level, it's his one wish for 2009, because the one-hour slot is chafing. "Did you ever get a duvet and give it a good rattle and then it feels really nice when you put it down? I want that slightly with my career.
"I want those, what do you call it, the jumpleads to kind of go: come on, here we go again. In radio terms I'd like more time, to allow for more fluidity, because I just feel the show keeps ending abruptly, I keep feeling I'm ending in the middle of a sentence." That, he clarifies, is meant as a metaphor.
"I'd like to breathe please. For ages I used to think an hour was enough, the show wasn't formed yet. But I do believe we're formed, nearly formed, and with that in mind I think it's time to flex it a bit."
And on a personal level, what is his one wish for 2009? "I would like if my private life becomes a bit more private."