Profile: He is already a familiar face from our TV screens and a reassuring voice on the radio, but the launch of his new afternoon radio show will be a big step up for Derek Mooney, writes Kate Holmquist
With the exception of Liveline, where the whinge-fest is occasionally entertaining, afternoons on RTÉ Radio 1 have been in a slump for a long time. So the challenge was to bring in something invigorating, provocative and amusing to tempt the awkward mix of people who listen to radio in the afternoons, mainly housewives, retired people and commuters. To introduce something that would tempt people away from TV, the shopping, the children and the fresh air of living and make them listen to the radio.
But when RTÉ's radio chief Ana Leddy announced that Derek Mooney was to become Radio 1's newest star with Afternoon Ireland, his own Monday to Friday afternoon slot, starting next week, there were a few gasps of surprise in RTÉ. His friends say, though, that the only person who was truly shocked was 39-year-old Mooney himself. He couldn't quite believe it, even though the rather bland golden boy had been working towards this day since he was a teenager.
A lover of nature and the eccentric naturalists whom he has featured on his successful Saturday morning radio show, he is the same Derek Mooney who presided over the reality TV series Cabin Fever in 2003. He was apparently determined that none of the contestants would be embarrassed when, actually, that might have been the whole point. He managed to turn walking the plank into a scene with the excitement of a needlepoint class.
A true radio swot, who fell in love with the medium when so many others of his generation were emigrating, Mooney's first appearance on RTÉ TV was as an 18-year-old with an appearance on Anything Goes, a young people's TV programme devised and produced by Aonghus McAnally.
Two decades later, it is McAnally who is producing Mooney's venture into the big time - 10 hours per week of radio. The fact that McAnally - a friend of Mooney's for the past 20 years - is producing the programme says something about Mooney. He's a one-man band, used to both producing and presenting his previous programme, Mooney Goes Wild. He's a private person with few friends in RTÉ aside from the trusted circle he works with directly. Outside that circle, people know him to see but few seem to really know him.
The greatest challenge for Mooney will be the experience of being produced by someone else. This could be messy. Mooney is used to controlling completely the content of Mooney Goes Wild, the Saturday morning RTÉ Radio 1 nature programme that is now moving to Friday afternoons as part of Afternoon Ireland. Most recent figures show that Mooney Goes Wild was listened to by 269,000 adults, gaining 12,000 listeners last year at a time when some bigger names lost ground.
But the shift from Saturday mornings to weekday afternoons is a big leap that will have to be filled with more than jackdaws, corncrakes and the strange habits of domestic pets.
Mooney's education in media and broadcasting was self-motivated. Not for him the degree courses in media and journalism. In his early 20s, he began by working as a "runner", the lowest rung of the broadcasting ladder, doing everything and anything in order to learn the business from the ground up.
The result is that he developed instincts that are among the best in the business, say his admirers.
Despite his ambition he comes across on air as having no ego to satisfy and always puts his guests centre stage. He is willing to allow a panellist or contributor to express themselves naturally, even if this means straying from the brief on to a tangent that listeners sense is spontaneous. This makes for good radio, but the new show has 10 hours of air-time to fill, peppered with news and traffic updates and a producer guiding the pace of the show. Mooney will have to rein his instincts in a little, while keeping that inoffensive boyish curiosity and spontaneity that Leddy seems to think the Irish public can't get enough of.
There's no doubt that Mooney has been genuinely dedicated to wildlife and the preservation of the Irish countryside - although he has steadfastly refused to preach or take stands on issues. This makes him the opposite of pundits such as Gerry Ryan, Pat Kenny and presenters on Newstalk, which went national yesterday.
The only thing that Mooney is known to ever have had a strong opinion on is the bad service given in exchange for bin charges in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council. This lack of vigour could make for some dead air. His reluctance to get involved in the harder environmental issues, such as planning, is due partly to his belief that politics is boring. He also believes that there is nothing to be gained by getting involved in rows over the impact of roads and development on the natural environment until the public comprehends the more fundamental issue of what it is that they should protect.
FAIR ENOUGH, BUT as much as the Irish public fell in love with the dawn chorus, it will be interesting to see how much patience they have with Mooney as he attempts to come to grips with a far wider range of human interest stories. Covering these, he will succeed if he uses the same inquiring approach he did to the niche subject of nature, although his trainspotter tendency to focus on odd little details may not appeal to those who don't share his approach. His researchers are working overtime to provide him with eccentrics, but Ireland may not have as many as Mooney hopes if he's to keep his show quirky enough to provide the unexpected, rather than the predictable, homogeneous mix we're used to in radioland.
His niche area helped him win two prestigious prizes - first prize at the Prix Europa Radio and TV Awards and the ESB Millennium Environment Award, both for nature programmes. And, to his credit, he has worked overtime to build up his profile. He has developed his nature platform in RTÉ like no other broadcaster, investing hundreds of hours in the Mooney Goes Wild website, for example, which he used to gain listener loyalty. But if those same Saturday morning listeners are at work or at school Monday to Friday, Mooney will have an uphill battle to win over ordinary folk who aren't already fans.
Although his lack of oomph hasn't prevented him from promoting RTÉ Radio 1 with an enthusiasm that few others have for the station, as listeners turn to local radio. When Mooney conceived the idea of distributing a CD of the dawn chorus with the RTÉ Guide, 140,000 copies of the magazine sold out. Mooney has coupled this with visits to schools, where he takes his role as an environmental educator seriously - building up his image in the process.
He seems to get on with people of whatever age and is never annoyed by being asked for an autograph or picture. On Winning Streak, the audience is seen to adore his bright, breezy manner and he has a knack for connecting with the over-60s, a talent that could pay off with his afternoon target audience.
BUT THE QUESTION remains, how many more bland golden boy presenters is RTÉ going to unleash on us before it gets the message that two hours of music and "magazine" items in the afternoon, aimed at a wide audience, may be too ill-defined to come across as anything more than aural porridge with perhaps a few raisins thrown in? Mooney's advocates say that he should succeed if he uses the same thoughtful, inquiring, whimsical and light-hearted approach to human subjects as he has to animal ones.
His friends don't doubt that he's up to the job, but when pressed on who Mooney is as a private person, they are more reluctant. It's not that he has anything to hide, but he appears to be so obsessed with radio that it's hard to get him to talk about anything else. What you see is what you get, they say. He likes to travel at the spur of the moment, loves to eat out (the Trocadero is his favourite restaurant) and that's pretty much it.
He's the sort of friend, one female colleague said, who will ring you up for a chat and if he finds out you're stuck at home with your young children and feeling fed up, he will get in his Audi saloon and drive a long distance to pick you up and take you out to dinner. He's the type, says another, who sends you flowers to congratulate you on a new job.
There's a quality to him that makes him as interested in getting precisely right the ingredients and cooking methods for a chicken dinner at home, as he would be for briefing himself on the garden snail for a radio programme.
And he's not a gossip. Eating out with friends is his thing, but if the conversation strays to hearsay about other people, he'll stop the talk cold by saying, "Actually, that person is a friend of mine." This loyalty could be one reason why, when he was "outed" by Des Bishop on Ray D'Arcy's Today FM show, his friends, colleagues and acquaintances rallied around. He was a bit upset at first, mostly for his parents, but soon decided that the best answer to the question, "So you're gay?" was "So what?" Those who know him say, however, that he's taking his new programme very seriously and is the least likely person to say "so what?" if it doesn't succeed.
On the other hand, if he's not happy doing it, he'll quit. His philosophy of life seems to be "If it doesn't make you happy, what's the point?" His radio listeners will surely be thinking the same, as their hands hover over that dial.
The Mooney File
Who is he?
Presenter of new RTÉ Radio 1 magazine programme, Afternoon Ireland, Monday to Friday, 3-5pm
Why is he in the news?
RTE Radio 1's great hope for boosting afternoon audiences, which were dwindling on a diet of Rattlebag and John Creedon.
Most appealing characteristic
Loves animals and nature
Least appealing characteristic
Bland, despite what his admirers say
Most likely to say
"Do you think birds dream?"
Least likely to say
"That RTÉ show Cabin Fever was the highlight of my career"