The Black Hole that is the Late Late Show

First published in the Western People on Monday.

If Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct, there exist, somewhere in the universe, things called black holes. A black hole is a region of space where matter has become so compact it has collapsed into itself. A black hole’s gravitational field is so strong that it draws everything around into it, allowing nothing – not light, not gravity, not anything – to escape.

In Ireland, we are familiar with black holes. One will start broadcasting against this Friday night at nine-thirty on RTÉ 1, holding all otherwise sentient, sensible people in its iron grasp for the next two and a half hours.

People once thought that the Late Late Show couldn’t survive Gay Byrne’s retirement. They’ve had to think again – although Uncle Gaybo has never really gone away, his last Late Late Show was fifteen years ago. And still the show goes on after him, Friday after Friday, year after year.

It is not entirely unreasonable to expect that, should the direst of warnings come true and Ireland is three feet underwater as a result of global warming, or the proliferation of windfarms and pylons and the Lord knows what has left the green isle of Erin habitable only by rats, badgers and the rougher sort of insect, there will still be a tower in Montrose that will fizzle fitfully into life every Friday in autumn, winter and spring to announce that tonight, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Late Late Show, and here is your host ...

Being the host of the Late Late Show is, supposedly, the premier job in Irish broadcasting. This is the reason RTÉ has historically paid its stars great pots of money for the apparently straightforward job of asking some British soap opera star how much she liked visiting Ireland and if, perhaps, she had any relations here. If someone like Pat Kenny wasn’t paid a big ball of money, the fear was that he would go somewhere else, and take all his listenership with him, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

The interesting thing is that the bluff has been called. Newstalk made Pat Kenny an offer he couldn’t refuse last year and so Kenny left RTÉ after forty years to do his old show for a new boss. Newstalk’s plan was that Pat’s pipes would sound from Marconi house, and Kenny’s loyal listenership would obey the massive advertising campaign to “move the dial” and follow their leader.

Except that’s not what happened at all. The latest figures are that Pat Kenny’s radio show on Newstalk gets 143,000 listeners, while Pat’s old show in RTÉ, now hosted by Seán O’Rourke, gets 307,000. That’s a hiding by double scores in anybody’s language.

The nation now has solid field data about what happens when a big star moves. Nothing is what happens when a big star moves. RTÉ get someone else, and someone else becomes a star instead. And what is the result of this? UTV come along and offer Pat even more money to do a Late Late-style show for them, once they get up and running. If this column were ever in a position to interview Pat Kenny, the first question would be “can you believe your luck?”

Pat Kenny’s successor as host of the Late Late Show, Ryan Tubridy, is equally blessed in having a career that seems impervious to the market’s opinion of him. In one way, Tubridy was given the media equivalent of a hospital pass when he was asked to replace Gerry Ryan in the 2FM schedule after Ryan’s sudden death. Ryan was not everyone’s cup of tea but those who liked him, loved him. And those who loved Gerry Ryan are not impressed by his replacement.

But in the bigger picture, the poor radio figures don’t really matter. What is amazing about Tubridy is that in the age of the world wide web, internet streaming, Netflix, Sky plus, digital TV and more, Irish adults will sit down on Friday and watch the Late Late Show, let it matter a damn who’s on it as a guest or who’s presenting the show. It could be Ryan Tubridy interviewing Miriam O’Callaghan or Miriam O’Callaghan interviewing Ryan Tubridy. There’s no real difference. It’s Friday night, and this is what we do.

Ryan Tubridy’s Late Late Show isn’t the worst show of its kind on television. That strange show RTÉ broadcast after the nine o’clock news on Saturday night is surely the racing favourite for that dustbin honour. In fact, that show is so far from good it’s hard to understand why it’s not on TV3.

The galling thing is that the Late Late Show isn’t meant to be a show that isn’t the worst show on television. It’s meant to be the best show on television, the show that holds a mirror up to Ireland as this great nation of talkers and wits discuss and debate the great issues of day, from Ireland’s role in Europe to whether the nation should simply put Brian Cody in charge of everything and be done with it.

That is very different from listening to comedian Des Bishop, economist David McWilliams, stylist Lisa Fitzpatrick and Dolores Kehoe. Who on earth is Dolores Kehoe? Who cares what the other three think about anything?

Writing in the Irish Times about Tubridy’s unhappy radio listenership figures, Laura Slattery suggested that the problem wasn’t Tubridy but RTÉ management, for asking Tubridy to do a job for which he clearly isn’t suited. But it’s easy to see how RTÉ management could be puzzled by Tubridy, as he’s not suited to presenting a TV show that holds a mirror to a nation either, and the figures for that show are solid as the rock of Gibraltar.

The answer, as is often the case, lies closer to home. It’s us. It’s the nation. The people of Ireland would watch the Late Late Show even if were presented by Lorcan Murray and featured the cast of Fair City reading tweets of the week. What incentive is there for the Late Late Show to be any good if there’s no disincentive for it to be awful? Why can’t we move the dial? Why do we feel we have to do what we’ve always done? What’s the matter with us?

They Are Spartacus - Where to Now for Off the Ball?

The Off the Ball team seem to have had an “I am Spartacus” moment. Resignations are rare in Ireland, not least when it’s so very hard to get another job. Principles don’t pay the rent or put food on the table.

For a mass resignation like that of Eoin McDevitt, Ciarán Murphy, Ken Early, Simon Hick and Mark Horgan (MMEHH from here on in) to happen is either an inspirational show of solidarity, or else a mad moment of hubris that the people involved may live to bitterly regret.

The fans of Off the Ball, and they are legion, will hope it’s the former. Off the Ball was like no other sports show on radio. That said, the path ahead is difficult for MMEHH  - Ger Gilroy kept the show on the road last night and paid the missing members a lovely tribute. And then Gilroy did what a good pro does, and got on with business as usual. If they were listening, did a cool chill run through MMEHH’s bones as they realised just how easily business can go on as usual?

The big plus for MMEHH is that thing called chemistry. Nobody knows what creates it or destroys it. We only know it when it’s there.

Chemistry was present in spades on Off the Ball. The diverse mix of the MMEHH presenters complemented each other perfectly, for no reason other than the fact they just did. But once that spell is broken, neither all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men can ever put it back together again.

Just last week, the BBC arts show, The Review Show, was moved from BBC2 to BBC Four and will now broadcast monthly, instead of weekly. When it started twenty years ago The Review Show, then know as Late Review, was essential watching.  Panelist Tom Paulin represented the highbrows, Tony Parsons the low and Alison Pearson the reasonable middle. The debat was chaired by Mark Lawson, and it was perfect.

And then the team split up and it was never the same. The BBC moved different people in and out, but they could never bottle lightning again. Newstalk are currently emphasising the fact that Ger Gilroy is the man who invented the Off the Ball format in the first place, but everybody knows there’s a void there, and it’s a void that will be hard to fill.

For MMEHH, there is a question of where do they go from here. In Newstalk’s worst-case scenario, a deal has already been made with a competitor and there will now be a battle royal between the official and continuity Off the Balls. This will be about who gets the regular contributors – will they stay loyal to the brand or the boys?

Newstalk is not a station that makes money but it is powerful because of its ownership. If MMEHH thought that the contributors would prioritize personal over professional relationships, they could be in for something of a rude awakening.

There also the issue that media organisations tend to hire singly, rather than a group. If MMEHH hope to replicate the format intact on some other station, there is then the question of exactly which media organisation will sign up for that. Bear in mind it’ll be broadcasting against the Newstalk Off the Ball, which will sounds very, very familiar to MMEHH version. A Continuity Off the Ball will require listeners tracking them down by moving the dial, something that Irish radio listeners are surprisingly reluctant to do.

There is also the fact that there aren’t many stations that could broadcast the show. Newstalk, Today FM and Dublin 98 are all owned by the same entity. Will this resignation be held against MMEHH by Newstalk’s sister companies?

What about RTÉ? Tweeters are clamouring for Off the Ball’s appearance on the national broadcaster but, amidst all this speculation, your correspondent will lay you Carnaby Street against a China lemon that there is no way on God’s green Earth that RTÉ sport will throw open their arms to welcome the smart arses who’ve been laughing at them for years. Life’s not like that.

There is also the question of what happens when individual approaches are made. Does a man hold out with his comrades or does he think he’d really like to pay the mortgage this month?

In a time of clouded media ethics we can only admire a resignation that’s been made on principle. But we also only have to look at how effortlessly Savage Sunday replaced Sam Smyth’s show on Today FM to find out that Irish media is not a sentimental business.

We won’t know until we hear their side of the story, but MMEHH’s own personal situation is precarious in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately industry. Off the Ball as we knew it could never have gone on forever but nobody could have expected its end to be so sudden. The best of luck to Eoin, Ciarán, Ken, Simon and Mark in their future careers. They made housework painless for a generation of men, and there are very few things that can achieve that miracle.

It's Unloveable, It's Unwinnable, and It's Back - It's the National Football League

A noted GAA pundit opined on Newstalk recently that the All-Ireland Championship should be divided into two. The top sixteen counties in Ireland should compete for the All-Ireland proper, and the rest for a lesser trophy more suited to their humble status. When asked how the top sixteen should be decided, the pundit thought having the teams in Division 1 and 2 of the National League at the top table and the teams in 3 and 4 eating in the scullery should do it.

A neat solution, but indicative of fundamentally woolly thinking. It is correct to note that the gap between Divisions 2 and 3 is a much more natural one that that between 1 and 2, or 3 and 4. But that gap yawns for a greater reason than a talent gap – it’s to do with the fundamental structure of the league itself.

The National Football League is played over seven games. In league terms, that’s nothing. It’s too short a gap to establish who is truly the best. The English Premier League plays forty-odd games before deciding a Champion. Major League Baseball, before getting caught in its current playoff format trouble, asked its teams to play 162 games before winning a pennant. If someone’s on top of the table after playing 162 games nearly every day for five months, you can be pretty damn sure that they deserve to be there.

A seven game league gives no such margin for error. If you slip in the first game, you may never be able to catch up in the remaining six. Suppose counties A, B and C are favorites to gain promotion from Division 3 to Division 2, and the foothills of glory. A loses its first game at home, but wins the remaining six. B wins all seven of its games. C wins six out of seven as well, but has a superior scoring difference.

B and C are promoted, A remains in the mire and the manager has to break his heart trying to get lads thinking about the first game of the Championship and not drinking Sam Adams in Boston during the lazy, hazy days of a Massachusetts summer. The fact County A remains in Division 3 doesn’t mean they’re a bad team; it just means they were victims of an iniquitous system.

That’s the zany thing about the League. The fact it’s unfair doesn’t really matter, because nobody cares about winning the thing. What consolation are those four Leagues to Cork? Winning doesn’t matter. All you can do in the League is survive. You might be able to deal with being relegated to Division 2 but once you cross the midway you might never bubble up again.

The radio is currently heavy with advertisements promoting the League but they’re actually ads to promote the Spring Series in Croke Park, where Dublin will play an astonishing – even for them – five of seven games on home turf. League games in Páirc Tailteann, Celtic Park, O’Moore Park and other venues will be completely different experiences.

The one thing better than surviving the League is finding new players. Mayo’s James Horan has been particularly diligent in this regard. Where his predecessor used the League to put a winning run together only to be rudely returned to Square Minus One by a pasting in the final, Horan has show a blatant and epic disregard for any League results at all. The media made much of Mayo’s League Final appearance last year but it was a chimera – Mayo finished fourth of eight in the League proper and, if fog had not descended in the abandoned game against Dublin in Castlebar, could very easily be in Division 2 now.

Horan knew it didn’t matter. He knew finding players and getting strength in depth matters. And that search will surely continue this year, if selections from the FBD League are anything to go by. The Mayo support, always philosophical, will have plenty to mull over during the spring.

As for who wins it, who knows? Kerry’s little ears are poking slightly above the long grass after their crippling four years of hurt. Cork are developing a Mayo size monkey on their backs and may probably be grateful to get relegated and take some of the pressure off themselves for the summer. Kildare continue to doggedly knock on the door. Meath, Galway, Armagh and Laois are all eager for a return to the top table, but they will any of them swap promotion for the prospect of football in August. The League is all very well, but it remains, as it always must, four months of shadow-boxing before the great pageant of the Irish summer.

Magdagate: Another Mortal Wound for Irish Journalism

You can’t have a democracy without a free press. The biggest danger to Irish sovereignty isn’t the bailout; it’s the absence of a free and functioning press.

Why do you need a free press? You need a free press to hold the powerful to account. To tell people what their leaders are doing and saying on their behalf, to interpret it, to encourage discussion and to ensure that, when the people go to the polls, they are as informed as they can possibly be.

The Irish media are failing badly in this regard. Because the country is so small, it’s always been difficult to have a fully impartial media. Unfortunately, the past year has seen such a calamitous fall in standards that it is now at a stage where the main check to governance of the country is hors de combat, and that is a crisis in any democracy.

RTÉ let itself down on the double. Firstly, the extraordinary libel of Father Kevin Reynolds on Prime Time, and secondly, the scuppering of the Seán Gallagher Presidential campaign by a tweet that was sent from a clearly bogus account. Either is a scandal. The combination of both is mind-boggling as regards standards in a publicly funded national broadcaster.

Today FM disgraced itself in its treatment of Sam Smyth. God only knows what goes on editorially in Newstalk, other than to remark if Prime Time wanted to do a States of Fear II, Marconi House would be a good place to set it. Allegedly.

The Irish Times let itself down very badly indeed in its attempt to re-write history in the sad case of the death of Kate Fitzgerald. They probably know it and the libel laws don’t help, but it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it right at all.

But even in the light of all this, there is something about the “Magda” story in yesterday’s Irish Independent that is particularly worrying. These are the facts: the Indo found an interview in a Polish magazine with a Polish woman who spoke about life in Ireland. The Indo printed the story as the woman having a big laugh at the dumb Paddies who are paying her way.

It would be the perfect newspaper story, if it weren’t for one pesky detail. It’s sensational, it’s got water-cooler appeal, and it rings a bell for people. There’s a whole generation of people who came home from J1s laughing at the Yanks and telling stories of the scams they pulled so it was only reasonable to assume that the new Irish were telling the same stories. And now here was proof.

The one pesky detail is that the story in the Indo bears no relation to the original Polish story. This is the Indo story; this is the Polish original, translated into English by the John Murray show on RTÉ Radio One. There is no basis for the Indo story in the Polish original. None at all. It’s all rubbish. Every word.

So how did it get printed? One of two ways. Either the Independent’s editorial process is so incredibly bad that they really don’t care whether or what they print has any basis in reality at all. The second possibility is worse. The second possibility is that they knew full well what was in the Polish original, and didn’t care.

If the article isn’t true, so what? Nobody’s named, therefore nobody’s libeled, therefore nobody can sue. It’s win-win. Sure they’ll be some yap about it but it’ll sell papers and the Indo will get a reputation as the paper that prints what others are too scared or – hah! – too “politically correct” to share with the nation.

The media is failing to self-regulate. No-one in the media will take on a powerful media group because who knows when the day will come when that somebody may need a new job and hope for food from a hand that they’ve bitten.

So journalists end up in the position of men in the women and children’s lifeboats – they feel terrible about the destruction of their profession, but they prefer it to drowning, thanks all the same.

That’s not good enough. Irish sovereignty is in greater danger from the absence of a free press than from the Troika, who only want their money back. Don’t let media cynicism take your freedom away. Don’t let it!

George Hook

The great language of Yiddish has many beautiful words. “Zaftig” is the word for a beautiful woman who is, in Oscar Hammerstein II’s phrase, broad where a broad should be broad. Isn’t it fantastic? It’s a word that’s inherently delightful to say out loud, just for the joy of saying it.

“Chutzpah” is another one of those words. It means gall, or cheek, or nerve. It was exemplified by a man known to your correspondent in more dissolute days who was getting grief in the Dole Office at Augustine Street, Galway.

He claimed he was skint. The lady behind the hatch doubted the bone fides of his attempts to find work and, God bless her, she mightn’t have been far wrong. She demanded proof from my friend that he’d tried to find work in the next period or else his dole was getting cut.

My friend said he would certainly try to find work, but only if Rialtas na hÉireann, as represented by the Galway dole office, would provide him with stamps necessary to post letters of application in a pre-internet age. He could not buy stamps himself being, as we said at the start, skint.

Getting the dole office to buy your stamps is chutzpah. It’s a fantastic word, and a quality that is 98% galling but 2% a cause for admiration, for having the sheer neck to go for it.

Chutzpah does not even begin to describe two tweets from Mr George Hook last night. They are the first two in this screen shot:




Aren’t they astonishing? “Hook controversial by conviction; Dunphy by opportunism.” Indeed. Quite. Of course.

For those equally traumatised as your correspondent, help is at hand. The Phoenix Magazine printed a story on September 23rd about George and his adventures with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V in a Rugby World Cup preview piece for the Indo. I’ve taken the liberty of scanning it – just click the image below and it should rise to legible and hilarious detail.

In the States, you get the road for doing that. But we’re currently redefining what we consider journalism here, aren’t we?

The Exemplary Interviewing Skills of Newstalk's Eoin McDevitt

It’s not easy to interview someone. The really interesting stuff is often what the interviewee doesn’t want to talk about. This means that the trickiest job the interviewer faces is coaxing that bit of news out of the interviewee without the interviewee getting upset over the extraction, thus putting the interviewer’s career – and possibly life – in danger.

Newstalk’s Eoin McDevitt is the best sports interviewer on Irish radio today. He is astonishingly good and, a little like Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, his skill lies in the fact that you never see him coming.

An RTÉ commentator badgered Ollie Canning on the radio recently about whether or not Canning would ever hurl for Galway again. Bad. Ollie wasn’t on trial for his life, and was left in a no-win situation.

If Canning said no, he was never playing again, ever, it would close off forever whatever spark is left in him, that may kindle yet after the harsh and lonely winter, and if he said yes, he would play again, he would look like an idiot. Nothing gained there for anyone.

Of course, the commentator was a commentator, not an interviewer, and there is a difference. McDevitt’s own recent attempt at athletics commentary highlighted that difference further. But purely as an interviewer, McDevitt is outstanding.

The reason McDevitt is so good is the same reason Michael Parkinson was so good. McDevitt always knows that his role is second banana. That people want to know what Darragh Ó Sé’s opinion, and not Eoin McDevitt’s. Whatever ego fulfilment McDevitt gets, he does not attempt to get it by telling Brian O’Driscoll what it’s like to win a Grand Slam. He is aware that insight travels in a contrary direction.

McDevitt’s personality type is particularly suited to Irish sportspeople, combining as it does the best traits of two icons of Irish life – the undertaker, and the former Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department.

We saw McDevitt’s undertaker schtick on Setanta over the weekend when McDevitt was chairing an hour’s cheap blather with Brian Kerr, Ken Early and Big Joe Kernan. It was up to McDevitt to ask Big Joe why he wasn’t manager of Galway any more, without ever being able to raise any unpleasantness over that green stuff that makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around.

And nor did he. Summoning the combined sorrows of Pippi Longstocking and our own Deirdre na mBrón, McDevitt heaved a heartfelt sigh and asked Joe if the deceased had been suffering long. Joe told his little scéal and McDevitt nodded mournfully in time with Joe’s pain. A double check to see if the departed would be buried in the blue suit or the brown, and McDevitt faded back into the wallpaper again. Genius.

An interview with Lovely Derval O’Rourke after Derval’s silver medal in Barcelona showed the Columbo side to McDevitt’s technique. Lovely Derval had a tiny crack at the AAI (as opposed to the big root in the bottom that they need so badly) when she got back from Barcelona, but by the time of Monday’s Off the Ball Derval didn’t want to get mixed up in a shouting match and was all for backing off.

Not enough for McDevitt though. He went back over what she said, gently but thoroughly, and Derval expanded a little more on what it’s like for Irish athletes trying to compete on a world stage. She did not have rant, but simply expressed what it’s like for her and what it’s like for others, with McDevitt leading her along without ever trying to trap her or be sensational in any way.

In the matter of bringing the truth to the light, it was like when Columbo would call around to the suspect's house, apologise for bothering the suspect, and just wonder – because he couldn’t sleep last night, wondering, and it just just this one other little thing – why was it that, if your secretary was in New York on business at the time of your wife’s murder, the ashtray in the summer house contains menthol cigarettes butts. Your wife only ever smoked Camels. And Columbo would stand there, in the raggedy coat and the cheap cigar like the biggest gom in the world, while the suspect paled beneath his tan.

McDevitt has the advantage of three hours of radio to kill, of course, and that gives him the time his particular technique needs, but still. It’s a pleasure to hear a master going about his work – not least if you are taking the iron around the chicanes and have another four shirts to do for the week. Long may he reign.

FOCAL SCOIR: Speaking of Parky, here's one of his finest hours, getting cosy with Miss Piggy in the 70s. Fantastic.

The Domestic Miracle of Newstalk's Off the Ball

While Off the Ball, Newstalk’s evening sports show every weekday, has received much critical acclaim, its true achievement has never really been identified. It is this: for the first time, gentlemen may face the unspeakable horror of housework, knowing that at least they can listen to Off the Ball while ironing shirts or doing laundry.

Off the Ball’s success is due to its positioning – the notion of any radio worth listening to after seven o’clock in the evening is a revolutionary one – but also to the remarkable teamwork of the show’s most notable presenters, host Eoin McDevitt and soccer correspondent Ken Early. The remarkable nature of the partnership seems lost on Newstalk management, as stand-in presenters rarely match McDevitt’s calibre, and can fall distressingly below it – sometimes to the extent of the gentleman laying down his iron to give LA Woman one more spin on the trusty CD player.

McDevitt’s particular gift is one that seems simple, but its rarity on the radio suggests that it may be more difficult than it appears. McDevitt listens. He is interested in what his contributors have to say, rather than giving the impression of a man simply sitting through a lot of yak waiting for his opportunity to put his own splendid oar in, and delight an eager nation with his pensées.

The quality of the contributors on Off the Ball is exceptional – hurling analyst Daithí Regan is a particularly standout – and the sheer length of the show means that they have a lot of time to discuss an issue, rather than simply tick off boxes. McDevitt can bring a slightly embarrassing level of awe to his weekly interviews with John Giles but then, which of us could be calm in the presence of that great man?

Early is a horse of a different colour. An Spailpín Fánach hardly ever watches soccer anymore, the cheating and cowardice having become too monstrous to ignore at this stage, but Early is a man capable of making converts. Early is that rarest of creatures, a soccer savant. In a game where “well, the lad’s a bit special” is considered seeing life steady and seeing it whole, to hear Early riff on comparisons between a player and Field Marshall Von Blucher, the man who out-Napoleoned Napoleon at Waterloo, is heady stuff indeed.

Soccer savants give the impression that the game of soccer is a precise and detailed metaphor for life itself. The most notable example of such a savant we had here was Eamon Dunphy of course, before Dunphy became a caricature of himself in his mean-spirited attacks on Giovanni Trapattoni. Early is now the inheritor of that mantle – more rapier than Dunphy’s broadsword, and always worth listening to.

McDevitt is aware of Early’s talents and, in his best form, acts as agent provocateur to Early, egging on Early to greater flights of fancy. It doesn’t always work, of course, but when it does it’s sublime. Thank God for Off the Ball – imagine how rumpled shirts would be at those eleven o’clock meetings if it were no longer on the air?





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