RYAN TUBRIDY HAS described the day he was due to appear before two Oireachtas committees as “Christmas morning – flipped” in a new interview.
Speaking with fellow-broadcaster Doireann Garrihy – on her podcast ‘The Laughs of Your Life’ – Tubridy details that he too would have gone to watch the hearings if he weren’t the one being questioned.
“If I wasn’t me,” he said. “I’d probably be going, ‘The poor devil, the poor devil’.”
Tubridy added that he would’ve watched the entire seven-hour event with a “whole bag of cans”.
Tubridy is due to start a new show London-based radio station Virgin Radio UK in the new year.
Opening the programme, Garrihy says she has a number of things to ask Tubridy as “so much has happened” since the last time the two broadcasters spoke on the podcast.
Tubridy quickly quips: “Since 2019 or six months ago?”
While Tubridy didn’t directly address the scandal he did reference the day before and the morning he was due to appear in front of two Oireachtas committees with his agent.
In June, it was announced that RTÉ had overpaid Tubridy by over €345,000 and had falsely reported his earnings to the public since 2017.
Later, in August, it was confirmed that RTÉ had also underreported Tubridy’s earnings from his previous contract, by €120,000, between 2017 and 2019.
The report, conducted by Grant Thornton, found it is “very plausible” that Tubridy’s salary was publicly understated in order to allow for “revised earnings” to show a figure below €500,000 in each year.
Seeking answers to how public funds may have potentially been misappropriated, the Oireachtas’ Public Accounts Committee and the Joint-Committee for media called on Tubridy and Noel Kelly to appear before politicians to account for their actions.
Tubridy explains that the day before, he recieved a call from his mother who had asked if he wanted her to come with him to the Oireachtas hearings.
Tubridy said: “She rang me the day before and she said ‘Are you alright?’. I said ‘Yep, I’m great. I’m doing fine, of course, everything is fine.’.
“She said, ‘Now listen, do you want me to come into the Oireachtas with you?’.”
“I said ‘No, thanks a million, you’re grand.’ – Could you imagine Kildare Street?”
Tubridy described the morning of the hearing as “Christmas morning, flipped” before saying “something serious” about the day.
“I got a taxi in [...] I was driving along, in the back of the taxi, and we were coming along by Vincent’s Hospital and then the next stop on your left, along the Embassy belt, was St Michael’s College, the school.
“And there were bunches of flowers outside the gate, because two boys died in Ios, in Greece.”
“I looked at those, they were eighteen year old boys. And I thought to myself in the back of that car, having spend a few hours feeling sorry for myself, and I thought ‘My life is interrupted and those families lives destroyed. Now cop yourself on. You’re going in to tell the story, you’re going in to tell them everything you know and then you’re going home. Think about that’.”
Tubridy described the emotion as “humbling, in the extreme” and one that “really put manners on me”.
Both hearings became some of the most viewed Oireachtas hearings ever, with pubs streaming the questioning on large screens for public viewings.
Since, the public record of Tubridy’s earnings has been amended but the fallout within the public broadcaster has immensely highlighted mismanagement, poor finances and governance and later led to the public-funded station needing to receive a government bailout to keep afloat.
Last month, it was announced that the veteran broadcaster would be hosting a new show on Virgin Radio UK in London. It was also announced that the show would be simulcast live on Dublin-based radio station Q102.
Speaking on the show, which he is due to begin on 4 January, Tubridy said he is excited to start his new venture and detailed the initial talks between him and the station.
Tubridy says that fellow-presenter on Virgin Radio UK, Chris Evans, had invited him for a coffee. While in a taxi on route to the station, Tubridy says he heard Evans announce that he would be a guest on the show later that morning.
“I was like ‘What?’. I hadn’t been on the radio for ages. I was kind of like ‘Did he say I was coming on? He said this would be a cup of coffee.’ Because my confidence had been a bit shook,” he said.
After appearing on the programme, the manager of the station brought him into an office and began the process of asking Tubridy to appear on his own programme.
On living in London, he said: “I can’t tell you how joyful it is to sit on a Tube like a ghost. That’s what makes London so attractive.”
He added that while he will be living in London, he will miss Ireland.
“The country need a lot of guiding and a lot of minding. Things could get a little tricky and I hope Ireland continues to fall into the right hands.”
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