BROKEN BRIAN9
Star has trouble sleeping after TV joke about Irish language backfires badly
Apology was made that didn’t actually apologise at all
SILE SEOIGE
ON FALLOUT
BY SANDRA MALLON
BRIAN Dowling has admitted he had “broken sleep” as he came under fire for “dissing” the Irish language.
The former Big Brother star suffered backlash after an interview with Sile Seoige and former Newstalk host Ivan Yates went viral.
Ivan said he “couldn’t be a***d to learn Irish”, while Brian came in for criticism online for shaking his hand in agreement with him.
Brian hasn’t yet addressed the furore since saying he had “ruffled some feathers” on the show but taking to his Instagram page on Thursday morning, he admitted: “Happy Friday eve, it doesn’t feel like a Friday eve. It feels like a Thursday.
“It’s super dark. The umbrella is out because it is raining. Now it is not super cold and the rain is not super annoying.
It’s that drizzly, misty, wet rain. I had broken sleep last night.
“I was awake from 1am, 4am and then my alarm went off at quarter to six so up I went. Going in early for a meeting.”
The row began after the trio were on the Six O’clock Show last week, while broadcaster Yates denounced the level of funding given to the language by the State.
Host Brian then got up from his seat and shook Ivan’s hand, adding that he too doesn’t speak any Irish.
Yates added: “All this money we put into it, and there’s only 16,000 people in the country speaking it now.”
This claim was later found to be false. A clip of the comments, posted to the show’s social media, was taken down on Monday after it got plenty of backlash from Gaeilgeori. Sile said earlier this week that she felt “dissed”, adding: “It was gaslighting everybody who had a problem with it.
“I think it’s been handled really badly. I wish this never happened... my blood is boiling over it.”
Dowling acknowledged the backlash and said the opinion he shared on the Irish language “ruffled some feathers”.
He added: “This is a place of inclusion. This is a place of love. And this is definitely a place of laughter.”
But Sile told Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live on Wednesday: “Nobody from the
Six O’clock Show has reached out to me to see how I’m doing.
“An apology was made at the start of the show, that didn’t actually apologise at all. “The host was saying, ‘We are a show about love and inclusion and having fun’, and what it didn’t actually acknowledge was the hurt that it has caused amongst the people that watched it.”
But she added that she understands the quips from Dowling and Yates were jokes that “backfired” but said it was “executed badly”.