‘The Bookshelf with Tubridy’ has just one problem – I don’t think he has read the books

There’s just one problem with The Bookshelf with Ryan Tubridy – it sounds like Ryan hasn’t read the books. This is a bit of a stumbling block to stimulating discussion, as the three books chosen by his interviewee are the subject of the podcast.

It’s also unlike Tubridy, in my very limited experience. In the days when he had his radio programme on RTÉ One he was fairly burning through the books. He was recommending them, he was talking about them, he was interviewing their authors – and he had read them.

For years Tubridy has talked about his reading with an air of defiance, as if it was a minority sport or an endearing eccentricity, like going to vintage car rallies, or stamp collecting.

Now he’s pushing books for the sponsor of this podcast, Eason. And there is to be a special section at the end of each episode called “Ryan Recommends”, which I was looking forward to.

I was prepared for a personal list which would reflect Ryan’s allegedly abiding interests: fishing and the Kennedys, for example. But he only recommends one single book; John Boyne’s Water.

The questions that hang over this podcast are the same questions that hung over Tubridy’s career at RTÉ: does he have no producer at all? Does he just roll up and shoot the breeze?

It is not good to see talent so unprotected, so unframed, so unsupported.

When you have a podcast on books on which there is no discernible reading by the host, that podcast is on the back foot from the start. One of the advantages of podcasting – having more time to prepare – is thrown away.

Hopefully this gaping hole in strategy will be remedied by the next episode, although there are only two episodes so far, according to the publicity material, and there are no details available on the second.

The guest this time was David Walliams, the comedian, actor, Britain’s Got Talent judge (retired) and the world-conquering author of books for children.

Walliams is an accomplished media performer who could basically interview himself, and here he comes pretty close to doing exactly that.

Tubridy deserves a fair assessment and we all know that the past nine months have been traumatic for him. But, for whatever reason, he’s sleepwalking his way through this one.

The format is simple: a guest nominates three books they love.

One from their childhood, one that changed their life and one that made them cry.

Walliams chose Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss, The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin – “he’s a bit like Morrissey,” said Walliams – and The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro.

That’s an interesting and accessible list. Nothing there to frighten the horses. And Walliams was very forthcoming, in a way that male celebrities rarely are, about the pleasures of being read to by his father as a child, and the pleasure of being a father to his own son, Alfred.

Alfred is the love of his life, he says, and has completely changed it. Even when he is driving, Walliams says, if he is tempted to start speeding he thinks, “What about Alfred?”.

So he brings quite a lot to the party. The strange thing is that Tubridy doesn’t sound as if he’s at the party, or if he has been then that he’s just getting his coat.

He’s referred to in the publicity material as “the renowned broadcaster” but he rushes through his introduction to the podcast, taking it at a thousand miles an hour and disrespecting the script; although it must be acknowledged that with this script there is a lot to disrespect; it is very slipshod indeed.

He has absolutely nothing to say about Green Eggs and Ham, and talks in a general way about Dr Seuss and books for kids.

He has only the vaguest grasp of who Philip Larkin was, let alone any familiarity with his poems. And he has nothing at all to offer on Ishiguro.

This leaves Walliams to do all the heavy lifting.

He lapses into anecdote and name-dropping – a bit of a weakness of Walliams’s, who ends up telling us all that he met Ishiguro at a dinner party given in honour of Mikhail Gorbachev.

And also that he once quoted one of Harold Pinter’s poems to Harold Pinter. Walliams is self-deprecating about all this but it’s a bit sticky all the same. Ishiguro now sends him signed proofs of his novels, which is a strange thing to know.

The worst moment came when Tubridy asked Walliams what, in the event of him writing his autobiography, the book would be called. Walliams replied that he had written an autobiography. (It was called Camp David, which is a good title. It was published in October 2012 by Michael Joseph. God Almighty, is there no researcher?)

Walliams gently said that he’d like to write a memoir about being a father which he would entitle With You. He saved it. Just.

‘This leaves David Walliams to do all the heavy lifting... God Almighty, is there no researcher on this podcast?’