Joe Duffy*
MY WEEK
MONDAY: Let me tell you… I grew up in Ballyfermot… salt of the earth… workingclass heroes… have I mentioned me good mate Brendan O’Carroll yet?
“What are you doing, love?” asks the wife, catching sight of me talking to myself in the bathroom mirror.
“Just practising for my next interview in the RTE Guide,” I tell her.
You’ve got to keep in shape. Sentimental anecdotes about Dublin’s fair city in da rare auld times don’t just tell themselves.
I head into RTE for another week of Liveline, a show that does for the phone-in what Jedward did for Ireland’s reputation as a home of great music.
It’s less stressful going into Donnybrook than it used to be when David McSavage was working there. He was always poking fun at me, making it look as if I enjoy stoking all dat misery every afternoon.
That gurrier stopped me being treated with the respect I deserve, just when everyone had finally stopped looking down on me as that funny, little workingclass Dub that Gaybo kept bringing in on work experience.
I did mention that I’m a working-class Dub, yeah?
Now I’m one of the biggest celebrities on Irish radio, and a close personal friend of many of the country’s top stars, including Brendan O’Carroll, though I don’t like to go on about it in case people think I’m name-dropping.
I like to see myself as the voice of the people.
The crazy people. The obsessed people. The people with nothin’ better to do in the afternoon than listen to some doddery aul’ doll natter on for half an hour about how she lost her bus pass in the Ilac Centre and wouldn’t have been able to get to the bingo if it hadn’t been for the intervention of St Anthony of Padua.
Today, I talk to a man who’s made a fortune from renting apartments from landlords and then subletting them to tourists.
I’m shocked. You can hear it in my voice. It goes up a notch in a kind of indignant keen and I suddenly articulate random words for NO reason at all.
In the name of God, there are easier ways to make a fortune. Aren’t I getting over a grand a day for presenting this rubbish? And I’m worth every penny, like I said for years when they were cutting our pay. You don’t present ‘Livewhine’ all these years without learning the benefits of a good whinge. TUESDAY: I have a chat with my good mate Brendan O’Carroll who’s busy putting the final touches to this year’s Christmas specials of his fun-for-all-the-family, heart-warming tales of working-class Dublin life, Mrs Brown’s Money For Old Rope. I don’t mind admitting that it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in years — and I haven’t even seen it yet.
“We must get you on air again soon, my good friend Brendan O’Carroll, star of stage and screen,” I say.
He agrees immediately, like the good, working-class Dub and close friend that he is. Well, who doesn’t like acres of free publicity?
I’m his biggest fan. Though not the kind of fan who’d kidnap him if he ever retired and force him to write another hilaaaaarious madcap movie, because that’s not what working-class Dubliners do. Salt of the earth, we are. WEDNESDAY: Regular as clockwork, every three months, here we are waiting on news of the latest JNLR listenership figures.
I pass the head of 2FM in the corridor. He’s got a face on him like a wet bank holiday weekend in Clontarf.
Yours Truly has no worries. The figures show that I have passed Marian Finucane and am now the most popular broadcaster in Ireland with a massive daily audience of 395,000 nutters… I mean listeners.
Just think — I could give every single one of them a euro and still earn nearly as much at the end of the year as a newly qualified guard.
They’re calling me the new king of the airwaves, but that’s easier than it looks at RTE, where you can put on any old bol**x and the punters will still tune in.
Today, for example, we have Tim Pat Coogan on the line complaining about his phone and internet coverage. No, really, we do.
“Aw, that’s awful,” I say. Because that’s what I always say. That, and “yeah, go on” and “stay there while I bring in another caller”.
Tim Pat also gets a chance to plug his new buke. That’s how this incestuous media love-in thing works.
THURSDAY: The head of RTE Radio One says the secret to the success of ‘Barely-Alive-Line’ is that people want to hear how I handle the big topics of the day.
Hear that, Philip Boucher-Hayes? It’s not you with your posh voice and fancy double-barrelled name standing in for me when I’m off that’s made this show what it is; but me, plain, old Joe Duffy from little, old Ballyfermot.
He also says the show works because it keeps reinventing itself, which is weird because it sounds exactly the same as it did when I took over the seat from Marian in 1879.
Straight after, I head to Waterford to plug me own buke, Children of the Rising, which gave a voice to all the young wans who died in 1916 — awful it was, awful — but, more importantly, sold by the bucketload, making me one of the biggest authors in Ireland.
You might even say that I’m the new king of Irish publishing. Is it too late to put that on the posters?
FRIDAY: It’s Funny Friday from Waterford. Or “About As Funny As A Box Set of Michael Noonan Budget Speeches Friday”, as it’s known to all comedy fans.
Some of these jokes are so old that Brian Boru was there at the birth.
In the evening, I settle down to watch everyone’s favourite chat show. Then I remember Graham Norton isn’t on till 10.30pm so I switch over to RTE instead. Enjoy it while you can, Tubs.
I can see it now: “Hello, good evening and you’re very welcome tooo ‘Da Late Late Show’ with me, Joe Duffy. Now please give a warm welcome to my first ever guest, and close, personal friend of mine, Brendan O’Carroll…”