We really need to talk about Ryan Tubridy
FAIR play to Ivan Yates for daring to commit secular heresy on Wednesday’s Hard Shoulder by admitting: “Am I the only one in Ireland who doesn’t like The Late, Late Toy Show? I find it boring.” Hear, hear. Enough already with the annoying kids and cutesy festive jumpers.
Credit is also due to the Newstalk host for doggedly banging the drum on his show about the systemic dysfunctionality of “our old friends in the Department of Justice”.
“If you’ve been paying attention to the show,” Yates reminded listeners, he’d predicted the Tanaiste’s position was untenable from the start. He can be forgiven a bit of self congratulation.
More belatedly, Liveline also caught up with the story, with Joe Duffy taking an interesting approach by asking callers: “Why did Frances Fitzgerald resign?”
This deceptively simple question teased out where each was coming from. Joe seemed to enjoy getting stuck in, even pulling up a man who referred to Fianna Fail’s Micheal Martin as the “longest serving
“We’re not iin the British Isles," Joe said, before checking himself for going off topic.
As usual, hyperbole was never far away. “We are becoming the most ridiculous country in the world,” declared one caller, irked that the Tanaiste had been forced to stand down. Why, another asked, weren’t politicians concentrating instead on Brexit, which was “the biggest thing to hit Ireland since the Famine”? Well, it is Liveline.
Moving on, we really need to talk about Ryan. Specifically the news round ups which begin each edition of The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE Radio One, which are fast becoming the most inane witterings anywhere on the airwaves.
Ryan just blethers on, with little of interest to say on any of the stories he features, almost as if he’s ceased to care about the words coming out of his mouth.
On Thursday, he began by revealing that he’d watched the BBC nature programme Blue Planet the night before, and how struck he’d been, watching these amazing sea creatures, by “the fact that we’re like them and they’re like us, there’s this strange beauty about it all, and the survival, and then the little fish, and the Darwinianism (sic) of it all, and the beauty of it all, and the sadness of it all.” Seriously, what is this incoherent nonsense?
On Monday, he could be found addressing the “bizarre, Twilight Zone-y story” that at least three survivors of the recent Las Vegas shooting have since died in accidents. "Isn't that the oddest thing?" was Tubridy's comment. "Is that eerie? I mean, I kind of feel sometimes, maybe your time was up, your time was yo. Odd, odd, odd, odd, odd, odd, odd."
This really isn't good enough from Ireland’s highest paid broadcaster. Live radio is hard, but Tubridy only has an hour to fill. Pat Kenny and Ivan Yates do three hours a day; Today FM’s Matt Cooper is in his chair for two and a half; Sean O’Rourke, two. Ryan Tubridy shouldn’t be struggling so painfully to fill the silence.