Text behind Devlin rant secret

Martin Devlin’s on-air tirade against a listener who sent him an abusive text on his Radio Sport show The Devlin Radio Show has been described as ‘‘a rambunctious survey stunt’’ by the man himself.

Devlin may be downplaying the incident, but a human rights lawyer declared the incident was ‘‘bullying’’.

Devlin was interviewing Dean Lonergan on Tuesday morning when the former rugby league player compared the process of building the under-performing Warriors back up to Devlin’s own evolution as a radio host.

‘‘You’d be the first to admit that when you come into a job as a radio host, it takes time for the audience to grow to like you,’’ Lonergan said.

‘‘You can do the job you’re doing for five years and only get small incremental changes, then after a long period of time – because the audience starts to like you and talk about you – it grows quickly. It takes time!’’

Devlin countered Lonergan’s assertions with an unexpected sideways reference to his rant from the day before.

‘‘The other way of doing it of course is you just do a sort of a rambunctious survey stunt and sort of just yell and scream at people and then of course it becomes a media event and then of course you get a whole lot of new audience,’’ Devlin said. ’’I mean, that’s a cheap way of doing it isn’t it?’’

Lonergan, who picked up straight away on what Devlin was referring to, responded by asking what we all want to know - just what was in the text that set Devlin off?

‘‘I tell you what, I thought your rant yesterday was an absolute piece of genius,’’ Lonergan said. ‘‘What did the guy say to you, what did he text you?’’

Devlin was dismissive of the question, offhandedly replying that ‘‘it would have been something to do with Liverpool [Devlin being a Manchester United fan]’’, before adding, ‘‘look, I don’t even want to go there’’.

Neither Devlin nor Radio Sport have responded to further requests for comment.

But a a respected human rights lawyer did choose to weigh in via Twitter.

‘‘Pretty sure that announcing a phone number on air, swearing and threatening to track them down is also bullying,’’ said Greg Robins, a senior solicitor at the Office of Human Rights Proceedings, in response to a Devlin supporter’s description of the anonymous texter as a ‘‘bully’’.

When asked whether they had received any complaints about Devlin’s broadcast, the Broadcasting Standards Authority said ‘‘the BSA doesn’t give out any information about whether or not we’ve received a complaint about a specific broadcast’’.