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Marty Morrissey’s flamboyant good cheer provides an unexpected highlight of the week

RTÉ presenter’s idiosyncratic broadcasting persona is imbued with a quirky sincerity, as well as a welcome bonhomie

RTÉ’s Marty Morrissey. Photograph: James Crombie/©INPHO

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Mick Heaney
Fri Jan 5 2024 - 05:00

With the new year, a clean slate. As 2024 dawns, one Irish broadcaster is particularly grateful for the chance to get on the airwaves and bid farewell the annus horribilis that threatened to leave his carefully curated image in tatters. And so it is that Marty Morrissey (RTÉ Radio 1, New Year’s Day) kicks off his traditional bank holiday chatshow with a palpable sense of relief. “Many of us were happy to say slán, adios, to a year that we may want to forget,” says Morrissey, obliquely referring to his public apology last summer for a car loan deal that came to light amid the RTÉ payments scandal.

Also keen to move on from 2023 is Morrissey’s erstwhile colleague Ryan Tubridy, as the man whose opaque side deals triggered the seismic RTÉ crisis starts his own new show on British radio. But while Tubridy’s demeanour exudes an exculpatory indifference to the mess he left behind, the contrition shown by Morrissey for his error of judgment imbues his idiosyncratic broadcasting persona – part county GAA official, part parish playboy – with a quirky sincerity, as well as a welcome bonhomie.

Well, mostly welcome. Morrissey begins his newspaper panel by confessing he shouldn’t have earlier kissed his guests – all women – on the cheek, as he has the flu. “I just wanted to share my love,” he says sheepishly, the laughter of his panellists dispelling any incipient unease at the incident. This faux pas successfully negotiated, host and guests quickly skim over bad news – of which there is much – to concentrate on more uplifting subjects such as the virtues of reading. Author Barbara Scully recalls how books got her through the pandemic – “you can escape reality in a book,” she says – and commends a new year’s resolution to read more as “something that will actually improve your life”.

Throughout it all, Morrissey remains determinedly jocular. True, he injects a due air of concern when speaking to Tokyo-based journalist and Irish Times contributor David McNeill about the earthquake in Japan, but he’s at his best with items such as his interview with Irish dancers and social media stars Michael and Matthew Gardiner. What could be a generic encounter proves an unexpectedly diverting segment: the Bronx-raised host bonds with the Colorado-born brothers about growing up in the United States, before his guests perform a routine on-air, the staccato rhythm of their steps compensating for the lack of visuals. (Dancing on the radio isn’t new: in the 1950s, one of Radio Éireann’s most popular shows was Take The Floor, an Irish dance broadcast presented by Denis “Din Joe” Fitzgibbon.) Given the state of the world, it’s hard to be optimistic about the coming year, but Morrissey’s flamboyant good cheer puts a spring in the step.

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Across the water, Tubridy is unabashedly hoping for a new beginning. Broadcast from the London studios of Virgin Radio UK and simultaneously transmitted on local stations in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Louth/Meath, the Ryan Tubridy Show (Q102, 96FM, Live 95, LMFM, weekdays) has already been picked over by critics – including this one – curious to hear how the sometime RTÉ golden boy fares in environs other than the beleaguered network he exited under a cloud.

Suffice to say, his daily three-hour shift of shiny pop-rock hits (think 1980s-era MTV) and light banter is still in its very early stages, but for anyone disappointed that Tubridy didn’t talk enough about the Beatles in his old Radio 1 show, your ship has come in.

[ Ryan Tubridy’s new radio show review: Buttery charm, frothy good humour and A-list interviews ]

That aside, most of the first week’s material is provided by messages of goodwill from Irish listeners, which while doubtless heartening for Tubridy are presumably less interesting to his putative UK audience. (There’s absolutely no mention of the circumstances that brought him to London.) In fairness, a chummy phone interview with actor Russell Crowe from his outback home provides a stellar boost on the host’s first day. But as the week rolls on, one suspects Tubridy’s conspicuously overenthusiastic discussion about teenage darts newcomer Luke Littler is a more accurate indication of his show’s future direction. The host’s excitement seems to grow in inverse proportion to the banality of his subject matter: ominously, he sounds almost hoarse with giddiness by the end of Wednesday’s show. Tubridy’s comeback has some way to go.

Can Ryan Tubridy succeed on UK radio?

Listen | 23:01

While some look forward, others cast a wistful eye back. The most quietly affecting programme of the holiday season is Goodbye to the Glebe (RTÉ Radio 1, St Stephen’s Day), which follows famed English film-maker John Boorman in the days before he leaves his long-time Wicklow home. Boorman spoke movingly to Miriam O’Callaghan at the time of his departure in November 2022, but this feature by producer Kevin Reynolds, who made several radio dramas with the director, is more intimate yet sprawling.

[ John Boorman’s Wicklow home, where Sean Connery and Lee Marvin came for dinner, for sale after 50 years for €2.75m ]

The documentary follows Reynolds and actor Stephen Rea – an enjoyably deadpan companion – as they make one last visit to Boorman in his house, the eponymous Glebe. There, they meet his daughter Daisy and local friends, while hearing family lore and neighbourly anecdotes. This conjures a vibrant portrait of the life around Boorman’s Irish home, not least the trees he keenly cultivated. (By way of personal disclosure, our family were visitors to the Glebe when I was a child.)

It’s a poignant but unsentimental tribute to a man who made classics such as Deliverance, encouraged the Irish film industry and nurtured the landscape around him

Amid the activity, Boorman is phlegmatic and reflective as he contemplates moving – “I haven’t been able to assess it emotionally” – and ageing: “I have hung around here 10 years longer than I deserve.” Buoyed by an evocative soundtrack from Colm Mac Con Iomaire, it’s a poignant but unsentimental tribute to a man who made classics such as Deliverance, encouraged the Irish film industry and nurtured the landscape around him; “an English oak thriving in this emerald forest,” in Reynolds’s description, the latter phrase a reference to one of Boorman’s most cherished movies. Some farewells are fonder than others.

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