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Carl, Roz & Aisling’s on-air vibes trump cookie-cutter formulas on 2FM’s new breakfast show

Radio: The new presenters get off to the good start the station needs after the calamity of its biggest stars leaving in a single week

2FM Breakfast: Carl Mullan, Aisling Bonner and Roz Purcell. Photograph: Andres Poveda/RTÉ
2FM Breakfast: Carl Mullan, Aisling Bonner and Roz Purcell. Photograph: Andres Poveda/RTÉ

If Woody Allen – yes, I know – is correct in his opinion that 80 per cent of success is showing up, then 2FM Breakfast with Carl, Roz & Aisling (RTÉ 2FM, weekdays) is set to be a triumph. “We all made it in on day two,” Aisling Bonner boasts on Tuesday morning, marvelling at the landmark that she and her cohosts, Carl Mullan and Roz Purcell, have reached.

But while turning up for your new job might seem a low bar for bragging rights in other walks of life, it’s not something to be taken for granted at 2FM, which only nine months ago saw its biggest stars leave in a single calamitous week.

The mere presence of Bonner and her colleagues in the studio therefore merits their inclusion in the station’s freshly relaunched schedule. As it happens, however, Bonner also admits that she nearly missed her second day on the show, having spent the previous night struggling with gastric fallout from a bean stew. Her digestive misfortune draws gleeful cackling from Mullan and recipe tips from Purcell, a cookbook author as well as a former model.

It’s a decent snapshot of the dynamic already taking shape among the trio. Bonner – recruited from the Dublin station Spin1038 – acts as the merrily provocative newbie, Purcell casts herself as a “dry shite” (although she’s livelier than that) and Mullan, a veteran of the 2FM morning shift since 2021, plays the irreverent joker.

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Even at this early stage the presenters generate a sparky chemistry. Which is just as well, because some of the rejigged show’s newly introduced features carry a whiff of the back of the envelope.

A segment entitled What You Looking At? – heralded by the trio warbling to the tune of What’s New Pussycat? – is just that, with listeners invited to share what they’re currently, well, looking at. As it’s just after 6am, commuting features prominently.

Review: Doireann Garrihy restores some celeb lustre to troubled 2FM with larky verveOpens in new window ]

But a pleasing curveball rescues the lame premise. After one caller graphically describes scenes of calving in his farmyard barn, Purcell recounts how, as a child growing up on a horse farm, she had to single-handedly help a mare give birth to a foal. Mullan sounds humbled: he meekly recalls fainting when his wife got an epidural during childbirth.

Such instances underline how on-air vibes can trump cookie-cutter formulas. The hourly contests may be a bit rote – in fairness, radio quizzes are rarely inspiring – but the three hosts bounce off each other exuberantly, as when Bonner reveals that she’s a bona-fide pinball wizard (she’s Ireland’s leading woman player of the arcade game) or when Purcell dramatically describes once spotting a UFO, only to realise that it was a birthday balloon.

This capacity for surprise may lessen as Mullan, Purcell and Bonner get to know each other better. And given the zany demands of the “morning zoo” format, there are inevitable diversions into less lofty territory. On Wednesday, Bonner’s conspiratorial revelation that lube is a secret ingredient for hairdos during photo shoots triggers a collapse into lascivious laughter.

“The wheels have come off the bus and it’s only day three,” their 2FM colleague Laura Fox comments, witnessing the trio’s helpless mirth. But, on the vibrant evidence so far, Mullan, Purcell and Bonner should be rolling on for some time yet.

The revamped morning show is just one part of a broader makeover at 2FM, which sees changes to the weekend line-up and, most significantly, the return of Doireann Garrihy, less than a year after she sensationally departed the station along with Jennifer Zamparelli and the 2 Johnnies.

Having previously cohosted the breakfast slot with Mullan and the former rugby international Donncha O’Callaghan – now gone too – the presenter now has her own solo berth, 2FM Drive with Doireann Garrihy (weekdays).

It seems a mutually beneficial move. Garrihy – who also, with Zamparelli, hosts RTÉ One’s Dancing with the Stars TV juggernaut – returns to national radio without the hellishly early starts and with her name on the marquee. 2FM, meanwhile, having been in a state of flux since last May – the steadying performances of Fox and her fellow daytime host Tracy Clifford notwithstanding – gets a much-needed stellar boost to steady the ship and bolster ratings.

But, judging by the evidence so far, it mightn’t be a rapid turnaround in fortunes. Though the star of the show, Garrihy is accompanied throughout by her wingpeople Taran O’Sullivan and Hugh Carr, the better to maintain patter and merriment over three hours of airtime. In contrast to the 2FM Breakfast crew, the host and her new companions haven’t quite gelled in their (admittedly short) time together. If they sound suitably enthusiastic, their rapport sounds uncertain and hesitant at times. “The nerves were here,” the host concedes about her first day.

Garrihy is also still working out how to best use her talents, such as the celebrity impressions that initially earned her viral fame. If her impersonations of the Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty and the reality-TV star Maura Higgins have a cheeky brevity, Wednesday’s improv segment, featuring Dáithí Ó Sé talking about sausages, is self-consciously wacky rather than actually funny.

True, the atmosphere grows more relaxed as the gang learn each other’s foibles – Carr’s taste in “screamo” punk comes in for amiable ribbing on Wednesday – though it doesn’t match the zingy tone of the morning show, never mind the unrelenting lads’ banter of the drivetime slot’s previous incumbents, the 2 Johnnies. (The latter isn’t necessarily a negative.)

Any new show needs time to find its rhythm, particularly when trying to balance team spirit with star power: Carr and O’Sullivan don’t act as on-air courtiers, but Garrihy, a broadcaster of natural ease and garrulous appeal, is unambiguously queen bee.

Amid all this, there remains the perennial issue of 2FM’s position as a State-owned music station in competition with similar radio rivals and predatory online platforms. But that’s a question for another day. For now the new presenters have turned up. Now they just have to stick around.

Moment of the week

As host of Lunchtime Live (Newstalk, weekdays) Andrea Gilligan enjoys playing the purveyor of common sense in a world of baffling trends. And so it is on Wednesday, when she discusses the supposedly pretentious language of modern restaurant menus with the food writers Russell Alford and Ali Dunworth, archly wondering what “wild albacore sashimi” is. (Tuna sashimi, Dunworth replies.)

Ultimately, Gilligan clunkily concludes that “the fancier the description on the menu, the restaurant’s hiding something”. But, in truth, by skewering such easily mocked contemporary mores, the host is shooting fish in a barrel. Or as an imaginary menu might have it, discharging high-velocity projectiles towards shimmering piscine specimens in a cylindrical vessel of polished oak.