When Newstalk goes national, can Orla Barry carry the station through the morning schedule now that Dunphy is gone and her slot pits her against Tubridy, Ryan and D'Arcy? Arminta Wallace meets the ambitious motor mouth from Cork
Bummer, working on a morning radio show. You have to get up at the crack of dawn every weekday; and you have to be ready to rock and roll before most of us have staggered as far as the nearest coffee machine. But the up side is, you get to finish work at lunchtime. Yes? "No!" exclaims an outraged Orla Barry. "That's what everyone thinks - my God!"
Her voice is exactly the same in real life as it is on Life! With Orla Barry on Newstalk 106: large, firm, and Cork-flavoured. Barry herself is gamine-slim, with a haircut to match, and an apparently endless store of energy - hence the length of that working day. She arrives at the station at 7.30am and rarely leaves before 6pm. As we weave our way through a newsroom full of earnest people gazing into computers and slip into a cupboard-sized office which, she hastens to explain, she has borrowed from a colleague for the occasion, she insists that the punishing regime is a matter of choice.
"I prefer to be on top of the stuff," she says. I like to know the ins and outs of every story and who the person is and what's going on. And I'd be bored, anyhow. Sure what would I do during the afternoon? I'd be going - 'oh!' " And she mimes a mixture of bafflement and frustration, eyebrows raised, fingers drumming on the desk. As if in response, a tiny desktop gizmo emits a couple of soft bleeps and a voice says something incomprehensible.
"News meeting," Barry translates. Does she need to go? She shakes her head. She has already spent an hour preparing for tomorrow's show. That's the secret of good live radio - prepare well, react fast, make it sound easy. Barry does all three with aplomb, and has the experienced broadcaster's instinct for when to let items ramble on, and when to pull the plug. She has been working this particular slot for two and a half years now, and her ratings are on a gentle but steady upward curve - not bad going when you're up against the biggest boys in morning radio, Ryan Tubridy, Gerry Ryan and Ray D'Arcy.
The show's format doesn't hurt, either. Easy-going daily slots are designed to draw listeners in on a regular basis: fashion tips and a TV preview on Mondays; wry celebrity chat from California-based Alan Silverman on Tuesdays; a weekend events preview from Irish Times columnist Róisín Ingle on Fridays and travel advice with Roslyn Dee of the Sunday Tribune on Thursdays. "It's not a show that's about news, or things you can put into a box - what it's about is things that all of us are going through in our daily lives," says Barry.
Such is the competitive nature of the radio market that Life! did not come about by accident - rather, it was carefully designed by Newstalk boffins. "The big thing was the target audience, which was younger than you'd find in RTÉ," Barry explains. "Then there's the fact that from the start, Newstalk has been a male-driven station. We were aware that we needed to bring female listeners in. And also, I always felt there was a gap, you know? If you have a male presenter in his 50s talking to female listeners - I mean, I'm in my early 30s, so he doesn't really represent what my life is about. I thought it would be good to bridge that gap." Design or no design, what gives Life! its distinctive feel is Barry's up-front and personal style; such as the day she bounced on to the airwaves with the cheerful declaration that she hadn't slept a wink because she poked her new contact lens into the corner of her eye the night before and couldn't get it out again. Her eye, she added, had swelled up "like a balloon" - no doubt prompting hundreds of commuters to cringe away from their rear-view mirrors in horrified unison.
"Hmm," she says, looking doubtful. Honesty, though, is part of her policy. "There have been times when we were trying to be too clever for our own boots. We've put in stuff that was a bit pretentious, and then afterwards you go - why did we do that? Sometimes you get a bit carried away. Someone on the team will say 'Oh, I went mountain biking in Ecuador and saw the most amazing . . .', or whatever, and I'll think, 'That's wonderful. Let's talk about that.'
"And you bring it on, and then you come out here and ask people - 'Did you listen to that item?' And they say, 'No, but I heard a great piece on women who don't take their husband's names when they get married.' You have to remind yourself all the time not to let your own interests invade the show."
Travel is, at the moment, Barry's biggest interest. "When Dee comes in every week to talk about the travel news, that's one of my favourite things. I just sit there, lost in the world of wherever she takes me. I studied Spanish and German at UCC; I had this big idea that I was going to become a translator and travel the world. That was the plan. Well, I went to Spain for a while and started working as an au pair, but I wasn't very good. The youngest child took a particular dislike to me on the first day. I remember coming in and she said something like, 'No me gusta la chica. Es fea, es fea.' ('I don't like that girl. She's ugly.')
"I had only recently learned the word 'fea' and I couldn't believe the way this four-year-old was throwing it around. Of course I had said on the application that I'd taken care of nieces and nephews - but basically I hadn't a clue. It was in Malaga, in this beautiful house up on a hillside with a swimming pool. A real patriarchal family. The husband used to come in at night and his dinner would be in front of him and his wife would be pottering around - but she had the nanny to take care of the kids, and a maid besides.
"It was very interesting - a real insight into another way of life. But by mutual agreement, it wasn't really working out. So I went and worked in an Irish bar. That was a bit tragic as well. I had to do Irish dancing on the street outside at night-time to try and entice people in - and I couldn't actually Irish dance. The owner, who was Spanish, had asked me if I could - and I needed the job, because I had no money - so I said yeah. I had never worked in a bar, either. Shocking."
Having made a tactical retreat to Ireland, she embarked on a master's degree in translation at DCU. "Some of the essays in Spanish would be about oil rigs - I mean, stuff about the really technical workings of some aspect of an oil rig, and you'd have to translate this back into English and vice versa. Even in English I had no idea what some of the words were. I found out that if I dropped out just before the exams, I'd get my money back. So that's what I did."
Time for a change of plan. She got involved with an organisation which published a bi-monthly magazine on the subject of HIV/Aids. "I used to write articles for them. I ended up doing more research work and things like that - but that was the start of the idea of writing, or getting into the media. Then I spotted an ad for a six-month broadcasting course with East Coast Radio." She worked there for two years, followed by stints at Dublin South Community Radio, South East Radio in Wexford and Radio Kerry, where she presented a morning show. She then moved to the fledgling Newstalk 106 where, at first, she co-presented the three-hour City Edition.
"A double-header is always a risk," she says. "Other stations do it, and I'm not sure that it always works. It's a hard gig to bring off. You're never sure what the other person wants to say, or when they want to come in, so there's a constant rivalry there. It worked while it worked, but the three hours was draining."
Barry was rescued by the arrival of Eamon Dunphy to present The Breakfast Show, which prompted a reshuffle of shifts. And now Dunphy is leaving. "No comment," she offers, in her firmest radio voice. What - not even a little one? "Well," she relents, "I wouldn't worry about Eamon. He'll be fine whatever he ends up doing. And the station will be fine, too. I don't know the ins and outs about what happened; but I know a lot of untruths have been printed." Regarding a replacement, she says all she and her colleagues have been told so far is that the station is "talking to everyone".
And as for the future, Barry is really looking forward to the station "going national" in October - although her own Cork roots and rural background have allowed her to play, as it were, outside the box. "A lot of the listeners text in saying, 'Who does yer wan think she is, talking on a Dublin station about things that affect Dublin lads and lassies?' I think it's good. I think I bring a different perspective to it all. Most Cork people would agree that Cork is almost tribal - but people's longing to go back to the county is something else. I've noticed that while I've been living in Dublin, and other cities as well; it's the Cork people who go back to visit most often. Or end up moving back."
It was Barry's mother who switched her on to radio in the first place. "I grew up on Marian Finucane. My mum was a big Liveline fan. She used to carry the radio around with her from room to room - she still does, actually. When I was down home the last time the radio was in her bathroom. Then it was in her bedroom, and then somewhere else. That's where my interest in radio came from. I listened to John Peel a lot - mostly for the music, but also, he had such a lovely delivery. Now I listen to Jonathan Ross at the weekends, if I can. I just think he's a very funny chap." What she doesn't do, she says, is get too hung up on checking out the weekday morning-slot opposition.
"If someone says, 'Oh, Gerry Ryan did a great interview with such and such a guest,' okay, I'd take a listen. But you have to take your own path too. I'm doing something that's just that little bit different. If you listen too much to the competition, you're in danger of starting to ape them - or losing faith in what you're doing." The gizmo beeps again, and begins its other-worldly murmur. Barry cocks her head and listens. "Hmm. Something about chocolate," she announces. It may not be time to go home, but it is time for lunch.
Life! with Orla Barry is on Newstalk 106 every weekday morning from 9am to 11am