After a very public courtship involving many Instagram updates and a jolly cameo on the station, Ryan Tubridy has sealed the deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Virgin Radio UK. He seems pleased.
“Desperately excited” were the words he used on air to breakfast presenter Chris Evans, before immediately reinforcing British perceptions of the Irish by talking about God.
“How did this happen?” asked Evans. Good question. Tubridy might need longer than his 10am-1pm weekday slot to explain everything that led him to London and Virgin.
Having been told repeatedly in the wake of the RTÉ hidden payments scandal that he had been “ill-advised”, Tubridy’s statement was notable for pointedly thanking the “people who advised me so well recently and got me to this moment”.
[ Ryan Tubridy announces move to London to host Virgin Radio showOpens in new window ]
His agent and fellow Oireachtas committee witness Noel Kelly duly released an image of himself flanked by Evans and his client against a branded Virgin Radio backdrop.
“Take a bow Mr Tubridy, you are wonderful and inspirational,” purred Kelly’s company NK Management, which just so happens to be paid to think that.
After RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst decided RTÉ was better off cutting the cord, Tubridy needed a new job. So why was Virgin Radio UK interested in giving him one?
Unlike the much-admired Graham Norton, who presents from 9.30am to 12.30pm on weekends – making midmornings on the Virgin schedule 100 per cent Irish – Tubridy has no profile of note in Britain, with his last stand-in stint on BBC Radio 2 coming in 2015.
Virgin Radio UK has sought to make a virtue of this, with content director Mike Cass describing Tubridy as “the pre-eminent broadcaster in Ireland for years” – with his “the” italicised for emphasis – and insisting that the station would “bring his warmth, humour and unique charisma to the UK audience properly for the first time”.
Its press release also quotes Scott Taunton, the broadcasting boss of Virgin’s parent company, News UK & Ireland, saying Tubridy is a “star” in Ireland and it was delighted to be able to “create a destination for [his] loyal fans, as well as a UK-wide platform across Virgin Radio UK”.
In an intriguing twist, the show, which starts in January, will be simulcast on Dublin’s Q102, one of seven Irish stations that belong to the same group, while Tubridy will also present a “dedicated Irish weekend show” on four of those stations: Q102, Cork’s 96FM, Live 95 in Limerick, LMFM in Louth and Meath.
The opportunity to boost Q102′s 5.3 per cent market share in Dublin – albeit with a UK-focused show – and swell the weekend listenership of all four stations is a nice bonus for Virgin.
But the company – which licenses the station’s name from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group – clearly wouldn’t risk exposing Tubridy to hundreds of thousands of British listeners if it wasn’t confident he would have greater appeal than the slot’s current occupant, “positivity super spreader” Eddy Temple-Morris. British radio stations aren’t in the habit of picking up the services of out-of-work Irish broadcasters out of charity.
In any case, Tubridy’s patter may well play second fiddle to the musically conservative, hits-focused Virgin playlist. It would be a surprise if he was either permitted to reprise the extended monologues of his Radio 1 days or wasn’t himself aware of the need for an adjustment in tone and style.
[ RTÉ board admits to ‘lapse of control’ around ‘Toy Show the Musical’Opens in new window ]
A key figure in this career development for Tubridy is Evans, who succeeded Terry Wogan as presenter of the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show before being lured to Virgin in 2018. Evans, who enthusiastically welcomed Tubridy as a guest on his show in September as a teaser of the signing to come, was also instrumental in Norton’s decision to join the station.
Another Irish presenter, one who never made the move to London, has a role in the backstory here: shortly after a blow-up that saw Evans leave BBC Radio 1 in 1997, he went on holiday in Ireland and tuned into a broadcaster who reinvigorated his love of radio: the late Gerry Ryan.
In truth, the Virgin slot is unlikely to put Tubridy on a fast-track to the sort of affection and fame enjoyed by either Norton or Wogan, who became a gently central figure in the cultural life of the UK during a less fragmented media era.
But after the love-in of his final Late Late Show, the last five months have, as he admitted, been “bumpy”. Now he has a “quite surreal” new gig to announce with a solid helping of exclamation marks and, no doubt, a sense of personal vindication.
