The Importance Of Being David

Dave Fanning is not so great at taking his own advice. The first sentence of the introduction to the veteran Dublin DJ’s just published autobiography The Thing Is... reads: “The Thing Is... you should always get to the point.”

In fairness, he does in the book, which, while not deeply revealing about his personal life, is witty, entertaining, well-told, and light on the kind of waffle that celebrity books are far too prone to. Conversationally, however, as will already be well-known to both Fanning fans and detractors, he only tends to get to the point via several other points. A rapid-fire interviewee, he’s a joy to chat to, but an absolute bitch to transcribe.
Bono puts it best in his foreword to the book: “He is not serene, our Dave. His conversation is more white-water rafting... ideas percolate... he tests them out on you, wondering who will capsize first... It’s a furtive intelligence; a very fast and furious brain, given to a boy and a character with impeccable manners and grace.”
He’s ten minutes late for our meeting in the Library Bar of the Central Hotel, but apologises profusely upon arrival (before asking, “Jesus, am I even late at all?”). The impeccable manners and grace undoubtedly came from his parents – religious mum Annie, and relaxed civil servant dad, Barney. According to the book, Fanning loved his Mount Merrion family home so much he remained living there until his late twenties. He was already a household name by the time he left, having quickly graduated from the pirate radio stations to RTÉ, where he remains an institution via a steady stream of consistently good radio and TV shows.
Thin, angular and sharply dressed, Fanning still looks pretty fab for a 55-year-old father of three. This is undoubtedly the result of having thus far lived a relatively charmed, happy and freewheeling life, travelling around and getting paid for doing things he loves to do – listening to music, watching movies, and talking to the creators of both. As he says in the book, “What a long strange trip it’s been. Then again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
He drinks two cups of coffee over the course of his Hot Press hour, but probably didn’t need them...
OLAF TYARANSEN: Dave, it says here that you didn’t lose your virginity until you were 20, and didn’t leave the family home until you were 28? That’s not very rock and roll!
DAVE FANNING: Hold on, I think I was about 29 when I left home. I’d say it would be nearer that, yeah. Didn’t lose my virginity until I was 20, no, which is very old for a lot of people, considering you are in college, and you’re doing other things. And I have no qualms about that. I don’t regret any of it. Would I change things? No. Fine, you know [laughs]. You’re looking at me accusingly, as if to say, ‘Jesus, why didn’t you just join the priesthood and get it done with, Dave?!’ That’s all true, yeah.
Do you think you stayed at home so long because you were the youngest child?
Probably, yeah. But it was also when I went to UCD – everything I went to was only a mile to my house. I lived in Foster’s Avenue. If you spat out the fucking window, you’d hit UCD. It was about a yard. Also, there was a hole in the fence there, and I used to go through that. But genuinely – and I don’t care what you say – for all the cool people coming up from the country and from various places trying to get the flat with the one-bar of electricity and the nine guys living with him in Ranelagh – I don’t care, like – my house was more rockin’ anyways, you know, any time of the night. My parents didn’t really care too much. So it was totally cool, you know.
It sounds like yours was a very happy childhood.
It was. And I’m now thinking about inventing trauma. It was brilliant, everything was perfect, it was all about music; it was all about movies. Probably the same as yourself, although Olaf, you were probably into a lot more things than I was. Like taking the Inca trail, or living with Howard Marks for a month, or something. That kind of thing. I was just into a pathetic little music thing.
Entertaining and all as it is, your book isn’t particularly revealing of the real Dave Fanning. Have you really never had any trauma in your life?
The only one would be my parents died, but that’s not considered a trauma because they were old enough. You know, my father was 75, my mother was 88. So that’s not really counted as trauma. The only one would be that I have a brother who lives in Canada and he has a daughter who was killed by a drunken driver on St Patrick’s Day, and she was crossing the road dressed in green, at the age of 17. And that was about 1997. And then because of that, my mother didn’t last another year, and she had ten years in her. But, I mean, I’m going to be honest, it wasn’t my kid that died. Also, it was a kid that was over in Canada, and much as I knew her and loved her very much, she wasn’t part of my everyday life. And it’s terrible to be able to make that disassociation, but I’m making it. So, to answer your question, no. Though that might seem like a catalogue of trauma for some people.
You castigate yourself in the book for not being particularly supportive when your wife Ursula had a miscarriage.
Yeah, no question about it. I think, ‘Jesus, am I alone in this? Am I an uncaring fucking asshole, or something?’ I just didn’t... maybe it was up to me to say, ‘Okay, let’s go again’. Or like, ‘There’s nothing you fucking can do about it’. And like, what do you want me to say? I didn’t know the kid. I mean, sorry. I’m sorry. And I wasn’t carrying. I don’t even know at this stage how many months it was. It’s a terrible thing to be saying, probably. No doubt about it. But I think it’s not a bad attitude to have. I think Ursula would almost like somebody in a relationship – me – to have that attitude, because then you move on. I mean, it has happened to my nephew only last week, but the difference between what happened to him and to me is a million miles. Theirs was stillborn. So it’s just a different ballgame, you know. And it’s their first. And, you know, the trauma of that is huge.
Are you an emotional type generally or are you distant?
I would have thought I probably was quite distant – it was only when tested that I realised I was very emotional. If I’m not tested – and that could be ten years with no test – then I’m just rockin’ along. I don’t even know what an emotional type necessarily means. Like, would I be capable of crying or anything like that?
Yeah.
Jesus, absolutely. I mean, I cry at a movie. I’m wondering do I cry… I think I cry more later in life, or, I’m capable of crying more later in life, than I ever was before. Is that natural, is it?
Well, it’s probably different for everybody, isn’t it?
I don’t know. But certainly I would be capable of it, yeah. Definitely. Especially at the big news things. I remember the biggest one of all was… not Hungerford where the guy killed all the people. Dunblane! Where the guy killed all the kids in the school. Dunblane, where your man, the tennis player is from [Andy Murray]. That affected me big time. I just couldn’t read it. I couldn’t read any more, you know. It was really weird, some of the details.
Are you quick to anger?
I don’t think I am, no. And do you know something, that might necessarily not be great praise for myself. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing. Quick to anger is, I think, possibly a trait that’s under-valued a little bit. Sometimes we should be. Jesus, if I was a bit quicker to anger, maybe if we all were, we wouldn’t be in the shit we’re in. When you see some of this stuff, you know.
Journalist Ian Gittins gets a co-writing credit on the book. Did you write much of the text yourself?
What I did was this: I wrote a book, and I gave it to Ian Gittins, and he only came back with one thing, and it was something like, ‘you’re going to have to put more of this in’ – and it was only once, and it was all private stuff, nothing about music or movies, nothing to do with the way things... Well, he did shape things. Also, by the way, the first chapter – I don’t know how to do a first chapter. So he said, ‘How about that awards ceremony you mentioned later on? We’ll put that at the beginning and we’ll kind of change it around to go with the lyrics of the song’. And that was his idea. A lot of it, also, was just to do with girlfriends, and to do with the sex thing – of losing my virginity in America – and all that kind of thing. Like, ‘You need to put that in’. So I said, ‘Okay, I’m putting it in on one condition: if there’s a phrase in it like ‘I popped my cherry’, which is one you used but I’d never use, I’m putting it in. So people know it’s not me. I’d never fucking use a word like that, you fucking eejit’. So we left it out. So it was cool. He did shape things. I gave it to him and he changed a few things, he said, ‘How do you like that?’ I said, ‘Fine’. But they were all there anyway. He just put things into a different place or whatever.
Why did you feel the need to do this book at this time?
I didn’t. I had time. And I was asked before by Irish publishers. So, I’m not going to lie. I have an agent guy who said, ‘Dave, come on we’re going to meet these people’. And suddenly I was meeting this person with [agent] Noel Kelly. She said, ‘You’re going to do this, and this. Give it to me in six months, or a year, or whatever’. And suddenly I was doing it. There was no need. And I never felt anything. And, you know, I’m being honest there.
Are you happy with it?
Do you know something, this is the funny thing: up to about three weeks ago I was thinking about this book quite negatively – but now that I actually see it and look at it, I actually think it’s okay. I genuinely do [laughs]. I don’t care what anybody says, regardless. But anyway, I’m much happier with it than I was.
Have your kids read it?
The kids haven’t read it. One of them is pretending to read it; he has got it beside his bed. He says, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve read the first chapter’, which means, ‘I’m not going any further’. They couldn’t give a damn. There’s a photograph, like, there’s been one of me and Bono and Robert in the paper about six times, and he says, ‘Oh Jesus! Ugh!’ I was on the cover of the RTÉ Guide once with the kids where I made the mistake – for Fanning’s Fab 50. I hadn’t done any promo for it, so… Imagine doing the cover of the RTÉ Guide to sell Fanning’s Fab 50? So I did it with the family. And they all think, ‘Oh God!’ They didn’t give a damn about it, never looked at it again. They don’t care. I think it’s great. That’s why I think it’s good of Bruce Willis or Gerry Ryan, or any of these people, to stick their kids out in front when they go to a charity movie, or something like that. Just do it. Like, who do you think you are? You’re just a feckin’ DJ. It’s not as though you’re Obama or something. Nobody cares.
There’s been a new broom in 2fm – and you’re back in the mix.
I’m doing seven-to-nine on 2fm; I’m also looking at a TV thing for the New Year, which is only in its early stages, of some kind of interview thing, which is definitely going to happen. I’m still talking to Sky about rock interviews, and they want to finance another bunch of them, which is great – because it’s something I wasn’t sure was going to happen. And then there’s a reconfiguration or something in the feckin’ States – somebody I was working with in the States – and they’re going to be back to me in the New Year to start that again.
Would you describe yourself a workaholic?
People have called me that.
According to the book, you’ve never taken a sick day in your life.
I haven’t. Not one. Isn’t that… that’s sick! [laughs] That is bizarre, but I live beside RTÉ, and if I’m in Dublin at all I want to do my gig. I just like doing it, simple as that. There’s nothing else I can say about that. If I’m in Dublin I always want to do the programme, and I always want to do it live. I have recorded the programme on occasion. In fact, I still cheat now and again – like for Guns N’ Roses I recorded the last hour, dashed down – they didn’t come on stage until half-ten. I was there from ten-past-eight. It was pathetic. And for the book launch last Wednesday, I recorded in advance. So you’d go in at four o’clock, you do two hours – because at the moment I’m doing a really weird thing on radio that some people aren’t doing, I’m just more or less shutting up and playing music. I’m not reading out any texts, which is unusual. I don’t have items in the first hour, like I did for a couple of years there. Well, I might go back to that in January. It’s just, ‘That was The Beatles’. Done. ‘That was The Clash’. Done. ‘Here’s The Sex Pistols. That was …’ whoever it happens to be at the moment.
Do you think there’s too much talk on radio?
No, because eventually I’d like to get back into doing that myself. I’m doing a talk programme on Saturday afternoon. And I’d like to do more of that, actually. I think I want to get back into that and do less music. I don’t think there’s too much talk on the radio, no. But I just think on a music programme sometimes they waffle on too much about the latest text that has just come in. Just this business of, ‘I have a text here from Mary on her way to so-and-so asking can you play “something”?’ ‘Oh no, I played that five weeks ago, I’m not playing it again’’ You know this inane waffle? And too many people say their own name, ‘Hi Jim …’; ‘Hi Jim …’ Don’t say the ‘Hi Jim’ bit! Just read the text. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I’m getting pretty pernickety. I’m sure I’ve done it myself.
You presented an episode of Ireland’s Greatest last week, making the case for Bono as the greatest Irish person ever. Do you really think that he is?
No. I don’t feel anybody is. Nobody is Ireland’s greatest. Give me a break. It’s a sign of the times, as you well know, that no matter what happens you have to have an element of the public being involved. And it was actually the public who supposedly voted these five people as whatever. And there’s another five you could pick in a second, in the same way as any movie in the Oscars. And that’s why they went [for] ten movies this year, like, you just can’t do it. So what we’re doing now, in effect, is trying to compare Schindler’s List and Toy Story. And it’s just silly. But once you know it’s silly it’s okay. But if you get too serious with it... [shrugs].
You went to Africa to film some of the documentary...
Yeah, I went to Ghana for two days. I went on Friday evening, I came back on Monday morning.
Was that your first time in Africa?
No, I went to… I’ve been to weird places like Cambodia and all that. But no, in Africa I went to Ethiopia and Eritrea for about two weeks each, years ago in the nineties, for Trócaire. And so this time it wasn’t as much of a culture-shock. Frankly, I don’t know if Ghana was in as bad a state as Ethiopia was. I don’t think it was at all. It’s terrible how I mightn’t know the difference, but for them it must be a huge difference. But Ethiopia was frightening. Ghana was – the minute you are just flung in, you know exactly how bad it is, and you’re there and it’s fine. Or not fine, if you know what I mean. Acceptably not fine.
Were you affected by the economic crash?
Well, I don’t have things like stocks and shares, and I didn’t put any money into property. Having said that, I did make a bit of a mistake. I didn’t buy a house. Like, anybody who bought a house between 1996 and 2006 is pretty fucked in one way, really. The money you paid for it, you’ll never be able to get it back. What I did do, though, in 2005, is I renovated the house I was in. And that’s just as bad. So, ‘Was I affected by the crash?’ You fucking bet ya! On that level, like, it was a kind of simplistic one, a simple one. It wasn’t a speculative one, or it wasn’t a ‘Let’s start making loads of money here,’ one. It was one just of necessity, so I don’t lose sleep over that.
Do you agree with Jay Leno’s assessment of Brian Cowen as “a drunken moron”?
The funny thing is, I don’t like too much emphasis on just one night of having a few drinks too many, and doing an interview the next morning. I mean, to a lot of people it’s a microcosm of the whole problem, but in another way it just takes away from the seriousness of just how bad it all is. It’s too easy to slag all these people, so I’m going to slag them. I mean, it’s just just so bad. Terrible. It’s just, it’s mad [puts head in hands]. And then, at the moment, the guy who presided over the whole thing – with a big wink and a nod – is now sitting in a cupboard doing an ad for a Sunday newspaper saying who scored the goals. And it has just gone beyond a joke.… And also, even in the kind of like, ‘Maggie’ – no, Margaret Thatcher, the wanker – you know what I mean. That ‘Bertie’. Stop this ‘Bertie’ business! By the way, what’s on his passport? What’s his real name? Is it Robert? Or Albert? I presume it’s not Bertie, but I’m just saying stop this. It’s like saying, ‘John “The Thrasher” O’Neill who killed six gangland criminals’. And all these ‘also known as’. Don’t tell me that: that’s for Batman with the Penguin. Even ‘dissident Republicans’. ‘Wankers.’ How about that? You know, it’s stupid. ‘Dissident Republicans’ actually makes it look as though these people really care about this country. We should just call them what they are – ‘wankers’. It’s just… those names are ridiculous. Anyway, sorry I’m ranting.
The one thing in the book that you genuinely seemed angry about was RTÉ apologising [following a complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission] for your live on-air rant about the Catholic Church during a review of TV documentary Deliver Us From Evil on the Marian Finucane Show.
Yeah, I was very angry about that, and that happened before all these Ryan and Murphy Reports came out, you know. And it’s pretty obvious. What do you want me to say that hasn’t been said? I just hope it doesn’t get swept under the carpet. And Cardinal Brady is in the paper this morning saying something along the lines of ‘this is a time for healing and reconciliation’. And like… stop! And by the way, that’s a stupid hat you wear, and your friends and acolytes on that altar. Like, the second item on the news on a Sunday night can still be, ‘The Archbishop’s blah, blah, blah, and in front of the Holy See …’, and all these weird religious things. Like, the Klu-Klux Klan are less bleedin’ weird… it is beyond insane. It’s way beyond a joke. And the fact that I did what I did, and was then hauled over the coals for it, and an apology was read out by RTÉ, in the year 2007, is very depressing. It just beggars belief that that can happen. The whole set-up is a joke.
It’s obvious you have little or no time for organised religion, but do you believe in a God?
I don’t.
What happens after we die?
[Blows lips] That’s it. That’s the end. Absolutely.
Why is life worth living then?
For itself. And for those that might be left behind. And certainly if you have kids. But I don’t want to get in the way of people who do want to believe in that. I do think there is an element of, a lot of people want to believe, therefore they believe, so therefore that makes me win the Lotto next Saturday! It’s ludicrous, and I want to win the Lotto next Saturday, but am I going to win the Lotto next Saturday? I mean, we’ve such self-importance. It’s ludicrous. Who do we think they are? We are one step up from... Cows can’t build these buildings here, you know, so that means there’s a God – for us. And then even when I was in school, if you worshipped a false God, which was like Buddha, which was like all these Gods that other people have, then you had blasphemed, you were gone forever, consigned to hell. So literally, billions of people around the world who kind of do the exact same thing as you do are wrong. Look at Scientology – look at the ten pages of what Scientology is, the first ten, and it’s the funniest thing you’ll ever read. It is absolutely bizarre. It is out there. Then read the one for the Catholic Church – it’s not really all that different [laughs].
Given the number of Hollywood actors you’ve interviewed, you must know a lot of Scientologists?
I know a good few. Well, I don’t know a good few, but some of my friends in LA would have friends who are Scientologists. One or two guys I know pretty well who are, yeah. Mad. In fact, one guy I know, he has actually moved nearer to whatever you call the Scientology centre. He moved there about two years ago, to be nearer to where all the action is – the big Scientology thing. He’d be hit by the aura better, or something. It’s ridiculous. But I mean, like, whatever turns you on in another way. Although the Scientology thing is a little bit more Gordon Gekko-ish; if you have a broken leg, then goodbye, you’re out. You know, because you have to be… Scientology is a bit more Reagan/Thatcher kind of thing, like, ‘We simply can’t help you because you’re poor’. You know?
Moving from Scientology to Kabbalah, you described Madonna as a ‘wanker’ in the book.
Not strictly true, that’s not the full story. First of all, she was at that interview – Ian Dempsey was at that interview, by the way. I never mentioned that in the book. I mentioned he was at the interview with The Rolling Stones. But he was actually with me, he was one of the ten journalists in the room – and she was a pain in the ass. Well, she wasn’t a pain in the ass, but she has this thing where she was the most famous woman on the planet at the time, she had the Sex book, so all the work was done. She was only just doing promos, and she kind of sashays into the room, and she’s completely in charge of all ten of us. And I’m not used to doing [that]. I’ve only done two of those kind of interviews in my life, and I hate them. I am no good at them.
Round table interviews or press conferences are a pain.
Even with [Bob] Dylan I just cowered in the background and let Mr. fucking Oslo go on and on and on. It was pointless trying to say anything because you only get there sometimes by [question] number five, if you are really probing, and you never get to five. Because you feel rude getting to five. So anyway, Madonna. She was cool in one way, and I did think she was a bit of a fuckin’ eejit and I don’t really like her music. But then the next few times I got to like her more, like at the Evita premiere. In particular, when she did a movie called The Next Big Thing with Rupert Everett, and that was a really funny interview. It was the first interview she had done in Europe, and the first thing she said to me was, ‘What do you think of the movie?’ … [adopts pained face] “Well...” …and there was a scene in the movie whereby it got very serious half-way through, from being a comedy before that, and I thought that there was too much of a jolt. So I was able to go with that one. And she just burst out laughing, ‘You fucking thought it was shite, didn’t you?’ She was great, she was really cool, and I quite liked her, you know.
You don’t go into a lot of depth about your feelings on the death of Gerry Ryan in the book.
No. If you’re asking why, I really don’t know. I mean, he’s mentioned in passing in a lot of things that I have done. And I just go in about a paragraph or two about him – and I could have done more. Em… I don’t want to start eulogising about his death again. I don’t need to do that, you know. And also, he was our Diana last May. It was too much. And as I keep saying, Gerry would be the one who would just say, “Lads, please? Like, I wasn’t a lot of those things, you know. I was no better a father than anybody else. Essentially, I was a wanker to a lot of people”. And he kind of was. In a good way. I had a friend in college – I had it in the book and I took it out, actually. He was a kind of arrogant guy, gay, and flamboyant, and brilliant. But if you hung around with him, he’d say [adopts superior tone], ‘So-and-so are playing the Stadium on Tuesday, Dave, and I need two tickets. Get them for me’. And I would. Instead of going: ‘Fuck you, man!’ Do you know what I mean? Of the top hundred people you’d want to meet in a pub, he’d still be in my top three. Now, Gerry was arrogant enough, but he’d be in my top three as well. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t have to marry him. I wasn’t living with him all the time. And this is what I wanted from Gerry. Like, he wasn’t Mother Teresa. She would have bored the shit out of me, Mother Teresa and I would have never hung around. There’s some people that you know are whatever, and you like them for that thing. And yet, if you see a book of what’s good and bad, it isn’t all that good.
Were you surprised at his death?
Absolutely shocked. Yeah, I certainly agree with everyone on that one. You know the way the woman who smokes 200 cigarettes is the one who’s 96 and still going strong? I couldn’t believe it. And still to this day there’s elements of ‘couldn’t believe it’. Like, at least once a day, you go... ‘He’s gone’. It’s really weird. Like, you do move on, I’m not grieving every day of the week or anything. Nothing like that. You move on, and life goes on, and all the rest of it. Jesus, I see the kids smiling, I see Morah smiling, so that’s moving on. But, yeah I really was shocked. By the way, just in case you’re thinking – because he probably ate too much, which he did; because he probably drank too much, which he did; or didn’t look after himself, which he didn’t – I’m still completely shocked. You just don’t expect it.
Marian Finucane maintains that he was under a lot of stress from management in RTÉ around that time.
To be honest, in the last three months I would have only gone out with Gerry three times. I went out with him once to the Four Seasons, which was where he liked to go. And I just wanted to talk to him about a few things that I think he might have been a bit worried about, or whatever, in terms of what a break-up actually means: like some people are not going to get in touch with you, and you won’t be going to some of the things you used to go to. And he didn’t necessarily take to it. I said, ‘Gerry, get off the fucking stage! That’s what happens’. But as regards stress about money in RTÉ, to be honest, from what I’ve heard since, I think he probably was more than I realised. And, do you know something, I don’t know the details, I genuinely don’t, Olaf - but I don’t know why he would because his pay cheque was so good! [laughs] I don’t quite get all that bit, actually, I don’t know where that’s coming from.
But he apparently blew a lot of money too, didn’t he?
Oh yeah. Oh God, yeah. And even problems, he’d throw money at. He did. He spent a lot of money. He would blow a lot of money, or use it, or whatever. He lived the high life. Like, you know, he was telling the RTÉ Guide beforehand, ‘Yes, I’m going to go away on holidays. I’m bringing the kids with me, and it’s great. And we’ll all go first class’. And, like, he wasn’t getting that free from Aer Lingus. Five kids in first class? That’s just insane. I don’t get that, but that’s the way he was. He always enjoyed the best, he really did. Like, what did he used to call the Four Seasons?
His ‘canteen’?
Now, a lot of people would hate that, but that’s… I hate to say, in these austere times… but it’s like, that’s why I liked Gerry. I expected him to do that.
You yourself have never really made big bucks
at RTÉ...
No. Have you ever seen me in the Top 20 bestsellers list in RTÉ? I’d like to be in there once. Because I see one or two people and I’m going [adopts crazed tone] ‘What?! They’re making more than me?!’ Gay Byrne always said never print it because RTÉ would just get angry, because there’s only about ten people who get silly money. And the average person in RTÉ? I think the average person in RTÉ gets less than the industrial wage – these people sitting at typewriters. Like, it’s really not great. Of course, I’m getting more than that, but by the same token, no, it hasn’t improved, and it’s never going to improve, and now I can tell you, ‘never’. Never going to improve. And even if some things got better, it would be given in a different way. Like there would be more holidays discussed, which is the last thing I would want. I don’t think I have ever taken my full holidays. I actually don’t think I have. I like doing the gig, you know. And I like taking holidays when I am taking holidays. I did, one year, about two years ago, where I took about five or six weeks in LA and took the whole lot in one go. But I have a few weeks left this year, I can guarantee I won’t take them all. It doesn’t matter.
Pat Kenny recently compared his RTÉ salary to those of Premiership footballers. What’s your take on that?
I saw that alright. A bit difficult, isn’t it? Like, I mean, he seems to get paid very well. Enjoy it, that’s what I say. I wouldn’t be slagging him, you know. And even Gerry wasn’t particularly great about all that business, ‘Why shouldn’t I get paid this?’ Because his argument would be, ‘I bring in five million pounds worth of advertising!’ And my argument would be, ‘Well actually Gerry, you don’t’. Nine ‘til twelve on the national airwaves brings in maybe four-and-a-half million, and because Gerry Ryan is there he would probably bring in whatever, you know. But the implication with Gerry was there would be no money brought in between nine and twelve. Like, give me a break, Gerry! You’re not going to make me try and swallow that one! Don’t get me wrong, if I could get the money that those two could get, I’d take it. I’m not going to lie. If you were offered the money you’d take it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t go, ‘Oh no. God. I don’t think so’. Because you know damn well that the management in RTÉ would spend it on some big carpet otherwise... So they might as well give it to you [laughs].
There’s a story on the front page of today’s Irish Independent about Michael Fingleton getting €420,000 for untaken holidays.
Well, I can guarantee there isn’t one penny given to people like me in that situation in RTÉ. It’s all very bad [the banking crisis]. There was one guy there, and I remember the guy’s name because I know another guy with the same name – a 32-year-old guy in Anglo Irish, and he was in charge of public relations the last few years, and he committed suicide. And his name was Stephen Doyle. And the fact that that isn’t out there more. Like, they’re the people being spat at. Which, of course, is what’s gonna happen because there are idiots who do that. But I mean, it’s frightening. How can they have so much in place, like this thing of performance-related, bonus-related, holiday-related benefits, but like, if they get a very bad performance and the business was shite, how do they still get a hundred thousand pound handshake? What does that mean? And yer man Lenihan says, ‘Oh I can’t change the law. I can’t change it. I know it might seem terrible to some people that we can’t take that 200 grand off yer man, but that’s the way it is’. Well, change the law, and back-date the fucking thing. Do something sensible.
A 100% tax on undeserved bonuses.
Yeah, exactly. Because anyone who has pensions now, and they’ve been dug with a shovel – if they can be affected in such a way now, and yet they seemed to be copper-fastened years ago …ah. And the same with Joe Public ringing up Joe Duffy: just because they’re doing it every five seconds doesn’t mean it’s not true. It’s mad.
Still, there’s no-one out on the streets.
Where did they have a riot recently? Canada? And bus fares – we’re going to put them up by 40% next Monday, and for one day some people will walk to work, but they next day they’ll take the bus. Everybody does. Nobody seems to give a damn. In the last twenty years, twenty-five years, thirty years, even students are really just there to get a job afterwards most of the time. They certainly wouldn’t be galvanised in terms of, ‘Oh people are being oppressed, so let’s do something about it. Let’s do a Bono on it and save yer woman in Burma’. That kind of thing. Forget it. Not going to happen.
What’s your take on The X-Factor?
I have to be honest – first of all, I am one of the very few who doesn’t know enough about it. I don’t see it. For some reason, we’re just not an X Factor family. I think you might have to be an X Factor family and then you probably might get sucked in. My take on the X Factor would be, as a person, I like Louis [Walsh]. And I love that Louis has come through the whole thing that he came through, and got talent and lucky with the bands he had, even though I hate their music. And he’s now bizarrely became a strange little leprechaun star in his own right. He has very little to say on that programme, and maybe that’s all that’s needed because Cheryl just has to be sexy, or whatever, and yer man Cowell has to be whatever. But I must say, there is something really oily – I need a shower every time I see that man. Obsequious is probably the word. He gets right under my skin. Like, shut the fuck up, you pompous fucking git! And I’ll show you how to wear a pair of trousers. Oh it’s just gone way too far. Like, the same with Big Brother.
Elaborate.
I thought that after the first year. ‘Well, now they know there’s fucking cameras in the toilets and cameras everywhere, blah, blah, blah, so now obviously the game is up. You can only do it for one year’. It went on for ten years. And people were dying to get in. So, you have the X Factor, which is just a kind of more sophisticated, more sexy, more cameras, and more like Opportunity Knocks. And I tell you what really fucking annoys me is just that the last little bit of what the pop charts might have meant has been completely stolen and flushed down the toilet by these four people in some ways. You could say, ‘Stop being so nostalgic. It was gone anyway’. It was already handed over to the tweenies – the under twelves had owned the charts since the mid-nineties anyway, with all the boyband stuff. And it’s fair enough in one way. But like, yer man, Dermot O’Leary says, ‘Come on and vote now because blah, blah, blah… because we really want to know what’s going to be Christmas No.1. Will it be (a) or (b)? It’s September! You’re not supposed to know who’s the Christmas No.1!!!. Jesus, do we have to be that blatantly cynical?
Do you have a motto in life?
I don’t live by any motto, or anything like that. Give me one of those calendars where you lift a different yoke every day, and I could try and live by those every day! Nah, I can’t think of anything I could say that would sound… Never too late to have a happy childhood! I would believe that. I had someone who said, ‘Jesus, I’m 50’ or whatever, ‘and I can’t’. You can, actually. It can be really good.
The Thing Is...is published by Harper Collins. The Dave Fanning Show is broadcast from 7-9pm Monday to Thursday and Saturdays at 2pm on 2fm.