It’s been a turbulent week in Irish radio. The ratings game is a bloody one at the best of times – but it is the basis on which the success of a radio station has come to be judged in this post-modern, commercially-driven media world of ours.

With that as background, the release of the results of the Joint National Listenership Research for a given 12 month period is anticipated with a degree of trepidation throughout the entire radio industry. If there are winners in the ratings, then inevitably there are losers too.

The latest figures, released last week, confirm that RTE is currently finding the going tougher than usual. The extent of this is often exaggerated with a variety of national newspapers taking a perverse pleasure in anything that smacks of a bruising for the national broadcaster. However, on this occasion – arguably pressing the panic button prematurely – management in RTE were quick to respond, with an immediate and decisive overhaul of 2fm’s programming as their first line of defence, including the replacement of Damien McCaul on the morning programme and the reduction of Dave Fanning’s time on-air to a one hour talk show at 8pm. Clearly, the wisdom of the thinking behind this shake-up remains to be seen. But what is certain is that it has left a lot of people in and around Montrose feeling singularly unhappy.

In contrast, the alternative national broadcaster, Today FM, came through the survey strongly. Almost across the board, they showed significant increases in audience numbers. In truth, RTE remains very strong and any other spin puts an unfair twist on the figures. It has superb talent at its disposal. And it is ahead in key areas still. But since its inception Today FM has fought a rearguard action. Now, there is the vindication of seeing the hard graft and battling spirit that has characterised the station being vindicated.

Ian Dempsey – up. Eamon Dunphy – up. Tom Dunne - up. Donal Dineen – up. And that’s just the four that Hotpress selected for interview, in a week which underlined that, whatever way you dice it, the station does have some of the best moves on radio in Ireland right now. Over to you in the studio, Jackie...

JACKIE HAYDEN: The latest JLMR figures show increases for both Today FM and The Last Word. Which gives you more pleasure?

EAMON DUNPHY: (laughs) Well obviously we’re human! But you can’t separate the two. We all benefit from the hand-on, so if the morning programmes are up we get more people. But we’re very conscious of the good figures for our programme.

JH: How would you explain the increase for The Last Word?

ED: I don’t know. We’ve been at it five years now, so with the quality of the contributors we have, the quality of the people I work with on the programme and the hard work every day, I think it’s probably different from RTE, a different tone. The humour is huge.

JH: And a different culture?

ED: Yeah, it’s probably a much more liberated programme. We can do what we want.

JH: How closely do you monitor the opposition?

ED: Not a lot, actually. I listen to other programmes during the day, but we don’t really monitor them.

JH: So you wouldn’t tape Five Seven Live and listen to it later?

ED: No. I’ll hear Five Seven Live sometimes in the car.

JH: Do they ever do something that makes you think, ‘that’s really good, we missed out on that’?

ED: Yeah, the way they’ve covered the Middle East or Afghanistan where they have outstanding correspondents, like Tony Connolly, who’s very good. They’d have access to the European summit, so yeah, there are things they do, but we have to work within the resources we have.

JH: Are there still weaknesses in the programme?

ED: Oh yeah. (Laughs) That’s why I was in at a quarter to nine this morning! In daily journalism, yesterday is history. If you get a duff item or something falls down on you you feel hurt because you haven’t done your stuff. That happens every day.

JH: Who is your favourite guest?

ED: I don’t have a favourite guest. We’ve had some really outstanding contributors. They’re all different. Frank Connolly is a great news journalist, covering the Tribunals. Fergal Bowers is a specialist health journalist. He’s outstanding. He’s given us great stuff on Hepatitis C, haemophiliacs and the Lindsey Tribunal. And on and on it goes. We had a great fella in America, Henry Cabot doing film reviews based in Manhattan. He worked for the Village Voice and Andy Warhol’s Interview, but then he moved to Arizona and we lost a great contributor who was idiosyncratic and different and listeners liked him. That was a blow. Robert Fisk, but he’s hard to get. He’s always on his mobile in a bunker in Beirut! We spend a lot of time chasing people.

JH: How do you strike a balance between informative news and entertainment?

ED: The sketches bring an entertainment dimension to the programme. You just try and get the best people and I’ve got to deliver in an unpompous way and I hope it’s an accessible programme for anybody. We’ve a lot of young listeners who don’t want to be turned off We’re not the BBC.

JH: Are you stealing listeners then from Tony Fenton on 2FM?

ED: (laughs) I’d like to think so! When I see Tony out around the town he tells me where it’s not working! But he has a huge audience.

JH: Is the success of The Last Word making RTE better?

ED: I wouldn’t be that presumptuous. We don’t think of success as much as we’re holding our own. What delivers the programme’s success is our listenership, in whose hands our fate is, really. We have to slog it out every day and we do slog it out. It’s a tough game (lights up cigarette).

JH: I thought you’d promised to give up smoking after you had that anti-passive smoking campaigner in your studio?

ED: (laughs) I was going to, yes.

JH: He gave the impression that you were actually killing him in your smoke-filled studio!

ED: Yes, (laughing) and he had an asthma condition as well. It was fairly dramatic stuff! But I’m doing my best with the smokes. I’m waiting for the ultimate JLNR survey!

JH: You work for several other people in the media. Let’s suppose there’s a libel action between TV3 and the Daily Star, both of whom you work for, how do you maintain a balance in that situation?

ED: I’m a freelance journalist. I deliver product to each of the people I work for. I haven’t found a real conflict of interest so far, but I’d balance it out as best I can.

JH: Would such conflict worry you?

ED: It would, yeah. I’d have to stop doing things. When I started doing the radio I stopped my column in the Sunday Independent which was a controversial, current affairs driven thing. I couldn’t do that and host a radio programme because some of the people I’d be hoping to get on the programme, politicians, say, I might be attacking in the Sunday Independent. When I saw the obvious conflict I had to choose.

JH: Have you yourself changed from the person you were, writing for the Sunday Independent?

ED: I don’t think I’ve changed a lot, Jackie. It’s a different medium. I’m the host on The Last Word. I’m obliged to those who come on. I have a different role, whereas if you’re writing a comment piece, like, say Fintan O’Toole or Gene Kerrigan or Vincent Browne, people can take it or leave it. But if they’ve taken the time to come on the programme it’s a different thing.

JH: You can say things about somebody in print more easily in that they’re not there at the time, perhaps?

ED: True, but we haven’t hesitated when we’ve had to do it here, if there is something wrong. At the time of the O’Flaherty affair we were pretty brutal. We kept that story going. Our coverage of Mary Harney and Charlie McCreevy was pretty uncompromising. It’s not that you don’t want to get into facing people down. The question is, does it make for good radio when you contrive it. I had a fight with Niall Crowley from the Equality Authority on air and I called him a fucker. But it doesn’t happen every day. If you set your stall out to create that, it wouldn’t stack up. The listeners want to hear the news of the day from a credible person.

JH: But do you not bring a certain confrontational element to interviews that others wouldn’t?

ED: I don’t think I do. If anything, the allegation is that I bottle it when I’m face to face with someone (laughing), that I haven’t got the virility for it, which isn’t true. Politicians are usually the ones you’d be going after, but we don’t have many of them on the programme.

JH: So having a human being in a studio makes it more difficult to go heavy on them?

ED: Yeah. It does. There’s no question about that.

JH: Are there things you regret writing?

ED: (Pauses) Well, I don’t know. If you live your life looking backwards… There may be one or two pieces, but I wrote what I felt at the time in my usual full-blooded way for a paper I believed in and it’s hard to post-rationalise. It’s over now.

JH: Would you go back to the Sunday Independent?

ED: It’s not in my current planning system. But I wouldn’t discount it.

JH: Some people who stopped reading the Sunday Independent because of some things you wrote, were reluctant to listen to you on radio but were gradually won over. Were you conscious of that and how did that happen?

ED: I used to get a lot of comments saying “the first time you came on the radio I thought you were a bollocks but you’re not so bad after all”. The person behind the newspaper column was to some extent a fiction. On the radio, you are what you are. You can’t fake it for two hours, never mind for five years. They hear your voice on an intimate medium. To that extent it’s been a really happy experience. I’m staggered that I never did any real radio until I was fifty one. I wish I’d started thirty years ago.

JH: Did your television experience help?

ED: It didn’t really. No. Good producers helped. No cock-ups on the sound-desk helps. The feeling of security, that whoever’s supposed to be on the line would be on the line. In television there’s a camera somewhere but you’re never quite sure which one is on you. It’s more an acting and projection thing.

JH: Are you self-critical?

ED: Very.

JH: Is that a new thing?

ED: No, I never wrote an article or did a programme and said “that was great”. Very very rarely.

JH: What about criticism from others?

ED: (Laughs) I think you were very critical once when I wrote a book about U2! We’re all entitled to a point of view. I’m critical of people. They’re critical of me. I’ve no hang-ups about it. I don’t remember any piece that made me cry. Sometimes I’ve wondered who are they writing about?

JH: Would you ever be vengeful after criticism and decide right, I’ll fix him or her?

ED: No. I don’t think so. Is there anybody out there? No. I think you should get on with your own gig. I wouldn’t be able to throw stones in that particular glasshouse. I’ve been wicked on people.

JH: So you feel you’re fair game then?

ED: I am and I have been. But you have your colleagues and your family who are the real props of your life. Your media image isn’t a real thing.

JH: What about those people being hurt by things said about you?

ED: They have been hurt. Kids are hurt and it is difficult. But a lot of that was self-inflicted because I don’t care that much about conventional imagery. I’ve never sued anybody for libel or even dreamt of it and I hope I don’t have to.

JH: What about current rumours of rows with Today FM boss Willie O’Reilly?

ED: Nothing serious. (Shakes his head) No.

JH: There are also rumours about your programme being syndicated to local radio.

ED: I’m contracted until July and I hope I’ll be here until July. After that I don’t know. That’s all I want to say about that. Anyone is entitled to look after their future, and if you have to leave you have to leave.

JH: If that type of syndication were to happen, wouldn’t that be the start of the local radio network moving towards becoming a third national channel and wouldn’t that be something the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland might disapprove of?

ED: Local content is hugely important for local stations and nothing should interfere with that. But I’m sure the BCI would look at any proposal, to make sure that local stations are primarily providers of a local service, and I don’t think that anything we’ve considered to them would interfere with that.

JH: Would you accept that The Weakest Link wasn’t a huge success?

ED: I’d accept that, yeah. Although it’s doing significant audiences.

JH: So what has Anne Robinson got that you haven’t?

ED: She’s better. A lot better (laughs).

JH: A lot of people would have thought you would have done better. Did you not?

ED: I don’t know, Jackie. I was offered the thing and I took it. I’m a freelance broadcaster and journalist and you tend to now and again take a job and see how it goes. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve seen the French version and it’s really awful! There’s nothing in it except this big woman speaking rudely at people.

JH: So you might be the Weakest Link?

ED: (Laughs) Yes, I might be the Weakest Link!

JH: On a personal note, what about getting married again?

ED: I plan to marry. I’m in a long-term relationship and I’m very happy. But we haven’t set the date yet. We do regard ourselves as, eh, betrothed, I think the word is.

JH: You’ve had your run-ins with the law over drink driving. What’s the current state of play?

ED: I have to go to court and answer a charge of drink driving. But there are some parties appealing because of this new machine. But I can drive at the moment.

JH: Is it true that somebody ratted on you?

ED: I don’t actually know.

JH: But if somebody phoned the cops to tell them that they’d seen you leaving a pub to drive and that you were probably over the limit, would you approve of that kind of civic-mindedness?

ED: Yeah. I would, yes.

JH: You wouldn’t hold any grudge against them?

ED: Absolutely not.

JH: Your book on Roy Keane you describe as an autobiography. Does that mean you’re writing it as his story?

ED: Yes. It’s his story and I’m just talking to him, nobody else. It’s a big money book. It’s a different process from that I used for the U2 book and I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else but Roy. I’ve great respect for Keane and it’s a good story. I said from the very start that Keane was a great player, a great character. I always admired Keane, even when he was getting a hard time here. He’s a warrior. It’s a tough game and he’s made mistakes. He wouldn’t deny them. He’s been extremely aggressive but he’s a great player. There’s no other player in these islands can match him.

JH: Some journalists depict him as somewhat surly. Is that accurate?

ED: No. He’s actually very intelligent, very funny, always with a glint in his eye. He’s been very obliging and very professional about the book. He has four lovely children and they and his wife live in a lovely home. He doesn’t suffer fools.

JH: Do you think David O’Leary handled the Leeds mess well?

ED: He didn’t. No. I’ve always had great regard for him but I think over the last twelve months he’s talked to the press too much. He wrote a book he shouldn’t have written.

JH: Why shouldn’t he have written it?

ED: Because he was at the centre of it and you have to be above certain things when you’re a manager. I think he compounded the problem. He injected heat into a situation when heat needed to be taken out it. He’s made a mistake, and I say that despite the fact that he’s a friend of mine.

JH: But he was right in the middle of something and his view on it would be valid, no?

ED:: Well, freedom of speech is freedom of speech. But sometimes in that kind of situation the best thing is to step back from it.

JH: Did he do it for the money?

ED: No.

JH: Naiveté?

ED: Perhaps. You get sucked into situations and that was a particularly emotive and volatile situation that lasted a very long time. I haven’t read the book, just extracts. When you’re managing a football club, managing those people has to be your first priority. Let someone else write the books.

JH: Should Leeds have dealt differently with Bowyer and Woodgate?

ED: No. They were entitled to due process. They got it. It was a dreadful story. They were found not guilty. I don’t think the club could do anything but regard them as innocent.

JH: What about the issue of high-profile footballers as role-models?

ED: Well, they have responsibilities. But they’re not role models as much as products of society. On the whole the Irish players are extremely well behaved. But England is a different place and drink is a real problem there.

JH: More than here?

ED: It’s becoming a problem here, but not like it is there.

JH: Why is that?

ED: I don’t know. I think the English probably don’t know how to drink. They get aggressive. We tend to get a bit more melancholy and sing a few songs. They want to go out and have a digging match. But the number of players getting into trouble is a very small percentage of all those playing. But the papers over there…

JH: Are the players regarded as fair game?

ED: Yeah. But some of the things they’ve been alleged to do, dancing on bars or something, that’s just how young fellas let off steam.

JH: When you were playing were you conscious of any pressure to set a good example?

ED: No. I think as a footballer you have responsibilities on the pitch. You shouldn’t be attacking referees, swearing at them. That’s got to stop. It’s a cancer in the game.

JH: You believe O’Leary has been too available to the media, whereas Mick McCarthy has been accused of the reverse.

ED: Yeah, but Mick McCarthy is lucky that he’s dealing with the Irish media. Sure, he’s had his critics here, but they’ve never really rooted around looking for dirt. If you were a footballer or a manager you’d much rather deal with the Irish sports correspondents than the English, who are either pompous or villains.

JH: You were very critical of McCarthy at one point…

ED: Yeah, I was, yeah.

JH: I think you said he was incompetent…

ED: I didn’t think he was the right choice for the job. In his first couple of years he made a lot of extraordinary decisions.

JH: What was the worst one?

ED: Playing Roy Keane as a sweeper at home to Iceland (laughs). But he (McCarthy) learned on the job and in the last 18 months the team’s performed superbly and he deserves the credit. When you review his whole six years he’s done a good job. And anyone like me, and there were others, who criticised him have to say he’s proved himself in the only place that matters, on the pitch. The league table doesn’t tell lies. He has achieved more with his resources than Jack Charlton did, and that’s a hell of an achievement in an Irish context.

JH: Would you apologise to him?

ED: No, I don’t think he requires it. He requires acknowledgement. You’ve done it, Mick, fair play to you, man, and I’ve said that on many occasions, including on RTE. But as for apologising to him personally, why should you apologise for your opinions?

JH: Who’s side were you on in the Ronan Collins versus Louis Walsh row?

ED: I like Louis a lot, and I like Ronan, but I haven’t heard the song. I don’t know how to judge Six, but I’d definitely say fairplay to Ronan for expressing a view and Louis probably went way over the top in his response.

JH: So you don’t plan to write a book about Six?

ED: (laughs) I don’t plan to do so at the moment! Louis would probably want 90% anyway! He did offer to make me a pop star, but I turned him down for the time being! But who knows ...

JH: You once said it was hard to get good coke in Dublin, is it any easier now?

ED: (Laughing) It was a joke when I said it then and it’s a joke now. I ain’t going there, Jackie!

JH: Given that governments spend billions trying to solve the drugs problem, yet it continues to get worse, so isn’t it time that all drugs were legalised and controlled?

ED: Well that’s what I believe. I think they should decriminalise them. Take them away from the criminals and let people make informed choices.

JH: Should it be as easy as getting a bottle of Scotch?

ED: Well, yeah, it should be… What the price should be I don’t know. The thing about drugs is that, in my libertarian belief, things would be no worse in terms of the number of people addicted. It would probably be around the same. But the criminal fraternity that lives off it would be diminished, torpedoed. So you’d get rid of that criminality and people being robbed and beaten and abused to get money for drugs. You’d also have to have information programmes in schools. Nobody who is informed will take heroin. It’s mad. But heroin wasn’t always illegal, only in the last couple of decades. The hysteria over drugs is mad. We need to have an informed discussion about drugs and we need to take on criminals and license certain drugs. But it isn’t easy. There are bad drugs out there, dirty heroin. The American government has spent 500 billion dollars trying to solve it and they haven’t. Nobody appears to be winning the war on drugs. In Britain they’re moving slowly towards a rational debate and probably Europe-wide they will too eventually.

JH: Does the rise of Sinn Fein concern you at all?

ED: No. It’s a complicated question in some regards, but the politicisation of Sinn Fein is for the good.

JH: So it’s okay to forget about all their misdeeds in the past?

ED: It’s okay to say that the leadership of Sinn Fein has moved the Republican movement radically away from terrorism towards democracy. It has made a lot of concessions to its core values such as a United Ireland. It has accepted the principal of consent. They’ve gone to the House Of Commons. They’re in Dail Eireann. Given our history, all of that is very good and required statesmanship and leadership and it should be acknowledged and set against some dreadful things.

JH: What about the sons and daughters of those murdered by the IRA who now see the murderers released?

ED: It’s difficult for them.

JH: How do you balance that up?

ED: Sometimes you can’t. You have to take the better of two difficult options. This is the better option. It’s hurtful for those who’ve suffered and lost, but the alternative is to continue the cycle of terror and anguish. So that compromise to achieve an end is acceptable to me.

JH: Have you ever been tempted to enter the political arena?

ED: No (emphatically).

JH: Were you ever approached?

ED: I was approached on a number of occasions, but I’m not that stupid!

JH: Were the approaches all from the same party?

ED: Fine Gael and the PDs. I was approached by Fine Gael during the time of Garret Fitzgerald and they asked me to run. And Mary Harney asked me once.

JH: What would make you say no?

ED: I wouldn’t be very good at it! I wouldn’t be diplomatic. I’m not a joiner really.

JH: What’s your view of Eoghan Harris?

ED: I think Eoghan Harris is all right. He adds to the gaiety of the nation.

JH: Is that all he is now, a figure of fun?

ED: No. I think he’s always interesting. We’ve tried to get him for the programme but he has a love-hate relationship with us, as Kevin Myers does. But I like those guys. They’re one-offs and some of the stands they took in the past were very important. I like idiosyncratic people.

JH: Is there enough of a pool of them?

ED: No! We need more people who tell it as they see it.

JH: How do you keep you own personal views out of a subject like, say, the abortion referendum?

ED: By declaring them, I think. A conflict of interest only becomes a problem when there’s something undeclared.

JH: So what are your views on abortion?

ED: I’d be pro-life more than pro-choice, and I would vote yes in the referendum, although I would have reservations. There’s no absolute position. Women have rights and ultimately it’s not for me to say they shouldn’t have their rights. I think it should be left to the people involved, the woman, her partner, her family and her doctor. I’d prefer if it wasn’t in the public domain at all, and there are genuine people on both sides of the argument.

JH: Supposing the people you mention can’t agree, should the woman have the sole, final decision?

ED: Yes.

JH: Even if that goes against her partner, her family and her doctor?

ED: Yes.

JH: What about the so-called media hounding of Liam Lawlor?

ED: He’s probably let himself in for a lot of it. The idea that we have to see him going into prison in a van and that the photograph is worth a lot of money, I’m not mad about that. I don’t think it helps, to humiliate people when they’re down. But I can understand the game. He’s entitled to some space and privacy but he is a public representative and he did vote for the legislation. He appears to have flagrantly resisted compliance. He’s not a person I wake up every morning worrying about. The time for hounding is when they’re on the run but once you’ve got due process there’s no need for hounding. We don’t want the kind of press we have in England where they name and shame and gloat. It’s not necessary and it serves no good.

JH: Is there anybody you would refuse to interview on the grounds that they were, say, a paedophile, a rapist, or a serial killer?

ED: Yeah. What we do is not shock radio. We’re trying to provide a thoughtful programme. I’m be very suspicious of people using an interview to get across a point of view or to spin us. Villains usually want to be interviewed when they want to win the PR battle.

JH: So you wouldn’t want to interview a convicted paedophile even if he offered?

ED: No. That’s the kind of radio I wouldn’t want to do. Let them go away and serve their time.

JH: Yet they might have something to say that might illuminate the nature of their crime?

ED: I’d rather leave that to the psychiatrists. I don’t think journalists are up to that. I’m not trained to do that kind of work. I’d say, no thanks. I’d feel more comfortable talking about Manchester United and Real Madrid!