Terry Prone: Cosmic Tubs, the Bakhurst Rule and a brave new wealthy world

Not getting tripped up in this way isn’t that hard. Anybody going on Prime Time or in front of an Oireachtas committee needs to expect the “what do you get paid?” question. Amazing, how many of them don’t, even though what people are paid is an infinitely predictable question. In the private sector, you can get paid any amount, you can get bonuses you couldn’t carry in real money, and only a shareholder or board member can ask about it. But if we, the citizens, indirectly send you your salary, you better look at the payslip before you pitch up in front of a broadcaster or a bunch of TDs.

Now, let us be clear. Bakhurst’s error could not have been premeditated. What he earns is pretty much public knowledge anyway, and he was never going to be able to hide his car allowance or pension contribution, even if he wanted to. As this paper’s front page reported on Saturday, a correction was made reasonably quickly by RTÉ personnel who sounded somewhat ratty at any floating negative implication. With some justification — Bakhurst has been pretty busy since he arrived at the station, The fact is, though, that any time in future he’s asked about take-home pay, he’s going to rattle it off, down to the last cent.

Meanwhile, Ryan Tubridy, who relied on his agent and RTÉ Accountancy, with a little help from Dee Forbes, to remove from him any obligation to know what he was paid in any given year, was appearing on Chris Evans’ show on Virgin Radio where he has committed, not just to a new presenting job, but to the syndication of programming made by him to stations in Ireland.

Now, Tubs is not directly responsible for the 400 redundancies coming down the RTÉ tracks. His new role may, however, lead several Irish broadcasters to lose slots, gigs or employment. But, sure as long as the regulator says it’s OK, as long as all the rule boxes are ticked, that’s grand. The “local” in “local radio” is fungible, you see. Lots of radio entrepreneurs have wanted to clump local radio stations together and apply a non-local syndication to make more money, thereby vitiating the principles on which legal local radio was built — I was on the authority that laid down the original rules — but, now they’ve all been passed by in one fell swoop.

The question now is how successful he will be for Virgin, and in that context, his interview with Chris Evans is instructive to listen to, comprising, as it does, two minutes of awful, followed by 19 minutes of competent broadcasting and fun.

The two minutes of awful are at the front end of the item, when Ryan bounces up and down for Chris Evans like a twelve-year-old on the Toy Show, announcing how excited he is to be on this new programme, on this fantastic station, in this new — to him — city 

He describes it all as surreal, which it isn’t. It may feel UNreal to him, but unless bendy watches are involved, surreal it isn’t.

He tells Evans that his start date is his late father’s birthday, a reference that is peculiar at best. Unless, of course, you have this New Age notion that coincidences have way more significance than they appear to have, and that the cosmos is doing helpful stuff on your behalf. Ryan’s affection for the cosmos surfaced earlier this year, in his social media post about the Leaving Cert, where he suggested students who’d done badly in the exam shouldn’t worry about it because, more or less, the cosmos would solve their problem. Might be interesting to see the clinical proof of the cosmos intervening with the CAO on behalf of a Leaving Cert student who earned themselves maybe seventy points.

 In the meantime, though, Ryan gestured inclusively at Chris Evans, indicating that Tubs knows Evans to have faith in the cosmos, too. Evans didn’t demur.

Then Ryan moved on to tell a story about Sinead O’Connor, advising him a fortnight before her death that he needed to regard what had recently happened to him as equivalent to being mugged by God in a hoodie. Disentangled, this seemed to be based on the supposition that sometimes God, for no good reason wearing a hoodie, smacks you in the kisser and steals your wallet, turning to smile at you and tell you he’d done you a favour, that you’d needed the mugging.

Now, apart from the questionable theology, this is a bit like the David Beckham “documentary” and its treatment of his alleged affair. The programme dealt only with the suffering caused to him and his family. Mugged by God in a hoodie, they were, as opposed to being mugged by Beckham’s alleged actions. Similarly, Ryan takes no blame whatsoever for the controversy which has brought his previous employer to its knees. He was just mugged by God in a hoodie for his own eventual good: absent that mugging, he would not, the implication was, be talking tripe in a studio with Chris Evans.

After the first two badly prepared minutes, Ryan at his best clicked in. Ryan, glowing in the company of famous people who like, even admire him and have done him the huge favour of giving him a programme. Ryan sped up away from the preachy stuff about us all in this together. Ryan smart and witty.

The bottom line is that if he can cut away the God-mugging stuff and if they put a zoo of constant change around him to prevent him going portentous, this might actually work.

With an added advantage. Nobody’s ever going to ask him what he’s paid. Or if they do, the beauty of working for the private sector is that he can ignore the question.