Listen up ... I want to be first with a word in your ear each morning

Thursday, May 28, 2009

It has been suggested that my past as a Fine Gael politician renders me unsuitable and inappropriate as a broadcast presenter because of party prejudice. I want to confront this issue head-on.

Yes, I was a member of Fine Gael from 1979 up to a few weeks ago when I rang party headquarters and asked them to cancel my membership card

MY lifestyle has been turned upside down. I have embarked on a new career opportunity as a radio broadcaster with Newstalk 106-108fm. I have relocated for the working week from Enniscorthy to Dublin. I am a morning person, awake between 6am and 7am, eager to arise. However, setting the alarm for 4am and getting up in the dark is weird. Proper sleep has been an early casualty.

I did not seek this route. I had deliberately pursued alternative challenges outside Celtic Bookmakers. I engaged with an agency for public speaking at corporate and social events. I write in the print media as a columnist.

I have joined a handful of commercial company boards as an independent non-executive director – without any personal equity.

I have enjoyed being a freelance contributor on television and radio current affairs programmes. This was to widen my horizon beyond being a bookmaker.

All of these new commitments, while intriguing and absorbing, were not on a full-time basis. Out of a clear blue sky, the producers associated with Newstalk’s Right Hook programme asked if I would be interested in filling in for George while he was on his summer holidays. I had been a regular contributor to that programme and relished the banter with himself. His gregarious fulminations on life entertained me.

I hadn’t a clue about presenting (probably still don’t). The main instruction to me was "when the red light in the live studio goes on, talk and keep talking…" Having spent decades talking for a living, this wasn’t impossible for me.

I became a regular substitute for George Hook when he was unavoidably absent or on a break. I got to know some of the team who worked in the station. I gained experience of broadcasting and was enthused by working with people who were at least 20 years younger than me. I found their energy invigorating.

Throughout my political career, I was invariably one of the youngest persons at a meeting within the party organisation, Dáil chamber, parliamentary party, cabinet and department.

For me now to be the old fogey requires an adjustment. I can’t type and I’m a technophobe with computers. I can rightly be regarded as a relic of the past.

I reached agreement with Newstalk management on a three-month trial to work with the existing Breakfast Show team as part of the station’s summer schedule. This is without preconditions on either side. They are free forcibly to evict me from the building after August 21. If so, my only request is that I could resume as substitute presenter on The Right Hook. The station’s ethos of "news, comment, analysis and opinion" across the range of politics, economics, business and sport mirrors my own interests as a listener.

Newstalk is a young station, only seven years old, with a national franchise since 2006.

It has all the business difficulties of a challenger brand: lack of awareness of its existence; no public subsidy; older listeners slow to change their lifetime habit of listening to RTÉ; limited resources for marketing; operating in a market niche of non-musical entertainment and seeking to establish itself in a thoroughly crowded broadcast and media spectrum.

Its advantages are that it’s agile, cost-effective, ambitious and, above all, has a national franchise to reach a nationwide audience from Malin to Mizen Head. It is unique in so far as it is the only radio station anchored in a talk-only milieu. This was never more relevant in our current difficult times. The public requires mature and informed debate more than ever before.

The purpose of this column is not to serve as a self-indulgent diary. There is a monkey I want to get off my back. It has been suggested that my past as a Fine Gael politician renders me unsuitable and inappropriate as a broadcast presenter because of party prejudice.

I want to confront this issue head-on. Yes, I was a member of Fine Gael from 1979 up to a few weeks ago when I rang party headquarters and asked them to cancel my membership card.

I was never a DNA politician, operating from a party gene pool. My family had no prior involvement in political activity or even fixed party allegiance.

I contacted Fine Gael through the Golden Pages directory. I could have chosen any party. I was not a republican or a socialist. At that time Garret Fitzgerald was actively establishing Young Fine Gael. The shoe fitted. I had no regrets.

I have not been a party or political activist for years. I have politely declined invitations to assist or attend meetings. I was determined not to be a hurler on the ditch within local politics in Co Wexford.

I have nothing bad to say about FG or any political party, including Sinn Féin. I profoundly understand where party members at every level are coming from and how they operate.

I respect their commitment, agenda and will to win. It’s a tough and cruel business that takes no prisoners. Good luck to them all.

My baggage is on display for all to adjudicate on. I enjoy the company of politicians. I respect the sacrifices they all make at a personal and family level.

Because I have been that soldier I can recognise their strengths and weaknesses. At times they have to obfuscate – the correct answer is "wait and see".

Occasionally they have to show party loyalty when in reality they would rather spit fire. I hope I can cut through the crap and chase the truth.

I learned from decades of political debate, controversy and confrontation, at the end of the day each voter has to make up his or her own mind.

AT VARIOUS stages of my political career I would have fought against vested interests and political opponents. I railed against building societies and opticians for restrictive practices.

I was ferocious as a frontbench shadow spokesperson opposing Rory O’Hanlon (Health) and Mary O’Rourke (Transport). This was not personal, just political.

As minister I was under continual attack and criticism. These were, and are, the rules of engagement. When the dust of debate settles, regardless of the presenter, you draw your own conclusions as a listener.

I will be absolutely fair to every political shade. I am unambiguously pro-enterprise and the EU. I will be fearlessly on the side of the taxpayer – always.

I will be unrelenting in seeking public accountability from those who seek to hold public office, without being self-righteous or moralistic.

I draw the distinction myself of being in the public eye but not in public life – as a bookie I am short on morals. I hope to cover these most grave times seriously, without taking myself too seriously.

I look forward to working with Claire Byrne, who has a professional pedigree in the media and the programme’s production/editorial team as a rookie apprentice. Please feel free to tune in between 6.30am and 9am.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, May 28, 2009