Edel Coffey: My mornings have been a much lonelier place since Ryan Tubridy left the airwaves

Ryan Tubridy to join Virgin Radio UK and Dublin’s Q102 with new mid-morning show from January 2024

Like many mammies around the country, I listened to Ryan Tubridy’s daily radio show religiously. 

After dropping the kids to school, I usually got home just as the news headlines were ending and rushed into the house to switch on my little battery-operated Roberts radio in the front room where I work, as well as the radio in the kitchen. (We’re Irish, one radio will not do.) 

Just as The Delorentos theme tune started blasting out, signalling Ryan’s imminent arrival, I’d flick on the coffee machine like a pilot going through her pre-flight checks. 

As Ryan’s voice came over the airwaves, everything was in order and running like clockwork. 

Over the next hour, I would eat breakfast and tidy up the kitchen as I listened, laughed, rolled my eyes, sometimes cried, often made a note for a new book to buy and finally as the show ended, began my working day.

Like many mammies around the country, my mornings have been a much lonelier place since Ryan Tubridy went from our radios. 

His disappearance felt like a personal loss, so I was very pleased to read the news last week that he will be starting a new job in the UK from January as a presenter on London’s Virgin Radio. And even better news for Irish listeners, the show will be simulcast on Dublin’s Q102.

In an interview last weekend, Ryan spoke of his joy at the new challenge ahead of him. “I’m ready for chapter two of my career, of my life,” he said. 

It got me thinking about how sometimes the toughest experiences we face can actually be the catalyst for the most exciting new journeys. (Sorry Ryan, I know you would hate that particular usage of the word journey.) In the interview, he quoted the opening line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’

“That line was sent to me by the cosmos today,” he said, “because it is a tale of two cities now for me. It was the worst of times and now I’m about to enter a new year with a new story and new hope, and the best of times is yet to come.”

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely acknowledge that sometimes bad things happen and we would all prefer that they never did. But sometimes, there are moments in life where difficult things happen, and challenges arise, and while we think at the time that it’s the worst time of our lives, often it is the beginning of our second chapter.

We’ve all been there — a break-up that we thought we’d never recover from; a professional failure we thought was the end of our career — only to realise six months later that those hardships were simply the paving stones of a new and unexpected path. Those difficult times were just God in a hoodie, to quote the late Sinéad O’Connor. She used those words to Tubridy shortly before she died.

As Tubridy made his announcement on Virgin radio last week, he recounted how O’Connor had told him he might be feeling beaten up but actually, sometimes we need that to happen. 

“So, being mugged by God in a hoodie is not a bad thing,” he said. “I think that mugging has brought me here today.”

My own second chapter came when I had children, gave up work, and moved from my beloved home town of Dublin to my new home of Galway. 

It was several big transitions at once and at the time I griped and moaned about everything — the weather, the wind, the Atlantic ocean (seriously, everything was up for grabs) — but six months into my relocation I was on a new path to achieving long-held dreams. 

What felt like a mugging at the time, was actually just God in a hoodie.

At this stage, I’ve had enough difficult chapter endings that transformed into new beginnings to make me a hopeful person. 

Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that when we are not fulfilling our potential or when we are stuck or dumbly repeating the same mistakes again and again, the universe will reach out and give us a slap to bounce us into the next chapter. 

These new chapters can feel scary, unfamiliar, and challenging but with a little hindsight, we come to realise we had long outgrown chapter one.

It’s possibly sentimental to point out that during many of my own worst of times, it was Ryan Tubridy’s morning show that kept me company, distracted me, embraced me, and cheered me up as I worked my way through new and uncertain chapters, whether that was covid or heartbreak or stasis or unhappiness. His show was a constant. 

So I’m glad he’ll be back as a fixture in my mornings, and I’m sure many others too. 

And I’m looking forward to hearing all about his second chapter via the means that he was born to communicate through — the airwaves.