Navan man at large

IT IS ludicrously early on a Friday morning.

Far too early to be walking through the beer-soaked streets of Galway. The City of the Tribes has yet to wake from the evident festivities of the night before and I find it hard to believe that the manic man I have been listening to in my car on the way can possibly be working out of a studio in such a seemingly laid back place.

On entering the RTE studio, which sits in a nondescript building on St Augustine Street, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of stockbroker’s firm, what with all the computer screens blipping away with e-mail requests, text messages and Facebook updates.

In a dark room behind some soundproof glass I catch a glimpse of a Manchester United scarf stretched out beside the presenter’s seat. Behind it sits a large orange panel with the life-affirming moniker ‘Keep Her Lit’. And in the middle of it all, Hector Ó hEochagáin is devouring a microphone at something approaching the speed of light.

He is ‘havin’ the craic’ with Rosie Riley from the New York Junior Gaelic Football team who is in Dublin that weekend to play in the All-Ireland Final. She is also on her honeymoon having taken the opportunity to get married in her native Cavan while here.

“And what part of New York are you living in Rosie?” asks Hector, barely letting her finish what she was saying before.

“Yonkers,” she replies.

“And where’s your home village or town?” Hector inquires.

“Here?” says Rosie. “Lavey, County Cavan.”

“Wow,” says Hector slowly, before firing into the next bit like a gun. “I can hear a beautiful sweet Cavan accent sometimes, and then I hear a bit of Yonkers coming through. It’s a lovely mixture. It’s taken the sharpness off that Kheavan accent and it’s given a little bit of culture to the Yonkers accent.”

Behind Rosie’s laughter you almost hear her eye lids fluttering at Hector’s flirtatious chat.

In the control room, researcher Roslyn is flying around the place editing texts and answering phones while producer Alan Swan walks, and sometimes runs, in and out of Hector’s studio to give him updates. Alan later tells me that they never use talkback because they don’t really like it.

Amidst the running and shouting and laughter someone drops in with a huge plate of oysters. It seems quite random, but then I remember that earlier Hector interviewed Galway native Martin Moran, a contestant in that evening’s National Oyster Opening Championships. The shock of red hair looks up from the mic and gives the gift bearer the thumbs up before going back to talk to a man on air who is looking for tickets to the upcoming Morning with Hector’s Second Chance Debs event. Hector later uses the word ‘relentless’ to describe the show and it certainly appears that way.

None of the guests on the show are particularly well-known. None of them have appeared in movies or written books, and as the show unfolds it becomes clear that it is about ordinary people — something that, like him or loathe him, Hector has been consistently interested in.

After the show the 41-year-old treats his team and I to coffee and a “has to be lightly toasted” scone. He talks about the ethos of the show.

“We don’t talk about X Factor,” he says as he gives his caffé latte a good old stir with a knife. “I don’t care about X Factor. I don’t want to know about reality TV. I don’t want to know about it. I want to know about things that are happening around the country. I want to talk to Irish people about Irish things. I don’t want my six-year-old and seven-year-old listening to that when they get into the car because they’re brainwashed with it anyway, but at least when they listen to our show they can have a bit of Irishness.

“I like the eclectic mix of people we get on the phone,” he continues. “I have grown men talking to me about their boxer shorts, about how they love their boxers. I have women talking about how they steal the quilt, about epidurals, babies, births. I had a woman on, we were doing a thing on unwanted Christmas presents, and I asked her did she get a voucher and she says no, ‘I got a plot in a cemetery’. Her husband had gotten it for her. South-facing it was and everything. This is at twenty past seven in the morning. That’s the sort of thing I like.”

Along with its somewhat madcap stories and anecdotes on Irish life the mood of the show is unashamedly positive.

“You heard it today, a woman opening a new business — put that on the front page of the paper,” says Hector. “I don’t want to hear about Fingleton anymore.”

There can be little argument with the sentiment but listenership figures show that most people in the morning are tuning into news and tuning out of ‘let’s have the craic’ music shows. It’s likely that emigration and increased unemployment in the 24 to 44 category is having a big impact, but whatever the reason, figures across all the main music stations have declined dramatically since 2009. Hector’s predecessors Colm and Jim Jim had over 200,000 listeners at the end of 2008, but by the time their show finished they had lost 70,000 listeners. Hector was drafted in to give 2FM’s morning slot a much-needed boost, which is exactly what it did, initially gaining 4,000 listeners. The latest figures show a loss of 7,000, which on their own, does not look too good, but when compared to main rivals, such as Ian Dempsey and Ray D’Arcy, who lost 14,000 and 6,000 listeners respectively, they’re actually not too bad.

“Well you see, it’s like getting your Leaving Cert results every month,” says Hector. “It’s not the part I enjoy. It’s about momentum. We’re only a year on the road. Not everyone in the country is listening. Not everybody knows we’re out there, so it’s about getting new listeners. It’s certainly a challenge.”

The Navan native says he is both “happy” and “proud” of the fact that the show is based in Galway, and says that RTE’s second largest studio has been given a “new lease of life”. For now Hector and his team fully intend to live by their Keep Her Lit philosophy — a philosophy that has its origins in a text message.

“It came from a listener,” explains Hector with pride. “I was using this ‘LOL’ thing not really knowing what it meant and I put out the call for something Irish. So this woman texted in with Keep Her Lit and next thing, t-shirts, tractors, people putting it on bales of hay, people saying it on Hill 16 live on telly. If that was Saatchi & Saatchi you’d pay a million for that. The whole Keep Her Lit philosophy has taken on a whole momentum and I think we’re keeping it lit in the morning in this country.”