David McCullagh on that 'excruciating apology' and why you always need a plan B

RTE news anchor wants to encourage kids to see that their voice is important - and that they can make a difference

David McCullagh: star jumping into the world of writing for young people

Carlsberg don’t do days at RTÉ but if they did, muses broadcaster and author David McCullagh, they would look like that day in 2005 when he got to interview Bruce Springsteen, have a pint and chicken wings in the Harbourmaster bar on Custom House Dock, and then go to the gig at the 3Arena.

While they say you should never meet your heroes, the American singer-songwriter did not disappoint. That is crystal clear from the photograph McCullagh, looking uncharacteristically star-struck alongside an ultra-cool Springsteen, has posted as his Twitter profile picture.

“I got my photograph taken with him and the cameraman Michael Lee said, ‘I’ll just take that again. David had a stupid grin on his face.’ The one I have on Twitter is the one without the stupid grin, so you can imagine what the first one was like,” he says.

That self-deprecating sense of humour permeates a conversation that wanders easily from music, politics, and history to his new children’s book, his excruciating on-air Covid apology and doing star jumps outside Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park.

He really enjoyed doing the latter on a photoshoot with Nina Val, he says, but he is more in RTÉ News SixOne anchor mode when Weekend catches up with him outside the RTÉ canteen during a working day.

The pressures of presenting to the nation live are never far away. Yesterday, for example, he says, the Angelus was on but the lead story for that evening’s bulletin was still not in. “I said to the director, ‘What’s plan B?’ He said there was no plan B but not to worry, the story would come in.” And it did.

It doesn’t help that he and fellow presenter Caitríona Perry can hear the chatter from the control room throughout the bulletin so they know that certain stories have not arrived yet.

They always come in, though, he says, knocking on the wooden table in front of him with gusto.

David McCullagh, in the company of the Boss, Bruce Springsteen

The star-jumping David McCullagh is back and he is the one that sets the tone for the Great Irish Politics Book which comes out on October 22. The text hums and the book is a visual joy. As McCullagh says, it’s as much illustrator Graham Corcoran’s book as his, and the pair of them succeed in injecting fun and enthusiasm into a subject that can often be dry and staid.

McCullagh gives enormous credit to his wife Anne-Marie Smyth, one of the editors on RTÉ’s children’s news programme news2day, and his daughter Rosie (20) for helping him to get the tone right: “I was trying to explain things in a way that was engaging for a younger audience, without talking down to them or oversimplifying things.”

When publishers Gill Books suggested that he follow up his meticulously researched two-volume biography of Éamon de Valera, he thought it would be fun — and it was — but it was a lot more work than he thought.

Not that hard work is a turn-off. He spent seven years working in archives revisiting the sources to try to even-handedly deal with Dev, the most controversial figure in Irish history.

When he submitted the manuscript, he says it was compared to War and Peace — “and not in a good way”. He had to cut about 70,000 words out of a 250,000 narrative.

“My friend Richard Downes advised me to keep Morning Ireland hours — that is, get up at 4 in the morning and hack away. I started doing that, well, getting up at 6am, and then staying up till 2 in the morning. The cutting back made it a much better book, but it was really difficult. You spent an entire day in an archive and you’ve come up with an interesting fact, and you’re sitting there two years later with your finger hovering over the delete button.” 

He didn’t have the same issue with the Great Irish Politics Book, as each section is brevity itself, but it manages to cover vast terrain in a way that will encourage 8 to 12 year-olds to take an interest in what is going on around them.

At that age, David McCullagh was already interested in politics — “I was probably insufferable” — but his new book will do more than simply interest its readers in politics. The message that comes through loud and clear is that your voice — whatever age you are — matters.

“Decisions are made by the people who turn up,” he says. “I hope the book can, in some way, encourage kids to see that their voice is important and they can make a difference.

“They might think there is nothing they can do, but they can. A smart politician knows that you will vote at some stage. If there is an issue you feel is important, your views are valid.”

Ask him if he was ever tempted to run for election and he responds with an almost comically vehement no. “The more I see of politics, the more I appreciate my wisdom in that regard. It’s a hard life. You can get kicked out of your job at a moment’s notice. When the tide goes out for a political party, even if they’ve put in a good performance on the national stage, they are out of a job. It’s a hard old game.” 

And part of the hard old game is facing a grilling from journalists. But, says McCullagh, it’s a process that is central to democracy.

“You have to keep reminding yourself that you are not there to score points, but to get information not for yourself but for Mrs Murphy in Ballydehob who is watching on her sofa.

“She mightn’t want a particular piece of information, but she does want to know that her politician will answer a question honestly; will say they don’t know when they don’t know and will not try and be evasive.”

David McCullagh: apologised on air for "extraordinarily stupid" breach of Covid restrictions

Speaking of being held to account, David McCullagh is more than willing to revisit his own public apology for breaching social distancing guidelines at a gathering in RTÉ last November: “I did something extraordinarily stupid for which I have nobody to blame but myself. The worst thing about it was that viewers who trust us and trust RTÉ to do the right thing felt let down. I genuinely am sorry about it.”

He says the apology was “excruciating” and the most difficult moment of his career, but it was entirely necessary at a time when people had died, others were very sick and people couldn’t see their families.

“That weekend, I was reluctant to go out and walk the dog (a King Charles spaniel called Max) but I did. Lots of people said hello. Maybe that was a coincidence, but they were not making a big issue out of it. You have to keep on, keeping on.”

In general, though, he says, his work life does not spill over into his personal life. “People in this country are pretty cool. They usually just say hello. After I got the job in Prime Time eight years ago, I was in Dunnes doing my shopping and this old fella in front of me turned around and said: ‘You used to work for the RTÉ, didn’t you?’ I said I still did, but now presented Prime Time. ‘Hmm,’ he replied, ‘past my bedtime’. So much for my fancy new job, eh?”

The conversation swings back to politics and the lack of women in office. As he says in his book, “The political system has been slow to sort out issues like this, which seems a bit strange. After all, women make up half the electorate.” 

Part of the reason, he believes, is the abuse women get from the “misogynistic pond life that dwells in social media. A lot of the time the abuse is coming from other women, which is something I can’t understand.” 

David McCullagh: posing outside Áras an Uachtaráin

He admires anyone brave enough to stand for election but has particular time for the people who established the State in the 1920s and the 1930s, both from Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil.

“WT Cosgrave deserves more credit than he got. An unarmed police force in the middle of a civil war, a new judiciary, a new civil service — those are impressive achievements.”

While he can’t say he is a fan of de Valera, he says his government built a lot of housing and they wrote a Constitution which, though flawed, was impeccably democratic.

He has huge time too for the spirit, though not the politics, of Mary MacSwiney. During the treaty debates, she spoke for two hours and 40 minutes: “It probably lost the anti-Treaty side votes, but it was what she passionately believed and she wasn’t afraid to stand up even at a time when the women deputies weren’t taken seriously in Leinster House.”

There are many other women who stand out, he says, mentioning Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Labour TD Maureen O’Carroll (comedian Brendan O’Carroll’s mother), and Labour Minister Eileen Desmond. He can’t comment on today’s politicians for obvious reasons, but he has a special word for Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, former Fianna Fáil Justice Minister.

“She decriminalised homosexuality [in 1993]. I interviewed her and she said what swayed her was the mother of a young man among a delegation who came in to see her. She spoke so passionately about her son and why he shouldn’t be discriminated against because of who he loved that it persuaded her [to introduce a new act]. That shows you, voices matter.”

If there is a single theme in the Great Irish Politics Book, it is that your voice matters. Every child in Ireland should be told that, and this book does it so well it deserves a place in the school curriculum.

• The Great Irish Politics Book by David McCullagh is out Oct 22, published by Gill