Culture That Made Me: Ian Dempsey on Tarantino, Larry Gogan and Alan Partridge
Ian Dempsey, broadcaster with Today FM.
Ian Dempsey, 61, grew up on (and has never left) Dublin’s northside. In 1980, he joined RTÉ as a radio DJ. In 1986, he became a TV star as host of Dempsey’s Den and a foil for Zig and Zag’s antics. He's been with Today FM since 1998, presenting the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on weekday mornings.
Around 1972 I discovered David Bowie on Top of the Pops. I became a lifelong fan. I know all his music, but I’m more obsessed with him as this iconic person – the guy who believed in himself. He had a vision. He didn't give up. He was different to what came before.
Pre-Bowie, everybody was very mannerly. Nobody stepped outside their lanes. If you wanted somebody to be experimental, you'd go to a jazz club. He was willing to fail, to keep trying.
He released his last album on the day of his birthday. He died two days later, having got five-star reviews all over the world. What a David Bowie death.
When I was going to school, I listened to Mike Murphy on Morning Call in the morning. It was similar to what I'm doing at the moment – a discs-and-patter type of thing. It was companionship. You felt he was talking to you one-on-one. He was a bit irreverent. He wasn't sticking by the rules.
All the people that I admire kind of break rules and are successful in doing that. He was a bit of a rebel. He would talk about the corporation corridor in RTÉ. He’d slag off “the suits” and see where it took him.
Nowadays everybody laughs their backsides off about everything on the radio. Back in the day, it was quite stuffy and formal. There was a report on cargo one morning on Mike Murphy’s radio show.
Somebody mentioned in passing about greyhounds falling from a plane. He couldn't get his head around it. He collapsed laughing. He was in convulsions in the studio. The way he handled it was different. It seemed like: “This is the way forward. This is what it should be like all the time.”
Steve Coogan is brilliant – all his guises, but he's particularly good at Alan Partridge obviously. Everybody knows that there's a bit of Partridge in each and every one of us, but Partridge has it all. He's a lovable character in a way. You kind of feel sorry for him, but at the same time you say he really needs to cop onto himself.
Larry Gogan was also a big influence. It was his enthusiasm. His voice never faltered. A positivity came out. There was a smile in there. Sometimes that can become an irritation to people when somebody sounds like they're literally “as happy as Larry”.
Sometimes people criticise me for that and say, “Oh, you sound too chirpy. I don't know how you do it at that hour in the morning.” It was a talent that Larry had. It was one of the main things he thought me.
I used to talk to Larry when the microphones were off and he wasn't always as happy as he let on, on the radio. It's all an act. You put your best foot forward. He always came across as prepared and up for it. He was a great storyteller. He had a good turn of phrase. He could be caustic about people. A very funny guy.
I don’t think all of that came out in his lifetime. There were other parts I’d love people to have seen about him. An all-round good egg.
There is a very good RTÉ Drama on One play by Ken Sweeney about Terry Wogan. He was told by the BBC around the time of the IRA bombings in London to stop playing Irish music, but he kept playing it. They were going to fire him. He was called to the director general’s office. He said, “Well, I've got a lot of letters from listeners who like what I'm doing even though I'm Irish.”
He had one letter from the Queen of England who said she enjoyed listening to his show. Suddenly he became a hero, Mr Personality. He got Blankety Blank on television and so on.
I love Quentin Tarantino’s sense of humour. I love that he could shoot an ordinary scene from an everyday front room, everything looks so normal; then suddenly all hell breaks loose. It brings it home: this could actually happen in your own house. It’s all very normal and then it becomes completely abnormal. I love the way he gets away with it.
The funniest thing I've ever seen in a Quentin Tarantino movie is a scene from Django Unchained about the Ku Klux Klan. A guy’s wife has done all the hoods for the guys and they're giving out about them. It becomes a domestic issue rather than about racism. It’s hilarious. I was on the floor when I saw it.
Whenever I'm watching a gameshow I watch it for the mechanics rather than the actual entertainment of it. I've come up with so many formats myself, but I've never gone anywhere with them. They're all in a notebook somewhere. If you take, for example, something like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
It's the perfect format: you help the person out. You give them four alternatives. You give them three or four chances to get it right. It’s all on their side. It's a win-win situation and still they don't win the million quid. There’s a real art to coming up with a genius format like it.
I love Conan O'Brien. He's got a good twist on things. I love his podcast. He's proud to be Irish. He’s very good at improv.
If his guests start on something, he can take it on up. He does funny voices. He's well-read. He loves history. He knows a lot about what's going on culturally. He's well able for it. I’ve huge admiration for him.
There’s a very good podcast with Jim Moir, who is Vic Reeves in real life, and Jools Holland. It’s called Jools and Jim’s Joyride. It's a simple format. It's a podcast about travel: cars, motorbikes, boats, planes, trains. They have a guest on.
They tell great stories about where they've travelled to, what they travelled in, going up on a plane for the first time. Maybe they've flown a plane. Maybe they've got their own boat. It's fascinating.
