Culture That Made Me: Dave Moore of Today FM picks his touchstones
Dave Moore presents a show on Today FM from 9am to 12pm.
Born in 1975, Dave Moore grew up in Portmarnock, Dublin. In 2002, after several years working as a songwriter and music producer, he began presenting on 98FM radio, co-hosting alongside his friend Dermot Whelan. In 2014, he joined Today FM radio station. He has a podcast with Neil Delamere – entitled Why Would You Tell Me That?! – which examines weird items in life. He hosts the Dave Moore Show on Today FM weekdays, 9am-12pm.
I'm a massive thrash metal head. I remember hearing Metallica's album Kill ’Em All for the first time, in my cousins’ house in Limerick in 1986 – this cacophony of beautiful, screaming, chunky, heavy nonsense. I was like, “What is this?” It sounds clichéd, but my life changed immediately. This is what I'd been looking for, even though I didn't know I was looking for it. In ’88, I went to my first live gig – Metallica in the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire, a now long gone ballroom. It was the Justice for All tour. As a 13-year-old, to hear live music for the first time – and for it to be Metallica in a tiny room – blew my mind.
Slayer are my second favourite band. They are so utterly consistent. To prolong their career, Metallica went and did what bands do, which is they disappeared up their own backsides for a period. We've forgiven them; they produced arguably the five most important heavy metal records of our time. They changed their sound whereas Slayer just went, “We’re gonna do what Slayer does for every single record,” which is what they did from 1983 until they finished up in 2018. They’re monsters, beasts of musicians, just phenomenal. I adore them.
People find it hilarious, but my other favourite genre of music – apart from thrash metal – is boy bands. The best gig I've ever been to was in 2002 in California. My wife and I were living in LA at the time. She bought tickets for NSYNC in Anaheim for my 27th birthday. It was the best night of my life. NSYNC are phenomenal. I love their songs.
My favourite songwriter is a Swedish guy, Max Martin. The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC both broke in Europe before they went near the US. They did it with songs co-written by Max Martin. The songwriters with the most number ones in the world are Paul McCartney #1, John Lennon #2 and Max Martin #3. He’s written so many hits from the ’90s and Noughties, and he's still the most sought-after songwriter in pop today. Whether it’s Katy Perry, Dua Lipa or Rihanna, they’ve all worked with him. He’s a genius.
Ian Dempsey is a phenomenon and a workhorse. He takes every day as seriously as he did his first day. He’s not just on the radio every morning because he’s always been there. It’s not a given. He has to work through every single radio show. He has to step up to the plate. He has to hit ratings. He has to be the Ian Dempsey that’s gonna make you listen again tomorrow. He has to do it every single day – at the crack of dawn. He’s had to make so many changes along the way. He's such an example from a professional point of view. I love being around him.
The first time I watched Alan Partridge, I couldn’t stop laughing at his antics. Having worked in radio for so long, I now realise how real Steve Coogan’s caricature of radio is, and how many of us are like Alan Partridge. Myself included! It's rare to get a comedy character that doesn't exist in a two-year window, who burns out and is gone. Steve’s command of the character allows him to grow with Steve. Partridge has gone from this late twenties BBC TV presenter wannabe through the failings of his chat show into regional radio, up to commentating on a podcast on King Charles’ coronation. He’s as relevant now as he was in the 1990s when he began. He’s stood the test of time.
I quote from Father Ted on a daily basis. Myself and my wife communicate entirely through Tedisms, Dougalims and Jackisms. It has permeated our psyche so much that we cannot exist in a world where Ted is not part of it. The scriptwriting by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews in those three series is unparalleled. They're brilliant. There isn’t a bad episode of Father Ted.
My number one movie is Elf, with Will Ferrell. It’s a Christmas movie. It’s my favourite 90 minutes of cinema created. I never tire of it. I can watch it during the height of summer or anytime in the year. I certainly wouldn't go a month without watching it. It’s never not funny. There's no joke in it that I don't like.
I love the Lord of the Rings movies. If they’re on, I need to stop what I'm doing to watch them. Everything about the world Peter Jackson created was so ground-breaking and phenomenal. The combination of early CGI with real-world effects. The forced perspective shots he did, the Weta Digital workshop, the monster creation, all the weaponry. The stories are brilliant. Nobody had the scale of mind to direct something that Tolkien had done like Peter Jackson. It’s cinematic perfection.
American Movie is a cult documentary film from the 1990s. It was made by Chris Smith, one the guys behind Tiger King. He did the recent WHAM! documentary, and the Fyre festival documentary. American Movie is about a filmmaker, Mark Borchardt, who isn’t a good or a well-known filmmaker. He wants to be the biggest horror movie maker in the world. He has an amazing passion for his dream, but the guy has nothing – no money, no connections. He has borrowed equipment and the extras are his friends. It’s the most heart-warming, beautiful story about this guy trying to make a horror feature film. I would recommend it to everyone.
I read the Riftwar Saga by Raymond E Feist as a teenager. The first novel of the trilogy is Magician. It's a fantasy saga. It has swords, dragons, castles, but it also has an element of sci-fi. It’s about a magician, a kitchen hand, with no royal connections, called Pug. He gets selected to go into a magician's school on a planet called Crydee. The sky tears apart. There's a rift in the space-time continuum. The attackers who come to destroy the world are from a different planet. It is the grandest scale of fantasy and sci-fi mixed together imaginable.
