Honesty the key for Dunphy
Gay Byrne was posing for photos with former Miss Ireland Andrea Roche to promote his upcoming series of concert hall interviews and for once, noone was looking at Andrea's legs. A woman of Byrne's vintage in floral frock and cardie gazed in delight. "He's wearing well," she said reverentially.
Another middle-aged, sombre-suited and busy-looking stopped in her tracks, squinted, pulled her glasses from her handbag, had a good look and took off purposefully, her mouth already forming the words of the news she was dying to pass on.
Across the road, a row of female twenty-somethings had gathered at the third-floor gazed in delight. "He's wearing well," she said reverentially.
Another middle-aged, sombre-suited and busy-looking stopped in her tracks, squinted, pulled her glasses from her handbag, had a good look and took off purposefully, her mouth already forming the words of the news she was dying to pass on.
Across the road, a row of female twenty-somethings had gathered at the third-floor of herself with celebrities ran off to get her own camera and insisted Gay return to pose with her for her own collection.
Four years after the Late Late and many moons after the buzzards started circling on his career, Gaybo still has it. And knows it.
It was easy to imagine Eamon Dunphy pouring scorn on such a scene but it would be an arrogant man who would fail to be impressed by the power to enchant three generations of Irish womanhood and Dunphy doesn't like to be thought arrogant.
Headstrong, yes. Assured, most assuredly. Pushy wouldn't be pushing it. But arrogant, no. Arrogance is a trait he has no time for. Along with incompetence, mediocrity and hypocrisy, it is one of the characteristics of the swaggering classes he actively seeks out and destroys.
At least, that's how he likes to present himself, although it will come as a surprise to some who have been on the receiving end of his tirades. His crushing critiques, if not born of arrogance, have at times been delivered with a haughtiness that practically swaggers across the page or the airwaves.
His presenting and interviewing skills have not always impressed either. Yet it is impossible to look into the craggy face or listen to the dirt road voice and doubt Dunphy believes in the views he is expounding at least for as long as he is expounding them.
His appearance suggests a life lived at full throttle . It suggests the wide experience that results in a sharp insight and the sort of honesty that comes from having too many warts on show to try to hide. For the most part, it doesn't lie. Dunphy has extensive experience of life , from the poverty of his childhood to the prosperity of his latter years, from the sorrow of marriage breakdown to the joy of a stable second relationship. He sampled the hope and glory of professional football and choked on its bitter aftertaste. He has grown-up children he cherishes and is a responsible grandfather but knows drink and drugs too well and behaves at times like a bratty child.
He has lived down rumours about his sexuality, rowed publicly with colleagues and been on the wrong side of the law, the rumour mill and public opinion. Radio and its disciplines may have mellowed him but in his more excitable moments he is considered about as governable as Iraq.
He has the advantage of appearing lived in without being worn out and that may prove attractive to guests with skeletons that have rattled a little too loudly in their own closets.
But television is less forgiving than radio , however, and being the newest show in town is not always as solid a crowd-puller as being the longest-running, which is Pat Kenny's advantage.
For a man who once shovelled 1,200 words of finely crafted opprobrium on Kenny in a Sunday Independent column which landed the newspaper a costly trip to the libel courts, Dunphy has had little to say of his rival of late, talking instead of the Late Late Show, which he clearly sees as concept and tradition that is bigger than its current presenter.
But is it bigger than Dunphy? Give it a bit of time and Andrea Roche's photo collection could reveal all.
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