A recent telephone survey conducted by Hot Press magazine found that 10 out of 10 media types agreed that Ian Dempsey is the nicest man in Irish radio.
Having once co-junketed to an REM show in Cologne with the popular Today FM DJ I can vouch for Dempsey myself. Throughout the trip, he always got his round in, and was just as friendly, funny, cheerful and self-deprecating as he is on the radio. You couldn’t help but warm to him. Even so, before interviewing him, I was hoping to dig up some kind of dirt (drink, drugs, bullying, control freakery, sexual deviances, animal cruelty, anything). Alas, everyone I called said more or less the same thing: “Ian’s a lovely bloke”; “what you see is what you get”; “totally sound.” Eventually I rang a media colleague who prides himself on never having a good word to say about anybody (including me). By these spiteful standards, my interviewee got a glowing reference: “Dempsey? He’s a bit fuckin’ bland. But at least he’s not a complete tosser like that tool X.”
In truth, Dempsey exudes a disarmingly likeable down-to-earth charm that’s worth radio gold. If he’s bland, it’s a blandness that has made him famous for almost all of his adult life.
Born in Dublin in 1961, he grew up (“very happily”) in Ballymun, and still lives on the city’s Northside with his beautiful wife, Ger, and their three children. Having cut his teeth working on the pirate stations, he joined RTÉ in 1980 – at the age of 19 - and became a national figure presenting, among other things, the smash hit children’s TV show Dempsey’s Den (where he gave Zig & Zag their big break). Having quit RTÉ in 1998 , he’s been hosting the consistently popular Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show for 12 years on Today FM.
Wearing blue denim jeans and a neat black leather jacket (natch), the 49-year-old is playing with his iPad and drinking sparkling water when I arrive into the Central Hotel’s Library Bar. A self-confessed gadget freak, he happily shows me some of its features. “Before they were available in the Republic of Ireland, they were available in Belfast,” he tells me. “So one day when I was finished my show, I walked down to Connolly Station, bought a ticket, went up on the train, arrived in Belfast at a quarter to two, and left Belfast at ten past two with an iPad. It’s very handy for ‘sofa surfing’. Anyway, I have it now, and it’s grand.”
iPitch over (I would’ve bought if off him if he was selling), we get down to the interview.
OLAF TYARANSEN: You presented your very first radio show at the age of six.
IAN DEMPSEY: Yes [laughs]. I did it with a friend of mine called Jonathan O’Shea, who has since moved to London. There was a guy called Ed Stewart on BBC, and I used to be fascinated by him. The two of us were into him, and he used to do a ‘junior choice’ type of programme, and he would do the jingles and all that. And I always wanted to try it, so Jonathan’s father had these reel-to-reel machines, he was a bit of a gadget freak like myself, and we used to play with his stuff. I think those tapes still exist actually, because I got an email from him once to say that he still has them, so I wouldn’t mind hearing the six-year-old me.
So a media career was always an ambition?
It was something I wanted to do. I was born at the right time because all the pirates started to happen, when I was about 16 or 17 and I started moving into them – and then I got into RTÉ.
Did you do your Leaving Cert?
I did, and I have no idea how I performed, because I knew what I wanted to do. I left one of my tests early. Number one, because I couldn’t think of anything to write; and number two, because I had to do a show on one of the pirate stations.
So you were broadcasting when you were still in school?
Yeah. But I do regret it, because my brother went on to university and most of the people I know have done third level. I was more the university of life. And the university of radio.
You joined RTÉ when you were 19.
I was on something like £60 a week. I used to do two weekend shows. I have my first contract at home, still, and I must frame it sometime. When you walk into somewhere like that, it’s very much corporation corridors, and I was in awe of the place, and in awe of all the people, like Gay Byrne walking down past me.
Where did the ambition to broadcast come from? Was it because you loved music?
I do like music, but I wouldn’t be passionate about music. I like the idea of radio. I like the idea of transmitting and the fact that you can sit in a room and talk and people can hear you somewhere else. And with text and tweets these days, the world has gotten even smaller. People from all over the world can tune into you, hear what you’re saying and remark on it straightaway. So that’s what attracted me to it.
Would you say you’ve been lucky?
Yeah, but I’ve always had the idea that you go into something for the long term, rather than saying, “I’m going to make a huge splash here, this is gonna be amazing, and everybody’s going to say, ‘Ooh, who’s that guy?’” I’m more of a steady-as-she-goes, and eventually people will gather around guy.
So you’re cautious?
I probably would weigh up things – what the consequences might be, or how I’m going to look out of it, so you might say I’m cautious. But after a few drinks... who’s cautious? [laughs]
Have you ever known financial hardship?
Well, recently, like a lot of people. I wouldn’t call it financial hardship, but everyone’s had to pull in the reins. We’ve had to tighten up, but at the same time, compared to a lot of people, it’s nowhere near hardship. You look at bills now more and say, “Is that good value or should I do a bit of shopping around?” But once I started working I haven’t stopped working. I haven’t been out of work. . . yet.
Your show took a dip in the most recent JNLR figures. Do you worry about them?
The day before I always did, and the day of, I always do. And then the next day they’re basically gone. They come out every three months and we’ve taken a tiny little drop each time. But there’s a lot of reasons for it: one is the recession, there’s a lot less people getting up in the morning; there’s people leaving the country; there’s also more radio stations. All the other stations out there have also taken a similar knock, but still it’s worrying when you say “Well, what can we do to take some of the listeners the other ones have?” Really, the only thing you can do is a quality show. We talk about it in meetings, we question everything, and we try to keep it as fresh and as entertaining as possible. But you worry about JNLR’s. What I’ve found so fascinating is how the newspapers are so interested in them. I think it’s because they can put a load of pictures in with arrows going up and down. For example, on radio you don’t say, “Oh, the newspaper ones are out now, let’s see who’s up and who’s down.”
There was a big shake-up in 2fm yesterday. Did you feel sorry for Nikki Hayes and Jim Jim Nugent?
I don’t really know either of them very well. But I believe Jim Jim Nugent, first of all, should stop using the name twice. Just be Jim Nugent. I think he’s a very talented guy, I believe he’s a really nice guy, and also quite funny – so maybe this is going to be the beginning of his brilliant career. In the way that he’s suddenly out from under the Colm Hayes thing, and that he can move on. If he’s interested, he’s a good buy for other stations. And Nikki, I feel a little bit sad about because she didn’t really get an opportunity to say “goodbye” to her listeners. She seems to be quite emotionally charged and she did a good lunchtime show. In fact the previous schedule where she was on at lunchtime, was one of the best one they had. Obviously with the death of Gerry Ryan, they had to make a few changes. It’s going to be interesting. Some of the 98FM personnel are gone from breakfast, the FM104 guys seem to have been moved. Nova are coming on as well. It’s an exciting time.
What did you think of the 2fm shake-up overall?
Since I left in 1998 there have been about eight different people who have done the breakfast show. If you take the Rick and Ruth and the Colm and Jim Jim, and you take them as two, and then Marty and Ryan Tubridy and Gareth O’Callaghan. I would say, “Wait a second, maybe it’s not the people we’re putting out front, maybe it’s the people behind the scenes that we should be looking at.” Those people are all good communicators, they’re all good broadcasters, but they need the backing and the support, and they don’t appear to be getting it.
Did you know Gerry Ryan well?
I wouldn’t call him my best friend, but we both lived on the Northside. Gerry was an avuncular sort of character when I went into RTÉ, he was a little bit older than me, and he gave me that famous letter – that I’ve still got at home – saying, “Welcome to RTÉ Radio 2, I wish you the best of luck,” and so on, and at the end it says “just remember, you can’t say ‘bollocks’ on the radio.” He was being friendly. We went out many times together, and went home late, and went to Some Like It Hot and Abrakebabra together, and things like that. We got along extremely well. Actually I was at a football match at the new Aviva Stadium recently, the Ireland vs. Argentina game, and Gerry would always have been there, with his son Rex or with Elliot or on his own. And he’d always come over and join us. And we were there and you could feel that something was missing. But to be honest, he would be looking down now at that, and saying, “Listen, lads, could you move on now?” And he’d also be having a great laugh that there’s been so much turmoil, and so much movement in 2fm, just because of one person.
By many accounts, he lived a fairly fast lifestyle.
I wasn’t in any inner sanctum, but any time I met him he was having a couple of pints or having a whiskey or something, but he wasn’t overdoing it. He enjoyed his food. But more often than not he turned up for work. It was almost as if it was part of his contract that sometimes he didn’t turn up because they wanted to have that legend going where it’s, “Oh, that Gerry, he’s done it again!” type of thing. But he’s probably the greatest communicator we’ve ever had, with all respect to Gaybo. He was able to do it spontaneously. Gay Byrne came in at 7.30am, or maybe earlier and went through everything, rehearsed, and wrote his interviews, and almost wrote the answers that people would be likely to say. So Gaybo was very prepared, whereas Gerry could go for it on a wing and a prayer, and he was well able to articulate whatever he wanted. He’s going to be very sadly missed. He was a great guy.
Will Tubridy be a good replacement?
Ryan’s had Morning Ireland, handing him a huge audience, he’s been leading up to another huge audience from Pat Kenny, so he’s been kind of cushioned. Now he’s exposed. He did the breakfast show before and he was the only one that really threatened us. But I think he was very fresh at the time and people were saying, “Hey, who’s this guy?” Whereas now he’s an established part of the institution that is RTÉ. Again, I go back to the back-up thing. Ryan’s able to carry it, he’s a total professional, but he has to have the people behind him to come up with the ideas, and keep the show fresh.
You’re going to be in direct competition with Hector.
It’s unusual for a national radio station to have one of their key shows coming from Galway. And Hector is obviously a huge personality and a great laugh, but I just hope that they also send him a team that’s going to work with him face-to-face rather than through emails, because if it’s done through emails, it’s just not the same. You don’t get the eye contact. People don’t say those things in an email, while they would say it in person. He could be extremely lucky and it could just click for him, or it could be a disaster. And he’s got a lot of other commitments, so I don’t know how regularly he’s going to be able to do it. He’ll be saying he has to go off to South America and record a Hector agus Whatever. But good luck to him. I love radio. I love the whole idea of the game of radio and I love the whole competitive element. And if I’m going to be a victim of someone else being brilliant, so be it. We’ll just try to be better, and make changes. It’s a game, and it’s a good game.
Did 2fm offer you that gig?
No, they didn’t.
Did they talk to you at all?
Nope [shakes head and laughs].
Aren’t you surprised by that?
To be honest with you, I left RTÉ television, I pulled out when I was in The Den, and I pulled out again when I was at 2fm, so I’ve got a history of pulling out. So I don’t think I’d be very welcome there.
Is it true that when you left RTÉ, they wouldn’t let you back into the building to reclaim 20,000 of your own albums?
Oh god! I did get them out eventually, and now I don’t want them [laughs]. It was just that it was very sudden and I had to just leave the building basically, so I didn’t have the time to empty my big locker full of stuff. So Deirdre McGee who was working with me, herself and her husband Noel came out one night with these boxes of records, and gave them back to me. So the story’s true. It was an unusual set of circumstances.
Who headhunted you?
I think Scottish Radio Holdings were taking it over and John McColgan was the chairman, as he still is today, so he was the guy who brought me on board. There was one very dodgy moment, where I had done a deal with them, and I went into Helen Shaw, who was the boss of radio in RTÉ. I was probably feeling a little cocky: “I’ve got this sorted so I can say what I want!” So I was quite critical and we’d a bit of a row and a blow up. We’ve since kissed and made up, which you’ll be glad to hear. But we had words, and then I got a phone call from a guy in Scottish Radio Holdings to say, “By the way, the deal is off. We just had a meeting.” We had already celebrated at home. So I was left there saying, “My god, I’ve just burnt my bridges with your one next door.” So I rang John McColgan, who was in Boston at the time, and I just said “John what’s going on?”. While he was away they’d had a board meeting and one or two people said, “No, we don’t want him here.” So John, to be fair to him, flew back to Dublin and called an extraordinary board meeting, and then he rang and said, “No, it’s back on again!” So there was a period of 24 hours when I was going, “Oh shit, I’m in big trouble.”
You got married at 25.
Yeah. People get married a little later now. It’s more sensible. You’re not going to ask me the dinner party question: “If you were to get married again, would you get married to the same person?” [laughs] And of course I would! To Ger. We’ll be 25 years married next year, and I’m going to be 50 next January.
Is that a big milestone for you?
I still haven’t fully grown up. I still think that I’m a young fella. I suppose it’s the business you’re in, so it might be a time when I say, “Okay, let’s get serious.”
You don’t look 50. Is that because you have an early morning lifestyle so there’s not so many late nights?
I’m always pretty wrecked by 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and I’d normally fall asleep on the couch. I try to go for walks, and I try to look after what I eat. But I still do as much abuse as everyone else.
Do you smoke?
Yeah, I do unfortunately.
And you drink, obviously.
Yeah, obviously [laughs].
Anything else?
No, no, no. It’s funny, you hear all kinds of things about drugs knocking around. I can honestly say I’ve never been offered anything. I’ve been at all these parties with all these so-called cool people. There must be another room that I never see, or a nod that I don’t recognise. I’m one of these people who if I did try something, I’d probably say, “yeah, that’s good, I’ll have more of that now.”
Come on! You grew up in Ballymun, and you’re saying nobody has ever offered you drugs?
I swear to god. Nothing. Honestly, I’m very upset about the fact that the pharmaceutical society, or whatever, have brought in these guidelines against Solpadine. I took a good few of those but it’s very hard to get them now. So that would be my poison! I like beer, I like red wine. But I’ve never been offered anything stronger. And it’s weird. I’m almost fascinated by it. I’m not hoping that someday someone will come up to me and say, “Ian, I read that thing in Hot Press, would you fancy some of this?” I don’t want that, but it’s just very unusual isn’t it? I got kind of left out.
You’re known as the nice guy of Irish radio.
Yeah, well, I’ve had my moments. I’m sure if you asked the team that I work with every day, they’d tell you that I can be a terrible moany old bollix.
Do you have a temper?
No, but when I stand up at a meeting, people know I’m about to make a point. I’ve also been told that I always pull my trousers up before I start pontificating [hoists his jeans]. Essentially if your name’s on the door of something, and it’s your show, you do have to protect that. I have to call it, and normally if there was some problem I thought was going to be ongoing, I’d think, “OK, let’s nip this in the bud now.”
You’ve never said “bollocks” on the radio, have you?
No. Although you can kind of say anything you like now, can’t you? It’s almost actively encouraged [laughs]. I always thought that about Eamon Dunphy, there was almost something in his contract, a bit like the Gerry Ryan one, where it specified that about every four or five days could you say “fuck” or “bollocks” or something like that.
Lorraine Keane is about to publish a book about her time at TV3 – in which she reportedly spills the beans on various arguments with the station management. Is that a bad move in a country this size?
I haven’t read the book so I don’t know. I’d be interested, because I’m fascinated to know what went on there. But every time I see her, she’s doing an expose on Xposé. I must say, “Well that’s gotta be a slim volume to tell that story.”
It’d be about the same length as My Struggle by Ian Dempsey!
Yeah [laughs]. That could be the title of my autobiography: My Struggle. Lorraine used to work with me on the breakfast show, so I know her very well, and we got along extremely well. It seems that when she left it was spur of the moment stuff, and if she had taken six deep breaths – like my father always told me to do – and walked out of the room for a while and came back in, she’d probably still be working at TV3. What’s she going to do now? All the slots seem to have been filled.
Do you have any interest in politics?
I’m not political, but I am interested in politics – and again it’s the game thing. I think it’s just amazing to watch all the different politicians and how they play it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the alternative governments, or the alternative parties, are going to be any better than what’s there at the moment. And Brian Cowen’s turned out to be one of the top ten leaders in the world, apparently [according to Newsweek], and you’re saying, “Well, maybe they know something that we don’t know.” Brian Lenihan has come across extremely well. He seems to be actually doing something . . . but it’s still a total mess.
Given that Gift Grub takes the piss out of so many politicians, have there ever been any attempts at interference?
No. A few people have put up the argument that one of the reasons Bertie Ahern survived so long was because of his characterisation on Gift Grub, which made him into this sort of cuddly, happy-go-lucky sort of character.
Do you not feel guilty about that?
No [laughs]. I suppose we should really. It’s harder to get him into it [Gift Grub] now, because he’s not as relevant as he used to be. But we’ve got Cowen going, and Enda Kenny going. I had a pint with him in Castlebar, actually. I asked him something about the hospitals, and you could see he’s a good politician, he knows what he’s talking about, but unfortunately he just doesn’t have the charisma. And he’s a decent man, but you’re saying where are the Denis O’Briens and the Michael O’Learys and the business people, because that’s probably what we need now? But it’s very easy to play the blame game.
Do you find the national mood overly negative at the moment?
I’ve found in the last three months that the country’s getting a little more positive actually. We did this thing on Monday called ‘Upstarts’, where people are setting up small businesses. We get one of them per week. And they’re people who are saying, “Ah, to hell with this, I’m going to do it my way.” The thing is, I prefer to recognise positivity and I try to push that on the radio, which may irritate somebody who’s just lost their job or whatever, but I do it because, what’s the alternative?
Are you religious at all?
Not really, no. I was raised Catholic, made my first holy communion, and confirmation. I do a carol service every Christmas because it’s the local community, and they asked me to go down and do MC, but I’m not religious. I believe in God, and I believe in a power up there, but, unfortunately the Catholic church has really let me down on many occasions. And I was an altar boy back in the day so...
Did a priest ever try to...?
No! But you see, this is it! They don’t offer me drugs or they don’t even try and... [laughs]. And yet if I’m standing in a cinema queue, I’m always the one that a beggar person would come up to. I could be halfway down, but there must be something in my face that says, “Yeah, he’s a sucker, he’ll give me something.”
What’s been the lowest point in your life?
Oh god! [laughs]. Lowest moment? Ummm... [long pause]. I got diabetes, which is pretty bad. That was about five years ago. And I was just low, because I didn’t know what the hell it was. So when I went to Blackrock clinic and they discovered I had diabetes.
Do you have to take insulin every day?
Yeah. I take it once a day, and watch my sugar levels, but it hasn’t produced any major issues.
So Ian Dempsey’s shooting-up on a daily basis!
Yeah – you got there eventually! [laughs] But it’s only once a day, it’s only a small amount, so it’s grand though you do have to watch yourself. There’s about 200,000 people in the country who have it, and I’ve often been asked to do things for them, but I just don’t want to become this guy who stands up and says, “Oh, look at me, poor me,” because there’s so many people that have it. So I always say “no”. I tend to forget the lows. Like, money-wise, I’ve been okay. Married-wise, okay. I’ve had a few dodgy hangovers.
What’s your ambition now?
I’ll be 50 on January 16th. My ambition is to try and stay as healthy as I can. Also I’m involved with two other guys, and we try and come up with TV ideas, and I wouldn’t mind getting into TV and try and come up with formats for shows. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be accepted at doing what I’m currently doing. You asked me did you get a phone call from 2fm, and I said “no”. And I worked out that the only way I’d go back is to be the boss. I’d love to be the boss of something. I’m looking at it from an aerial point of view and I just think it’s so simple what they need to do, but they can’t see the forest for the trees. So maybe that’s an ambition – to go behind the scenes a little bit more in management in the radio and in the broadcasting business.
It wouldn’t bother you not to be broadcasting yourself?
It’s not an ego thing for me. This is a job. I get up every day and my task is to try and help people get through the day. I know they’ve got other things like burning toasters and cleaning up after babies and putting on make-up and policemen walking up to their front door – they’ve got all that stuff going on. We’re in the background, providing the best service we can. So it’s totally a job – but it’s a very enjoyable job.