Matt Cooper has a hell of a tough act to follow as he takes over from Eamon Dunphy as presenter of The Last Word. Of course, credit for the success of the programme under Dunphy can also be attributed to the production team and countless contributors but there is definitely a perception – sometimes fostered by the less than humble “Eamo” himself – that he was solely responsible for turning The Last Word into the single most popular show on Today FM. Proving that perception wrong, to listeners and advertisers alike, is the greatest challenge that lays ahead for Cooper. It’s also a job he’s being paid a reported E200,000 a year to do.

But then Matt Cooper has taken on many a challenge since he graduated from UCC with a commerce degree, and DCU, where he studied journalism. He started out working for The Sunday Business Post back in its hey-day circa 1989, soon became business editor of The Irish Independent and then took on the onerous task of editing and reviving a flagging Sunday Tribune. Then, after stints as a stand-in presenter, came that high profile move into The Last Word hotseat.

Matt Cooper is 36, was born in Cork and is married to barrister Aileen Hickie. They have three girls aged two months, two years and four. In recent times, he has gotten rid of that poodle, sorry, Robert Plant-style mop of hair that threatened to undermine his journalistic credibility for so many years.

Joe Jackson: Matt, you must secretly feel fucked before you start, fearing that you can’t match Dunphy’s audience figures, the loyalty of his listeners and, maybe most importantly of all as far as keeping the gig, his appeal to advertisers.

Matt Cooper: I’m coming into a situation in The Last Word where, yes, there was a very high profile individual, in Eamon Dunphy, as presenter. But the programme was always about more than just Dunphy. It was about the way it was set up by its production team and it was the balance it had between getting good interviewees on, dealing with issues intelligently and in detail. And those are all the things that continue to be the case in the programme with me at the helm. So I’m not worried.

JJ: It seems unnatural that you wouldn’t be scared or nervous.

MC: I suppose if I hadn’t presented the programme 120 times in the past I would be extremely nervous. And there were some nerves going on for the first time last week with it being my programme. But if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out! But, Jesus, wouldn’t it be much better to try it and even fail rather than be so scared you say, “I’m not going to take it on”? And, seriously if you were to take the attitude that nobody could follow Eamon Dunphy you may as well apply that in all walks of life. You’ve got to have a certain degree of self belief

JJ: Are you one of those Cork people who wants to beat the “Dubs” at their own game. You’ve already brought this issue into the equation by saying that George Hook’s show on Newstalk radio is “Dublin only” and that, being from Cork, you want more rural voices on your programme.

MC: I was only joking when I said that! And if those were my motives, I’m not aware of it. My motive, as a print journalist has always been to try get the best story and get it out there to as many people as possible. And those are my motives as a broadcaster.

JJ: But does that involve getting a dig at your opponents such as Hook? Wasn’t it a cheap shot – and basically untrue – to say George Hook sells his show on two and a half hours of rugby? That’s not what he delivers.

MC: I was being flippant during that interview. So all I’ll say about George Hook is that he is a mildly entertaining rugby commentator who has developed a persona for himself on RTE television with a bombastic approach to dealing with a minority sport. He’s tried to do in rugby what Dunphy did as a sports commentator in RTE. That’s fair enough, it’s entertaining, but it does become a bit wearying.

And the difference between Hook and myself is that I am a professional journalist, I’ve been a working journalist for the past fifteen years. And I have the experience of editing a national newspaper. I have an experience across a whole range of topical issues and that experience will be beneficial to me in The Last Word. That’s the advantage I have. But best of luck to Newstalk. When I said Hook is “Dublin Only” I meant he has only a Dublin audience whereas we are a national station.

JJ: It was reported in one Sunday paper that you brought three female members of your production team into your office last week and told them you wanted to end the sexism that had dominated The Last Word . Isn’t that a coded attack on Dunphy?

MC: I never said there was sexism and whatever you read in Ireland On Sunday you can take it as being complete nonsense. It absolutely mystifies me that Ireland On Sunday can make up the stuff they make up. That report was fiction. And not only was it fiction because no discussion like that ever took place but because one of the three female producers was in Australia all last week. Ergo, it could not have happened. And didn’t.

JJ: But let’s address the issue. Whatever about sexism in The Last Word, Dunphy certainly had a preference for men, when it came to commentators and guests. And there was a laddishness about the programme. So when you say, in another interview, “there will be no great changes in The Last Word” are you suggesting those tendencies will remain in the show?

MC: There is going to be an evolution of things. One of the biggest mistakes anybody going into a new job can make is saying “everything was wrong before I arrived here and everything has to change.” So you do things over time. Yes there could have been more female voices on the programme but I don’t agree with tokenism and won’t be putting on women for the sake of putting on women. But there probably are a lot more female contributors we could use. Yet we won’t set out to get women because we feel we must have some form of gender balance.

JJ: In terms of the laddishness that was part of The Last Word under Dunphy, the show’s success might suggest that if you change those aspects of the programme it will become less popular.

MC: Let me say a couple of things to that. The production team I have at the moment is not the production team Eamon Dunphy had. Two of the key members of his production team have gone. One is Stuart Carolan, who may produce Eamon in his TV show and was very important in terms of The Last Word. Another person who was absolutely essential to the programme but has been slightly written out of history – because personal difficulties emerged between himself and Eamon – is Stephen Price, who was the senior producer on the programme up until three months ago. I think Eamon owed Stephen an enormous amount because Stephen was the guy who actually said, “this is the way you should do this” – as in “give the guests the opportunity to chat, don’t interrupt, listen” – and he also had a very good feel for the type of thing that should be on the programme.

But Stephen’s is going do the comedy aspects of The Last Word, which, I believe, was an important aspect of its success. Stuart was the voice of Navan Man but Stuart and Stephen originally did all the comedy for Eamon between them. So the humour will come back into the programme. And even though Stuart and Stephen are gone as producers, fortunately Emer Bradley and Sally O’Herlihy are still there and they, too, know exactly, what makes the programme work. And we’ve a new producer, Barbara Loftus who has come back from the BBC. And it’s very good getting her outside perspective – Barbara was out of the country for the past six years – and she can cast a good, jaundiced eye over what’s going on. But because we now have three women in there it means you can’t have the laddishness that was a feature of the programme.

JJ: Do you feel you have to ape Eamon in any way?

MC: No. I wouldn’t try to. There is no point in being false to try and replicate what he has done. And perhaps Today FM, when they asked me to take over from Eamon, realised you can’t replicate somebody who was, in many ways, unique. So what you do is put somebody else in. Hopefully, I can keep his audience and go forward.

JJ: You obviously have a passion for current affairs, business, economics and sport but are you weak when it comes to the Arts? They certainly got short shrift in The Sunday Tribune, being stuck inside the sports section.

MC: That was purely down to printing configuration – all those pages had to be printed together. And I would argue we gave more coverage to arts than any other Irish Sunday newspaper, twelve pages every week. But it was a regret for me that it was inside the sports section because I have a great interest in the arts. I read a lot, love cinema, love music.

JJ: But would you spend an hour talking with BP Fallon about your passion for the Rolling Stones – as Dunphy did?

MC: I don’t have a passion for the Rolling Stones. But I spent an hour talking to him about Elvis Presley last August on the anniversary of Elvis’ death. It was one of the most enjoyable hours of radio I’ve ever done. Great fun. And BP was on talking about Maurice Gibb’s death the other day so music won’t be relegated to the sidelines. Far from it. The same with film. We won’t do movie reviews but we will deal with the issues raised by major movies, as happened last week when we discussed Gangs of New York.

JJ: What kind of music did you listen to growing up?

MC: I was into the likes of Led Zeppelin as a teenager.

JJ: Your previous hairstyle gave that away! Had you a secret yearning to sing alongside Robert Plant!

MC: (Laughs) No, not really!

JJ: Have you a liberal attitude to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll that you’ll bring to The Last Word or are you more conservative?

MC: (Pause) I am quite liberal. I would not be judgmental in relation to how people live their lives.

JJ: So do you feel Pete Townshend, for example, should have been arrested for looking at child porn if, as he claims, he was doing so as part of his research for his autobiography?

MC: If he was doing it in the name of research, that is the question. But a distinction has to be drawn between paedophilia and looking at child pornography.

JJ: What, in your view, is the difference?

MC: One is active abuse of children, the other is looking at it.

JJ: But by looking at and paying for child porn you are adding to the culture of child pornography and helping sustain an industry in which children are actually abused physically, sexually or simply by being photographed?

MC: In that sense there’s not much of a difference. And there is abuse perpetrated on the children who appear in it. (Pause) This is deeply disturbing stuff. And this subject is where your liberalism starts to be challenged and tested.

JJ: Did you ever look at child porn?

MC: No.

JJ: If you were going to interview someone on the subject would you look at child porn as part of your research? Would that be a legitimate journalistic activity? That’s what Townshend says he was doing.

JJ: There’s not proof he was writing a book. But, no, I wouldn’t look at child porn because I wouldn’t want to be brought that close to it.

MC: I do sense that even as you talk about child porn now you are, in fact, disturbed.
I am. There are certain issues in life you really don’t want to confront and child porn is one of them, for me.

JJ: It also is, as you say, one of those key areas that tests your liberal attitudes.

MC: Yes. But what consenting adults want to do in their own privacy, that’s nobody’s business but their own, as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t be judgmental in terms of people in those situations.

JJ: What’s your attitude to a drug like cocaine – the use of which Dunphy referred to when he told one Irish newspaper “you can’t get good coke in Dublin these days”. So would you come out tomorrow and say “I use cocaine, lots of people in the media do!”

MC: No. Because I’ve never used cocaine. Possibly, to a certain extent, because of a fear of what effect it would have on me. I’m a hypochondriac so I’d be afraid of dropping dead with a heart attack. But there is a legitimate argument to be made in relation to the legalisation of certain drugs. In particular cannabis. Look at its risk to health in comparison with alcohol. And it always struck me that someone smoking a joint is less likely to be violent, in the sense that people under the influence of alcohol are. In addition to that, the legalisation of cannabis could allow the authorities to more readily police the use of harder drugs. And I’ve never been convinced by the argument that hash is the gateway to harder drugs.

JJ: So did you and dope-lovin’ BP have a joint while talking about Elvis!

MC: On the air? No! Off-air afterwards? Perhaps!

JJ: Let’s talk about sport. Last year you described Roy Keane as a “thug” which was the reason you fell out with Eamon who, obviously, sees the man in a more romantic light.

MC: More recently I wrote that one of the things I would like for the new year is to see Roy Keane back in the Irish team. Not only that, I would like to see him lift the Champions League trophy for Manchester United this year. I thought it was terrible for him to miss the ’99 final when his performance against Juventus was one of the great football performances, the way he dragged that team back from a two goal deficit to win the match. But I would always have had the feeling that no matter how great a talent Roy Keane is there are times he loses control on the football pitch.

Then the Keane biography came out and there was that passage in relation to the Alfie Halland incident, and it was in that context I said Keane was a thug, because it clearly was premeditated and went back to something three or four years earlier when he had this thing in his head that he was going to do the guy. That’s the way it was written in the book. Now, afterwards, Eamon said he took whatever licence in relation to that but at the time I wrote the piece that’s what was in the public domain, from the book – that Keane himself acted that way.

JJ: Dunphy and Johnny Giles had their initial falling out on The Last Word when you were presenting it, didn’t they?

MC: Yeah. And, in some respects, I think the worst thing Eamon did last year was what he did to John Giles. John Giles was such a good friend to Eamon all through the years. But Giles committed the sin of merely disagreeing with Eamon on something. And he got “mugged” as a result. The night Eamon came on air – and asked to come on air (via a phone call from France) we had a 45-minute conversation and he brought John in gratuitously, deliberately. It was in the fall-out, the following day, to that ‘Roy Keane Is Thug’ editorial I wrote. But to disprove the point that Keane was a thug, Dunphy decided to attack John Giles. And he got it factually wrong. He said Giles set out to break another player’s leg, which he hadn’t done. But he really, vitriolically, went for John Giles. It was quite astonishing that he would do that to his friend. And the following night we had John on the programme and John responded in a very measured way. We played back some of the clips. But then the following Sunday we ran in the Tribune a transcript of The Last Word Dunphy interview and I remember John rang me at home, on the Sunday morning, and he was utterly taken aback by the things Eamon had said about him. It was the first time he realised what was said. He hadn’t actually heard the original piece.

JJ: One reviewer of the Keane book said that the Tom Humphries’ Q & A interview with Keane, re-printed at end of the book, gave you a better, deeper sense of the man than Dunphy’s narrative.

MC: I remember Eamon came on saying ‘this isn’t the usual bog-standard football biography, this is nothing like that.’ But, unfortunately, it was a bog-standard football biography. Ghosted autobiography, in this case. The top class book that was done last year, was the job Tom Humphries did on the Niall Quinn book. It’s a great read, searingly honest, beautifully written. And that’s exactly what I would have expected from Eamon. Because Eamon did a great book on Matt Busby. Unfortunately, he spread himself too thin last year. And his performances on The Last Word suffered as well. It’s amazing to think that – given the importance he attributed to The Last Word over the years – during the General Election campaign, Eamon took a week off. What current affairs journalist takes a week off during a General Election campaign?

Dunphy himself once said no matter how popular The Last Word might become RTE is still JJ: the “station of record” and that during a major crisis it’s the station we’d all turn to. Like, presumably if there is another war in the Gulf.

MC: Yes and no. RTE is incredibly important and I would be a big supporter of the need for Public Service broadcasting and would agree with the licence fee increase. I think there are an awful lot of people cribbing, who don’t mind paying for their satellite bill and various other things. So I think the licence fee increase is important to help RTE serve its Public Service brief.

But as for it naturally being the station we’d turn too in a time of crisis, that comes down to the intelligence of the contributors you’d use at a time like that. And how you deal with the issues. So if war breaks out in Iraq I would hope we would have really good, heavyweight contributors who’d lend additional information and knowledge to what people know about the event. I’d have no fear that, when it comes to major events, we’d match, and sometimes beat, RTE.

JJ: Do you believe the Americans when they say those planes stopping at Shannon aren’t carrying weapons?

MC: No. Can you imagine the Americans sending groups of people on war flights and sending them separately from weaponry? It doesn’t make sense.

JJ: So what’s your response to the fact that the Americans probably are using Shannon as part of their war on Iraq?

MC: My own view in relation to the Gulf War is that it is not exactly a principled war. It’s going to be about oil interests and economic interests rather than the excuses that are being offered. Obviously Saddam Hussein is an evil tyrant but, by the same token, I don’t think there should be a war as envisaged by America and Britain. And we are supporting that, in a sense, by offering facilities at Shannon. That’s not something I feel we should be doing.

JJ:How do you rate Bertie Ahern as a leader, particularly when you hear him speak on such issues alongside the likes of Blair?

MC: (Pause) I’m reluctant to start passing judgement on the Taoiseach.

JJ: Fair enough. But do you think he has taken a strong enough position on the subject of the war on Iraq?

MC: When does Bertie ever really take positions on anything? That possibly is the greatest difficulty I would have with Ahern. What does he really stand for? When does he really come out and enunciate a firm position without having vagueness? One thing you have to say for Tony Blair, even if you disagree with him: at least he’s actually brave enough to do something and say what he’s doing while he’d doing it. I don’t think you’d ever really know what the real position of our political leadership is.

JJ: How do yuo rate the performance of Charlie McCreevy as Minister For Finance?

MC: A lot of what he has done has been posturing. He loves talking the talk, as if he’s the hard man who takes all the tough decisions but he clearly let things run out of control. The money, during the good years, wasn’t spent wisely or on the right things. So suddenly, to prove himself, because the revenues of the State aren’t as great as expected, he clamps down. And in doing so he hits the most vulnerable sections of society. But if McCreevy had more control when he was boasting about all the initiatives he was taking over the years then he wouldn’t have left us in this situation.

JJ: Do you have any hope that he can help turn things around?

MC: McCreevy will do what McCreevy wants to do. He’s a stubborn man in relation to that. I have been very critical of McCreevy, in print, along these lines. Because I do think the function of journalism is always to be extremely critical of whoever is in power and put them under the analytical and investigative spotlight as much as possible. I certainly don’t think newspapers or broadcast media should become partial towards a political party or a government.

JJ: As editor of The Sunday Tribune did you ever feel compromised, politically, by being part of the O’Reilly group of newspapers?

MC: No. I was never stopped or requested not to do something I felt it was right to do. And in the Tribune we took on a lot of big issues, particularly in relation to business figures, and I never had any complaint made towards me. I never even got the feeling there was any dislike for what I was doing.

JJ: I heard there was at least one point of collision in relation to you and the O’Reilly’s.

MC: There was an incident, in relation to a story on a friend of one of the sons, Tony Jnr, where there was unhappiness on his part, but there never was a problem with his father. His father never mentioned it. And since I left the paper we’ve had a very good correspondence with each other. There’s a very good relationship there. And one thing I found good in relation to working for the Tribune was when, during the time of the Eircom take-over battle, O’Reilly was going up against O’Brien, we published an editorial saying shareholders in Eircom shouldn’t sell to either of them. On the front page we put pictures of Denis O’Brien, Dermot Desmond and Tony O’Reilly and used the headline: ‘Eircom shareholders, why you should sell to none of these men.’ And nothing was ever said to me about that. One of the reasons I did it was because I knew nothing would be said. That showed we are able to take a position we felt strongly about and there was never any fear of retribution. And one thing I learned over the years was that you would always get people saying, “look how soft he was on O’Reilly there.” But when you do the things no one else has the bottle to do, you never get any credit.

JJ: There are a lot of cash-strapped people in The Sunday Independent who believe that O’Reily’s money is wasted on the Tribune and that it should be folded and the money pumped back into the “Sindo.” There also is the belief that the Tribune was bought by O’Reilly, basically, to keep the paper in a secondary, subsidiary position and to ward off competition.

MC: First of all, the investment was made originally in 1991 so I wasn’t privvy to the reasons. And The Sunday Independent is an extremely successful newspaper and they don’t want to damage it so you can see the commercial logic in buying the Tribune. It makes good business sense. But the point is that if the Independent hadn’t been involved in the Tribune it probably would have folded by now.

JJ: Were you, as editor of The Sunday Tribune, starved of resources?

MC: Every editor will tell you they want more resources.

JJ: The sales figures must have been a disappointment to you.

MC: Yeah. That said, I left the sales a lot higher than when I took over. When I took over the sales were 74,000 over the preceding six months and as I leave they average 85,000. Though they have gone up to 90,000 and fallen back. That happened when you had a surge in The Sunday Times, which has massive investment behind it and when you get a free newspaper with a CD called Ireland On Sunday! That’s why I think we did a lot better than people give us credit for.

And I didn’t leave the paper because I was unhappy with my job or unhappy with the situation I was in. The Last Word was the only job I would have gone to. Because I wanted to see if I could be a good broadcaster and put my own stamp on the programme. That’s a new challenge and that’s the only reason I left the Tribune.

JJ: The pay increase must have helped tempt you away too!

MC: That is true. There is no doubt that I am a lot better paid now than I was. It would be utterly dishonest to say anything else.

JJ: If they’d given you € 200,000 to stay with The Sunday Tribune would you have?

MC: No. Because, as I say, this was a new challenge. You’ve got to test yourself. I’ve been really, really lucky and I’ve had a very fortunate career path. I was in The Sunday Business Post at the start, then to got a chance to edit a section of a daily newspaper, then became the editor of a national Sunday newspaper. Now I’m getting the chance to have my own radio programme. That’s a great run.

JJ: It might also have left you psychologically ill-equipped to deal with a major public failure if The Last Word doesn’t work out. You have rejected the suggestion that the listenership figures went down by 20% when you or Fintan O’Toole stood in for Dunphy but what if, a year from now, figures show that trend is true and has gotten even worse?

MC: I know if I give it my best shot I will be happy. I also know if it doesn’t work out I can go back to print journalism.

JJ: You still do occasional articles for The Sunday Tribune but would you go back to it full-time?

MC: It depends on whether a new editor would want me.

JJ: Would you go to Ireland On Sunday?

MC: (Laughs) I think I’m more of a broadsheet journalist!

JJ: The Sunday Independent mockingly refers to Ireland On Sunday as Little England On Sunday but if that’s what it is surely Today FM should be called Little Scotland On Sunday given that it’s now owned by Scottish shareholders!

MC: (Laughs loudly) Well, it still has a distinctive Irish flavour, doesn’t it?

JJ: But, seriously, is there a hatchet hanging over your head in Today FM if you don’t, for example, pull in the advertisers?

MC: They actually put the ad rates up when I came on board. By 15%.

JJ: Was that just to get back the salary they’re paying you!

MC: (Laughs) I doubt if I’m as expensive as Dunphy was! Willie O’Reilly (MD of Today FM) also told me they got approached by a company who said, “now that you are changing the presenter, if the major sponsor of the programme – which is Aer Lingus.com – wants out, we’ll back it.” But there is all that stuff printed saying that whenever Fintan or myself took over listenership figures fell by 20%. I’d love to see the bit of paper that proves those figures. Willie O’Reilly tells me there is no basis to that. And if there was, why, then would they have hired me? So, to me, all those claims are just the worst kind of Dublin media pub talk.

JJ: Spread by Dunphy?

MC: No comment! But it will be a year, or more, before we know where things are going. And, hopefully, I’ll grow more comfortable with this job then, more and more of my own personality will come out, whatever this personality might be! But I am confident we will put together a good news and current affairs programme which will also go into unexpected areas as well. At least that’s my intention.

JJ: And can we expect to see you on the tear at lest one night every few weeks, drinking, smoking dope, doing coke, getting into brawls?

MC: Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t hit anyone!