Dunphy vs. Myers

The day after this interview took place, Irish Times journalist and former Last Word guest presenter Kevin Myers went on the attack in an extraordinarily vicious (and hilariously pompous) An Irishman’s Diary. In his column, Myers declared that he would never again appear as a panellist on Questions & Answers because "serial drunk-driver" Eamon Dunphy had been invited on the previous week.

"Nobody expects television or radio pundits to be conspicuously better than the rest of us," he wrote. "But only in this country would someone who is so conspicuously worse than the rest of society be lionised, and his opinions sought as if he were a fountainhead of wisdom. He is not. He is a dangerous drunk."

Accusing him of hypocrisy on a grand scale, Myers lamented the fact that Dunphy’s conviction hadn’t cost him his job ("If Today FM had any moral fibre, it would have decided it was impossible to allow his broadcasts for another minute: his contract should have been instantly terminated") and made it clear what he would like to have seen done with the controversial broadcaster and journalist ("In any other country, Eamon Dunphy would have been thrown into jail the moment he was found guilty"). Hot Press contacted Dunphy on Friday morning to get his reaction. Busy preparing for his final Last Word broadcast, he didn’t seem overly concerned about Myers’ column…

"Well, it’s a free country," he observed. "If he hasn’t broken the laws of libel, he’s entitled to his opinion, however unacceptable it might be."

Was he bothered by the viciousness of the attack?

"I suppose viciousness on that scale bothers anybody, but not to the point that I’d be losing sleep over it… My capacity for surprise doesn’t exist any longer (laughs). I’m never surprised at what they do. But the reaction from my own listeners has been very supportive and a lot of people in the business seem to be offended by it. There’s not much I wanna say about it, to be honest. I’ll just put it down to the man and his gift for polemic."