Glad to be Ray

When Hot Press meets Ray D’Arcy in the reception area of Today FM’s plush new Digges Lane studios, we're half surprised to see that the popular broadcaster isn’t sporting a shocking electric blue hairstyle. There are big posters of him all over town, looking like a member of a Sigue Sigue Sputnick tribute band, advertising the station’s ‘Shave or Dye’ charity campaign – for which, as the name suggests, various presenters will be either shaving their heads or dying their hair in order to raise money for the Irish Cancer Society.

“They photo-shopped the posters,” D’Arcy explains. “We won’t actually be doing it until February 18 – and it’ll be broadcast live on air.”
Will he be shaving or dyeing when the time comes?
The 45-year-old lets out a self-deprecating sigh, rolls his eyes and runs a hand over his cropped grey hair. “The listeners will decide, but to be honest it doesn’t really bother me either way. My hair isn’t exactly my best feature. It’s Ian Dempsey I feel sorry for.”
Born in Kildare in 1964, D’Arcy has been a familiar figure on the Irish media scene for more than twenty years now. He first came to public attention as a presenter on RTE’s flagship children’s show The Den, where he was regularly the butt of Zig and Zag’s jokes. Ten years ago he made the move to Today FM, presenting The Ray D’Arcy Show on weekday mornings (though he still occasionally moonlights for RTE, having – among other gigs – presented their televised coverage of The Rose of Tralee festival since 2005).
Although his radio show was initially music orientated, it has gradually achieved something of a cult status thanks to its quirky quizzes and segments, occasional campaigns (most notably against drink driving) and close textual relationship with its listenership. Audience figures are healthily close to the 250,000 mark and D’Arcy has won the ‘Best National DJ’ award three times at the Meteors. He lives in Dublin with his partner Jenny Kelly (also a presenter on the show) and their three-year-old daughter, Kate.
We take our seats. Ray D’Arcy looks wary as the tape starts to roll . . .

OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s your earliest memory, Ray?
RAY D’ARCY: Right. I’m going to sound like a swot… my earliest memory is of writing with my grandmother.
Writing what?
Writing letters. It was pre-school. My grandmother lived across ‘The Green’ – as people would have called it. We lived in the same estate. And she used to come across every afternoon and help my mum, because I’m from a very big family – there’s nine of us. And she used to come across and do the ironing, et cetera.
Where do you come in the nine?
Third eldest. So anyway, that’s my earliest memory, of just writing the letter ‘A’ on a piece of paper with my granny in the afternoon when I was three.
Was it a happy childhood?
Em, yeah, yeah. I … [shifts uncomfortably]. You know, this isn’t supposed to be a personal interview. I specifically said that.
Oh! Did you? I thought you’d agreed to do the Hot Press interview. . .
Yeah, well you see, I’ve been sold a pup then, Olaf, and this is going to be uncomfortable for both of us. Because I was told specifically this was going to be about ‘Shave or Dye,’ and I thought, ‘Why in the fuck would Olaf Tyaransen be interested in talking to me about my hair?’ Because I knew that’s not what you do.
I don’t want to make you unhappy, Ray!
No, no, no, but like I’m not … [laughs]. I’m a private person and I’m not going to talk frankly about that kind of stuff.
You often talk about your private life on-air, though, don’t you?
I do and I don’t. People know my demographic: they know what age I am; they know what size family I’m from; they know I’m from Kildare. They know I’m from a working-class background, all of those things. So I don’t know what we do from here . . .
Me neither!
I don’t want to piss you off! We’re in a sort of a… I’m not hiding anything, it’s just I don’t do this sort of thing. I believe that once you start courting that sort of thing and you talk about yourself in that sort of way, then all bets are off and people can say and do whatever they like. Once you maintain a little bit of privacy about yourself, you can get offended if somebody, sort of, breaks the trust, if you like. So, I don’t know. Do we switch that [recorder] off and have a chat, and then switch it back on? Do we have rules of engagement? If that doesn’t suit you either, you know [shrugs].
Well. obviously I’m here to do this interview and part of my job is to get you talking about things you don’t normally talk about. But if you’re resolutely not going to do that …
Well, look, it’s not that I’m resolutely not going to do that, but like, it depends what you ask me! [laughs] You know what I mean? I didn’t stop you there because I didn’t have a happy childhood; I stopped you there because I immediately knew that this is different to what I’d been told. So, if you want to continue with that in mind . . . go ahead.
Look, I’ll just ask the questions and if you don’t want to answer anything, tell me to ‘fuck off’.
Okay, rules of engagement! [laughs] No, like, I’ll answer them honestly. Yes. In the main, I did have a happy childhood. I worked from the age of nine, I had a paper route. That was the type of family – it was a working-class background – my dad was in the army. Nine of us – four boys and three girls. One breadwinner. My mum is a saint, an amazing woman, like a lot of Irish mothers are. A bright woman. Five of us achieved – got degrees, which was unheard of for a working-class family.
What were you like in school?
Eh… you know, I was in the top three in the class, always. But that’s a small town in Kildare.
Were you a smart-arse?
No. I’m not a smart-arse. To this day I’m not a smart-arse. That’s not my schtick. It’s odd: Kildare is sort of a small town, and the beauty of attending school in Kildare is that everybody was there. You had the local bank manager’s son; you had the rich kids – so I was sitting beside, say, Johnny Osbourne, who was my best friend. His da was the manager of the Irish National Stud, they were well-to-do. I was always achieving in-or-about the same results as him in exams, stuff like that. He was going to university, so I thought, ‘Well, if he’s going, I’m going’. There was a certain naivety about that. I didn’t question it, whereas, you can see, for example, in places in Dublin they don’t have that because nobody goes to university in a particular school; their brothers didn’t go to university; their parents didn’t go to university. But a small town is different. If you were academically bright enough, you went to university.
Did you ever feel stifled growing up in such a small town?
No, I never felt stifled at all. My younger brother Hugh – I can’t speak for him, but I suppose he was the – my da, who is up there with George Bush when it comes to malapropisms, you know, he used to refer to Hugh as being a bit of a Hibernian – he meant ‘bohemian’! [laughs] Hugh was the guy who got his head shaved, got the earring, wore the punk clothes. I was more of a conformist.
You became a DJ at fifteen?
It was one of those ridiculous stories. It started in the local hall, which I had gone to since I was twelve, at a disco on a Friday night, sitting beside this guy called Paul Brass. He was a new kid in town, arrived from England, long hair, sort of a crocheted jumper that had never been seen in Kildare! We were sitting there, anyway: there’s this local painter who is 6’4” with a bad stammer and a monkey hat playing ‘My Boy Lollipop’ and he’s the DJ. And, you know, I said, ‘if he can do it…’ He [Paul Brass] said, ‘Coincidentally, me and the brother were DJs in England, I have all the gear’. So we decided we’d go into business together. Then he thought that DJ-ing wasn’t for him because he was a drummer as well – he wanted to be in a rock band. So he sold me his decks and his record collection and we went our separate ways. There was a sort of an overlap in that I fronted the band for one performance only. The band was called Purple Helix, and I performed one song at a school concert preview. And then I was approached by the vice-principal, who was protecting me from myself, in a way. He suggested that I didn’t do it at the real thing [laughs]. It was a song called, ‘Monday Morning,’ and the chorus went: “Education, condemnation, my poor brain’s got constipation.” And it was white reggae in the sort of early Police punk style. So I just shouted it. And so anyway, Paul Brass and Declan and John, they went off and had a bit of a band. And then I became a DJ at the age of 15.
And were you DJ-ing every week?
No, it started – my older brother was in UCD, and he was having a house party in a house on Kilmacud Road. And he told his mates – he lied – that I was an experienced DJ. And this was my first gig. It was 1979, I think, and ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was the big sort of everybody-gets-on-the-dance-floor type song. So I went up, at the age of fifteen anyway, and I’m DJ-ing away. It was a house party of students, and this twenty year old girl sort of – I ended up dancing with her, I ended up kissing her. And my brother was so indignant that he actually told her my age [laughs]. What did he think was going to happen, that she was going to go off with him just because…? Anyhow, that wasn’t the reason I stayed doing DJ-ing.
But it must have been a good way of getting girls?
Well, no actually, my rule of thumb was if they came up to you at a disco they weren’t the type for me.
Were you sexually adventurous when you were younger?
Nah. No.
What age did you lose your virginity?
Twenty. I’ve said that on the radio.
And what was that about? Were you holding off or did you just have no luck?
It was probably about listening to women, and them saying, ‘I’m saving myself for the right person’, and I wasn’t in any way politically-minded, but I thought, if they can have that approach to life, why can’t men have that approach to life? That was part of it.
Are you a cautious type generally?
I would be cautious. Yeah, I’m naturally cautious. Definitely.
When did you have your first drink?
Twenty.
Really? Even though you grew up in a small Irish town?
Never drank. My mother didn’t drink at all. My dad’s a bit of a drinker.
Were you religious?
I would have attended mass until about 28. And, increasingly, I was finding myself during the sermon questioning things. And then there was a new curate, and he came to the sermon – and he could have been younger than me, I was 28/29 at the time – and he said that if you’re not suffering, you’re not a good Catholic. And at that stage I just said, ‘Ah lads, come on’.
Would you have been a daily mass-goer?
Ah no, weekly. Weekly, and only if I could fit it in with everything else. My mum is very religious. So we still have chats about it.
Would you say you’re an atheist now?
I would, yeah.
You don’t believe in God?
No.
What do you think happens after we die?
Nothing.
What’s your take on the new blasphemy laws?
Ah look, I think it’s a waste of time. I think there are a lot more important things to be discussing apart from that. And I think if that’s the height of what our government are getting up to, what a waste of space. It’s just a joke.
It’s not something you’d think about challenging on your show?
No. Sure, if you went over it and listened to everything I’ve said since I started ten years ago, I’m sure I’ve broken that law on numerous occasions.
You studied Psychology at Trinity. Why Psychology?
Well, it was by default. I was in St Vincent’s Hospital when I was ten, and it was a brand spanking new hospital. And the reason I wasn’t sent to a children’s hospital was because I wasn’t particularly sick.
What was wrong with you?
I had a rash. It was recurring, and nobody knew why – the local GP couldn’t diagnose it. So, they sent me there, and I was a little bit of a novelty. So I stayed for three and a half weeks, and I got out of there thinking, ‘Ah this medicine thing is great’. So I wanted to be a doctor – and that stayed with me until my Leaving Cert. I was one point short – and there wasn’t a culture of repeating at that stage. So, that was first on the CAO – then communications, because I had done a bit of local radio, and stuff like that. And you needed an honour in English to get that, which I didn’t realise until the day before the offers came out. So I didn’t get that. So, third in line was Psychology in Trinity.
That’s still a decent degree.
It was high up there, but you didn’t need the Leaving Cert you went in with to do it. I’m constantly meeting teenagers, who say – ‘Oh you did Psychology. I’m going to do Psychology’. And I really am strong about advising them not to do it.
Were you looking at medicine in terms of it being a well-paid career?
No, it was that my experience of the medical profession at ten was of this spanking new, clean hospital. It was actually nearly a joyous occasion for me. Because I came from a very cramped cottage – you can imagine the contrast. My school was an academic school, and had really bad career guidance, or no career guidance. So you did what you could achieve academically. There was no sense of what you were suited to – if you could get the points for medicine, you did medicine, even if you were a non-caring being.
Did you resent how messed up Ireland was at that time?
No. I wasn’t politically aware at all. My first spark of thinking about the country was when we did economics in fifth year. At the time we were hugely in debt, and we were just spending, spending, spending. And I remember thinking that we would have to go through some pain for this to right itself, and we did in the early eighties. It would have been Charlie Haughey, you know, ‘We are living beyond our means …tighten our belts …blah blah blah’. So that was the first time I thought about Ireland as a country, that was governed, and that we owed money.
Are you worried about the current economic situation?
It’s worrying, yeah. I said it on the show, but I haven’t heard anybody publicly talk, in any real way, about the psychological effects of unemployment. And they’re huge. It leads to depression. Part of who we are is what we do. And then there’s the logistical thing of not having anything to do – that you’ve no structure to your life.
And no money.
And no money – filling your time takes money, in the main. When it was obvious there was going to be huge unemployment, I jokingly said to the lads in the office, ‘My advice to anybody who has become unemployed is to go out and buy a pair of good running shoes’. Right? And they all laughed. And my thinking there is that, firstly, good running shoes are expensive, right? So, if you are made unemployed you have some sort of redundancy, or whatever. And running – like this is not Hot Press or anything like that – but I’m nearly evangelistic about this, and it is that the whole thing around exercise is being wrongly sold to people. It’s being sold as a way of getting into a lower dress size, or a smaller waist, when really the benefits are about up here [taps head].
Jogging releases endorphins.
Yeah, it releases endorphins. And I don’t want to sound like some fuckin’ mad American or whatever, but if people were sold that, rather than the dress size – because for a lot of people the lower dress size takes so long that they just give up hope – but within weeks of starting to do a little bit of exercise your head feels a lot better.
Are you fanatical about your fitness?
Not fanatical, no.
Do you go for a jog every day?
No. I ran the marathon last year. That was my second marathon. Right up until I broke my toe two weeks ago, I’d run three times a week. And I cycle in and out to work. The cycling fulfils that function, but it also means that I arrive to my desk having had some fresh air. You are sort of in touch with something live, as opposed to getting into your car, turning on the radio and the heat. You know, so it sort of wakes me up!
At what point did you first begin to feel famous?
Ha, ha!
Well, you must have been a well known local DJ in Kildare . . .
More because I was a D’Arcy, and there were nine of us. And in a small town everybody knew the D’Arcy’s because they all were in a class with one of us. The first time I was asked for an autograph was actually walking down to mass in Kildare on a Sunday. And I told the girl to F-off because I thought she was . . .
Taking the piss?
Yeah. So, I really do believe that we don’t – apart from Gay Byrne and Bono – we don’t really have celebrities in this country.
So what’s your take on celebrity culture in Ireland?
I just don’t get involved. It’s an industry, really, isn’t it? It’s important for things like the tabloids that they have people who will talk about inconsequential things and get their photograph taken, and be willing to do that. It’s an industry, and it’s self-fulfilling.
Most of the local ‘celebs’ are all fur coat and no knickers.
Yeah. So I don’t really involve myself in it.
When did you move into TV?
I had done radio, and despite the fact that various people around me said I wasn’t very good at it, I just loved radio. And I had applied to 2FM, and various places, and then this job came up – a programme called Jo Maxi. They were looking for people who had never done TV before. You had to send in a video – and at that time that was big news, because nobody ever asked for that. It was 1988, video technology was really in its infancy. I think three people in Kildare Town had a video recorder. So I applied for that with the sole purpose of getting into radio. I thought, ‘Well if I get into television, surely they’ll have me on radio.’ [laughs] It sort of didn’t work out that way; I got into television and then, twelve years later or whatever, I eventually got onto radio.
Were you frustrated doing children’s TV?
I was doing The Den, and The Den was really special. There’s nothing like it anymore. It was a bit like radio-television in that you weren’t held back by the normal constraints of television, which are: make sure you look to that camera, there’s a crew of 15 and everyone has to know what you’re going to say and when you’re going to say it, blah, blah, blah. We were just in a room with one camera. If I was dressing up, I would be more self-conscious about walking from the wardrobe department downstairs up to the studio, than I would be about going on telly. That’s a bit messed up, but that’ll give you an idea of how relaxed and free it was. Actually, looking back on it now I think, it probably did restrict me as an adult! I didn’t need to develop any sort of opinions because it was children’s television. As long as I knew the difference between the three Animaniacs, or whatever, that’s all I needed to know.
Were you disparaged by your contemporaries?
Yeah, still to this day, a lot of people don’t take me seriously. But when I came to Today FM it was a huge gamble for both parties because I was an unknown product on radio. But it was an itch I had to scratch. I wanted to do radio, five days a week. It was one of those things where I’d go, ‘If I don’t do this I’ll be always wondering how it would have went.’ And I always listened to radio as a critical listener, in, ‘How would I do that? Why did that work? Da da-da da-da.’ So, in my head, I was constantly preparing myself.
You must’ve seen the Father Ted episode about the ‘Lovely Girls Festival’.
Yeah.
Did you ever think you’d wind up presenting the Rose of Tralee?
It’s something I’ve wanted to do since the age of 20. Before I did anything, I would’ve been asked locally to do a ‘Lovely Girls’ competition. There was a local guy called Tom Madden, who was sort of a professional but an amateur – and the staging and everything was perfect. I was up there doing my best Gay Byrne impersonations and I thought, ‘God, this is something that I actually would enjoy doing’. That was when I was 20. And then I suppose twenty years later I was asked to do The Rose of Tralee. It gets slagged off and for good reason. A mate of mine said, “Imagine trying to pitch that to a TV executive anywhere else other than Ireland.” You know, six hours of live television with a small, middle-aged man talking to a series of lovely young girls who are noticeably taller than him about nothing of great consequence, and it’s broadcast from a tent. And the police provide the music – and I’m not talking about Sting and co! And I suppose part of its charm is that it’s intrinsically Irish. Television has been globalised in a big way. You either buy in a format or you copy it, so there are fewer and fewer things that are uniquely Irish on television – and The Rose of Tralee is one of them.
Do you have any heroes in radio?
Gay Byrne. We had him in recently – his wife, oddly, was reading the full Murphy Report at the time he was in. And he said this on-air – he was hearing, ‘Oh my God!’ from various rooms around the house where she had secreted herself to read this. And then he went on this sort of monologue about how it all started on his radio show – like, the Granard thing (The death of Ann Lovett – Ed). That was exposed because of a letter in to them. So they started the ball rolling. He had what nobody will ever have again in Ireland – they reckon that there could have been a million people listening to his radio show. That’s just phenomenal. There was no other show in town, but he was a genius so he made the best of it.
How do you rate Pat Kenny?
I worked for Pat Kenny for a summer as a researcher on his radio show. He’s amazing on radio, just amazing. I don’t get to hear people who I’d like to hear more of. I’ve heard a bit of Chris Evans. Terry Wogan obviously is just amazing . . .
Do you think that Irish broadcasting generally is up to international standards?
I don’t hear enough international stuff but from what I hear of British broadcasting, I think yeah. I tune into BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 and I’ve never heard anything that is sort of streets ahead of what we do. I think we’re a nation of talkers. And we like to tell stories, so that’s good. Actually, now that you ask, against our nearest neighbours, I would say we perform really well, if not better.
Do you miss having Eamon Dunphy on the airwaves?
Yeah. We need a voice like that. There’s no voice on the radio now that’s giving out, that gets angry. It’s not RTE’s job because they’re a public service broadcaster and they have to be balanced in their reporting. So opinion isn’t what they do. So come back, Eamon! It was sort of sad to hear him doing Desert Island Discs on a Saturday morning – that’s not what he’s good at.
Have you ever had an ambition to move outside of Ireland?
No. I think it’s hugely important that you are aware of your limitations. And I think what happens to people is that they’re not, and they sort of go to places that they shouldn’t go. I had interest from a local radio station in England a few years ago. But, no. Part of what I do is: I think I know Ireland quite well, even geographically, which is a huge thing. Because not a lot of people do. And the reason is that for eight or ten years every weekend I was in a car doing discos, in every county. On a journey, I always go to Jenny, “I did a disco there”; “did a disco there”; “did a disco there” [laughs]. So I couldn’t see [myself] doing the same sort of thing I do in a country that I wasn’t familiar with. Because part of it is empathy. When you speak to somebody on the phone and they say they’re from Ballyhaunis, I’ve been there, I know Ballyhaunis.
You’ve personally backed a number of singers over the years – the likes of Tom Baxter and Damien Rice.
I didn’t back Tom Baxter. I would’ve backed Damien Rice, but I rarely play Tom Baxter. It’s not that I back singers – I hear songs that I like and I play them. Like, we don’t run a charity. So there would’ve been songs that for whatever reason nobody else was playing, and we played them before they became huge hits. Damien Rice is an example of that. And then of course there are songs that we play and they’re never hits! (laughs).
What’s missed that you feel should’ve been a hit?
I just thought the Martin Staunton Band were great. He’s an Irish guy from Galway. There’s himself and one sister and a group of mates. And they’d a song called ‘Our Luck’s About To Change’. Their personal story – not that you play someone’s music for their personal story – but they were driving to a gig about three or four years ago, and they were in a crash and they lost another sister who was a member of the band. So I suppose ‘Our Luck’s About To Change’ is pretty poignant, you know.
What’s your opinion of the current state of Irish music?
The problem with the Irish music scene is that it comes in waves. As a station, we have to play a certain quota of Irish music. Sometimes that’s very easy and I’m sure we play more than our quota, but other times there just isn’t a lot of stuff out there. It’s going through a bit of a lull now – though maybe that’s just me. We would’ve played Fight Like Apes early last year and then beyond that... Hmmm. At the moment – and you might laugh – Hermione Hennessey has a version of Crowded House’s ‘Fall at Your Feet’ and she actually nails it. It’s a very good interpretation so we’re playing that. But it’s like there was a wave there of the Paddy Caseys, the Mundys, and even The Frames – and they’re just not delivering at the moment.
What’s your take on Jedward?
When I saw them first I was just embarrassed to be Irish. And then I sort of grew to like them and look forward to their performances on X-Factor. I think they’re pure entertainment and they’re definitely what we need at the moment. They can’t sing, they can’t dance, but they definitely have something.
What kind of music do you listen to at home?
The iPods been a brilliant invention for me because there was a couple of years there when the only time I’d listen to music would be when I was preparing for work. Now I can have the i-Pod on in the background when I’m cooking or whatever. It’s like anything, it goes in waves. Mumford & Sons; we would’ve championed them. I came back from holidays in early September and I’d about 200 CDs and the only song I felt I could play on the radio was Mumford & Sons’ ‘Little Lion Man’. I like Wild Beast’s Two Dancers. But my tastes are completely eclectic. So of an evening when I’m preparing for the next day, I’ll slap on an old disco classic and turn the volume up to 10 and pump away. I don’t really take a CD out and play it from start to finish. I’ve never done that. There’s very few albums that actually have ten or eleven good songs that you can actually just play over a full album. I’m a singles man. Vampire Weekend have a very good song we’re playing at the moment, ‘Taxi Cab’. I don’t know if you know it, but it’s just a lovely oasis of calm with a piano and a cello on it and your man’s voice is good.
Some years ago, you were engaged to a fellow TV presenter, Geri Maye, and then the wedding was called off at short notice. What happened there?
It just didn’t work out. That’d be it. There’s no big story, honestly. It just didn’t work out.
Have you had many long relationships in your life?
Em… yeah. Well, I’m 45. [laughs] You know, over the years, yeah, I have.
Has fatherhood changed you?
Yeah.
Is it true that Jenny went into labour on the night Pat Kenny was attacked on The Late Late Show?
Yes. That is true. She started laughing and that brought on labour.
Is it tough working with your missus?
Em… she’s on parental leave at the moment, but if you talk to anybody who works with their partner, the odd time when things aren’t going well, it’s tough – but I think we are both professional enough not to bring our personal life into work. And I suppose the opposite probably spills over sometimes, where you are sitting down for dinner and you have a chat about something that happened on the show. Part of the reason we are together is because we work so well. And we are probably a case of opposites. Like I said it, she had a pony, I had a paper round [laughs]. But you asked about fatherhood. When I was eighteen I thought I was going to have a huge family. I hadn’t discussed it with anybody! [laughs] Because I saw our family, and despite yourself, you’re a social being because there are nine in the family, and it’s all meeting their friends, da da-da da-da. And then I suppose work took over.
Would you say you’re a ‘people person’?
I like people, I’m genuinely interested in people, but I find it hard to be false, you know.
Has that got you into trouble along the way?
Well, I read a piece once in the Sunday Tribune where people in RTÉ said I was awkward.
You don’t like plámás-ing people?
I think I would have high standards, and I think listeners deserve that. And everybody on the scene knows that. So we beat ourselves up – metaphorically – if we don’t reach those standards for whatever reason.
Would you agree that you’ve become more cantankerous in recent years?
Yeah [laughs]. I’ve only become comfortable with my own opinions in the last six/seven years. Part of that is getting older, part of it is life experience – you read more, da da-da da-da, and part of it is that for the radio show I have had to have opinions. I have to actually go, ‘Well, what do I think about that?’ I’d be cautious about giving an opinion on something I haven’t given thought to, and read about. And the more I read about things, and the more I witness, I become more cantankerous because I’m pissed off with the way things are.
Do you see the radio show as a vehicle to change things?
I wouldn’t be that high-and-mighty. People probably know where I stand on SUVs, say, and the current government. And our show is very much led by our listeners – but if we spot an injustice, we go with it. We did the drink driving thing, because I saw that the people who were dying on the roads were people who were in our catchment area. I listened to the ads that were addressed to them, and they were shite.
So you did the ‘Don’t be a Fucking Eejit’ campaign.
Yeah. I wasn’t trying to shock for the sake of shocking. Donnacha Quilty spoke about his twenty-three year old brother who was coming home from his birthday party, and the man who was driving was drunk. And he died. And so Donncha just gave us a testimonial. He’d written an email. He re-read the email, and you know, it was just stark. He talked about his mother making tea, and sandwiches, and more sandwiches, and more sandwiches. It was just like something out of Frank Pig Says Hello. And we played those, and they were really, really, strong. And then I looked into it, and there was nobody taking responsibility.
How do you mean?
If you went to the Minister for Justice at the time, he said, ‘No, that’s a transport thing.’ If you went to the Minister for Transport, he’d go, ‘No, my hands are tied because we have no finance.’ And it was giving me a headache because the big picture was that nobody’s responsible in this country, nobody’s culpable, the buck doesn’t stop anywhere. And then when I looked at another thing, and that’s the modus operandum of Irish governments: they create this sort of quango level, that you address them, and they sort of kick the ball back out to them, they don’t have any teeth because they are funded by them, so they can’t say anything that’s critical. In Ireland we have the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, and they can’t have an opinion on the fact that 5,000 or more Irish women travel abroad to have an abortion every year. They can’t have an opinion because they are funded by the government.
What’s your take on the abortion debate?
It’s a debate I don’t want to have, really. I think that in certain cases you should have the choice to have an abortion. I was a lot more clear-cut on it when I was younger, and before I was a dad. And if you look at the recent Irish Examiner poll, I’m not surprised anyway that 61% of them said that they were in favour of abortion, because they were all under 25. It’s something that you become a lot more considerate about as you get older. But it’s a debate we have to have. Anyway, there’s a whole list of things like that in this country. You get despondent, don’t ya?
Yeah, but you can always kick up.
Yeah, well, you constantly kick up, and we do. But we’re only a small little radio show.
Well, you’ve almost a quarter of a million listeners. There was a case on your show where a woman got pregnant after a one night stand with a guy she met in Copperface Jacks, and she found the father through your network of listeners. Does it feel good when you witness human stories like that?
I’ll tell you what feels best about it, is that somebody’s going to confide in you, because then there is a level of trust. You know you are doing something, or connecting in some way, when people are sharing those moments with you.
Do you feel under constant pressure to keep your listenership figures up? You’re up against Tom Dunne, Gerry Ryan, Ryan Tubridy and Pat Kenny.
Yeah. It’s crowded isn’t it?
Would you listen to them when you go home? On Podcasts or whatever.
Oh Jesus, no, no, no! No, no. Jesus, I’d go mad [laughs]. I think there’s a lot of people who live by demographics, and all sorts of research, and focus groups, and JNLRs and all that, but I think you have to go by feel, you know, by intuition. And surround yourself with a good team. But if we, as I’m sure happens in meeting rooms like this all over the place, go, ‘We need to get 15-year-old men,’ you know, you’d go mad because you’d be trying to be all things to all people and you’d end up being nothing to anybody. Obviously, when I say we still live and die by the figures, that’s a bit melodramatic, but if our figures kept on going down… [shrugs]
Do you choose your own music for the show?
I do. That was a bit of a battle I had to win at the start. Growing up I was passionate about music, still am. Music, and how we consume music has changed completely, and you have to be cogniscent of that when you are choosing music. And we play a lot less music than we did. Like there was a time when I used to play twelve or thirteen songs an hour, now it’s five or six. But yeah, I said I had no interest in going on to a radio station and playing somebody else’s choice in music.
Russell Brand was critical of you, accusing you of stealing some of his guests and ideas.
Yeah, he was. We were actually talking about it the other day because we are looking at another Guinness Book of Records attempt around this Shave or Dye thing. But we were in the window in Arnott’s or something like that, and some DJ in the States had attempted a world record for eating three bananas in less than 30 seconds or whatever. And some guy emailed us and said he could do it. So we got him on, blah, blah, blah. Then some smart-arse emailed Russell Brand and told him that we were copying his show. I had never heard his show. Obviously, he was copying yer man’s show, so – it was ridiculous stuff. Then he said it on-air, ‘There’s some guy, Ray D’Arcy copying me’, you know, quite derogatively, as he would. And then I arrived home one Saturday night, and Jenny said that his producer was on, and would I take a call. I said no. I’d had a few jars or something. So then it was arranged that I would, and they were in L.A. at the time – he was shooting Forgetting Sarah Marshall or whatever. And I got up in the middle of the night, like an eejit, to talk to him, and it was just the worst thing ever. It was just a nightmare, because I was on a mobile phone with bad reception. I couldn’t hear him properly, but – which wasn’t broadcast – he said something very insulting about my daughter. It was just a really bad experience.
You must have felt a certain amount of schadenfreude when the Andrew Sachs scandal enveloped him?
Yeah. But I still think he’s brilliant. I think what happened there is that it was two lads trying to out-do each other. Jonathan Ross desperately trying to be cool, hanging out with the kids – it’s just they happened to be live on national radio.
Did you lose the rag and hang up when he insulted your baby daughter?
No. He took it back, you know.
You posed naked for the Spencer Tunick thing last year.
Yeah, but I wasn’t on my own, Olaf. There was 1100 other people.
Are you self-conscious about your body?
Yeah, well it’s not something I would have done six or seven years ago. With age comes freedom, and I suppose things conspired for it to happen. We had spoken to Spencer from way back, like years ago. He probably still doesn’t know my name, but in our heads, we developed a sort of relationship with him! Every time we spoke to him, we’d say, ‘Will you ever come to Ireland?’ And eventually he was coming to Ireland. And I said, at a meeting, I said, ‘It’s odd with something like that; you can’t go down and be an observer. It’s sort of voyeuristic. You know, you need to be involved.’ It was less about the photography, and more about an excuse for people to get nude. You know, it’s not a word that I use all the time but it was genuinely liberating. And, you know, I met this man in his late fifties/early sixties, and we were moving from location to location in the nude, and he put his arm around me. And he goes, ‘Ah, how you doing, Ray?’ And I said, ‘Well, why are you doing this?’ He said he had lost his son in a car accident – he was 23 – nine or ten months previously, and he was just doing things that were life-affirming. And he found this life-affirming. And he had this big smile on his face.
Any regrets?
No. In a way, our problem with nudity has created so much shite. Like, if we didn’t have a problem with nudity, there’d probably be no porn industry.
Have you ever had a same-sex experience?
No. Never.
So you’re resolutely 100 percent heterosexual?
Yeah [laughs]. You know, there weren’t many homosexuals in Kildare.
Would you ever consider entering politics?
No. It’s odd, because we had Joe Duffy in recently, and he had done an interview with Kathy Sheridan for the Irish Times, and he said that every day he thinks about going into politics. And I asked him who he had been approached by, and he said, 'Every party.' And he then said, 'Sure, you must have been approached.' And I said, ‘No,’ because I haven’t and there’s no reason why I should be. And then some eejit of a radio critic was saying something like, ‘Oh there’s a great gap in politics because Ray D’Arcy isn’t …’ Rubbish stuff. Anyway, no, it’s not something I would do. I would have no grandiose opinions about myself.
When was the last time you cried?
I broke my toe two weeks ago, and it was at a right-angle. I have never broken a bone before. I played sports, rugby up to 29. I played everything when I was at school. I played soccer, football, hurling, I did gymnastics, you know, I never broke anything. And then I was chasing Kate around the house and broke my little toe.
Ouch! Speaking of which, did you lose a lot of money when Irish bank shares collapsed?
No. I probably bought my house at the wrong time, like anybody who bought in the last few years. But no, I hadn’t invested money in other things.
Are you cautious with your money as well?
No, I’m not …I don’t do things for money, oddly. But, that being said, I think that if I’m doing something, I should be paid fairly. Like, when people say, ‘Oh, you don’t do things for money, well then do it for nothing’. No. I would hope that I have an idea of my worth. But I am not motivated by money. Usually it’s the last thing that come into a conversation if I’m discussing a project.
What’s your main ambition now?
Look, I don’t know, you don’t know what’s coming around the corner. But the way the programme has evolved, there’s no reason why we couldn’t be doing it for years to come. Because it’s not about ‘getting down with the kids’. It’s about having a chat in the morning: there can be silliness, and there often is silliness, but it can be talking about NAMA for residential mortgage holders, or talking about Jim Corr’s appearance on Brendan O’Connor, and the fact that it was irresponsible that he was allowed to say that this vaccine was a bad thing, and we were injecting poisons into our bloodstream.
Would you like to go back to TV?
Yeah, I’m constantly having chats [laughs]. TV must be one of the most talked about things in pubs – other than politics, religion and sex. But I am lucky in that I have a job, which I love, and it takes up a lot of my time, so it would have to be a certain type of programme – probably live – with the right people. And the biggest thing is the logistics, because I don’t work in RTÉ. I work in the outside world, the commercial world, I only get a limited number of holidays, I have a family. You know, so I can’t be using up all of those working on television.