Kieran Cuddihy: "You don’t end up doing the 'paint by numbers' thing. There’s an element of chaos every day"

“Talk to Joe,” is probably one of the most well known radio promo clips in Ireland. After 27 years at the helm, Joe Duffy retired from RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline show last summer. Following intense speculation over his successor, it was revealed last October that the baton would be passed on to Kilkenny’s Kieran Cuddihy.

Working at Newstalk since 2011, Kieran presented their current affairs programme The Hard Shoulder along with his TV gig on Virgin Media’s The Tonight Show. With plenty of broadcasting experience under his belt, what surprised him most about his new role at Liveline?

“I started in November and I don’t think we’ve gotten to the end of the show where we followed the plan once in all of that time! It goes into completely unexpected directions every single day,” he explains. “Usually it’s the strength of an individual caller who gets in touch and has got this incredible story to tell. They take over the show, or they bring something up, and the phone lines just light up, because it resonates with people and that’s all they want to talk about. Then everything else falls by the wayside.

“It brings great energy to the show every day, it’s so unpredictable! It’s great to work on, because you don’t end up doing the ‘paint by numbers’ thing. There’s an element of chaos every day.”

With years of experience of putting politicians through their paces, Kieran explains why talking to members of the public is slightly more nuanced.

“You have to give people the oxygen and the room to express their opinion, and to talk about what they’ve gotten in touch about, and what you’ve asked them to talk about,” he says. ”It’s not about treating them with more respect, because you do treat the politicians with respect. It’s just that when people have power, there’s an element of accountability that comes with it.

“That means that you have to maybe be more forceful with them (politicians), and a slightly lighter touch with callers. It’s not that callers go unchallenged, because you would challenge their views, but maybe in a more inquisitive way than a judgemental way.”

Credit: Marc O'Sullivan

Kieran is an astute broadcaster and a natural when it comes to getting the best answers out of his interviewees. Is there any Irish legend, dead or alive, who he’d love to interview?

“Well, I’m fascinated by history, so there would be too long a list of people from the past who I’d love to interview,” he replies. “Going all the way back to Diarmait Mac Murchada, Strongbow, and everyone like that. So I’ll stick to people who are alive! I’d like to do an exit interview with Michael D. to find out how he got on.

“I’d also love to interview Nikita Hand. There’s a book coming out in the autumn, I think, Not The Perfect Victim – it’s a brilliant title. I’d love to interview her. Richard Boyd Barrett is brilliant when talking about James Joyce. He’s a real Ulysses nut. He’s got such an interesting take on it. So, you kind of want people like that.

EXTRAORDINARY STORIES

“The people I’d love to interview are just ordinary people with extraordinary stories. People who have gone through something, good or bad. Or somebody famous, but they’re talking about something completely unexpected as opposed to something like, ‘What does it feel like to be an Oscar winner?’”

Although Kieran is a very proud Kilkenny man, he has a soft spot for Cork, having studied law in UCC.

“Cork is a great city, which I’m not shy about telling you,” he enthuses. “The best club night in Cork when we were there was the ‘Freakscene’ on a Wednesday night up in The Savoy. It was absolutely class electronic music, and huge screens up everywhere, and just random shit… It was brilliant, a really good night. Then we’d go to Hillbilly’s for some chicken afterwards, of course!”

Following his studies at UCC, Kieran moved away to Vancouver, Canada. While he was there, he and his friend Damien took it upon themselves to cycle from the city to Mexico.

“We raised money for The Susie Long Hospice Fund in Kilkenny,” he recalls. “We raised a few grand, but mainly we just did it because we wanted to. It took a month. Thirty days of cycling and we took two days off. Thirty days of cycling is about 300km a day. It was savage, I’d do it again in the morning.”

Kieran still loves to head out on his bike in Ireland.

“I got engaged on the Achill Greenway, so I have a soft spot for that place,” he admits. “The Waterford Greenway, especially Kilmacthomas towards Dungarvan is amazing, really nice. There’s the new South-East Greenway, which is lovely as well, along the end of the Barrow, down towards Waterford. I’ve never done the Ring of Kerry or any of that, but I’ve done the Wicklow Mountains, which are lovely. We’re lucky with so many nice routes.”

Talking to Kieran, you immediately know he’s a very switched on, energetic person and sharp as a tack. In that sense, it comes as no real surprise that a ‘duvet day’ is his idea of hell.

“Okay, so I’m off today and I have my list of things to do, starting with cleaning my young lad Sam’s room at 9am, and ending with his hurling training at 7pm. And then after that, I have to walk the dog. I actually said this to my wife this morning, and she just rolled her eyes and said, ‘You’re such a loser’. (Laughs)

“I have a schedule for my day off. I hate on a day off to be like, ‘Sure, we’ll see where the day takes us.’ I want to know, I want a plan of what we’re doing for the day from the moment we wake up!”

Speaking of itineraries, I sheepishly admit to Kieran that I’ve never been to Kilkenny and ask for his top spots for a weekend away in his hometown.

Kilkenny Castle

“There are loads of lovely things to do,” he says. “There’s the Butler Gallery, which is an amazing space. Kilkenny Castle, the castle park, and the canal walk are all brilliant. There’s great cafés around there as well, like Wild Tails down in Canal Square.

“If you want to go for a longer walk, there’s a bus service that will drop you down at Bennettsbridge, which is about 7-8km outside Kilkenny, and you can walk the whole way along the river, all the way back into town from there. It’s absolutely beautiful, there’s no people, no houses, no traffic.

“You’re just completely on your own in nature. It’s a proper trail, there’s no maintained path. It’s an old river bank, so you’re passing old mills and the ruins of them along the river. Gorgeous!”

INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM

Kieran’s enthusiasm for his hometown is infectious.

“When you’re back in town, go over to the Kilkenny Design Centre, where they have beautiful art and sculpture exhibitions,” he continues. “There’s different craft courses and classes you can do. Goldsmiths and silversmiths work out of those buildings as well, so you may see them doing their work.

“From there, you can make your way down to the Medieval Mile in town. You’ve got the Shee Almshouse, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Rothe House & Garden, Grace’s Castle, and then at the far end of it, you’ve got St Canice’s Cathedral and the round tower. There’s brilliant walking tours of all of that around town. It’s amazing history, not just Kilkenny, but a lot of the South-East medieval history, Norman conquest onwards to slightly post-reformation.

“There’s also great night-life. Go for drinks in John Cleere’s or Tynan’s and then go out for dinner. There’s any number of places you could go! Rive Gauche is always nice, Zuni is beautiful. You’ve got Campagne as well, which is Michelin star if that’s what you’re into. Langtons obviously, who have all the different options.”

Langtons

Now I have the lowdown on Kilkenny, does Kieran have any favourite family staycation spots?

“Yesterday, we went down to the National Heritage Park, outside of Wexford, which was really cool,” he enthuses. “My kids thought it was absolutely brilliant. It’s a great little place. The way you say you would’ve gone all the way up the West Coast, my kids have never been West of Shannon in their life!

“We would always go the other way in Wexford, down towards the Hook Peninsula to Duncannon, Dollar Bay Beach, Fethard On Sea, Baginbun Beach – all these places around Hook Head. So West Wexford was always somewhere we’d go, we still go! It’s only about an hour and five minutes away. You really can’t go much farther than that if it’s a day trip, otherwise it’s too much. It’s ideal!”

Kieran has two children, Sam and Grace, with his wife Natasha. What does he love most about raising his kids in Ireland?

“The sense of community that you get,” he says. “It’s the fact they know they’re safe and that they can call into the neighbours, and there are other people around who will look out for them and keep them safe. I like that sense of community. It’s like Yeats’ "my country is Kiltartan Cross", you know what I mean? We have a real keen sense of where we’re from and that those are our people. And I love that, I love raising my kids in that environment too.”

Kieran’s love for Kilkenny is undeniable, so it’s clear to see why he decided to build his forever home there with his family and commute to Dublin for work.

“My commute up is kind of ‘work’, so I’d either do a production call with the team, or I’d flick between David McCullagh and what else is on the radio to see what they’re talking about,” he says. “Then maybe after 11am, I might flick on LBC and see what James O’Brien is talking about at the start of his show. I think he’s brilliant, the way he frames things. That’s a caller-led show as well but it’s very different to Liveline.

“On the way down, it’s more to sort of switch off. I might listen to music, and I often let Spotify decide – you know when they give you the Daily Mix? Although it’s completely skewed, because my kids pick most of the music! I’d listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks in the car as well.

“Podcasts like The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Entertainment, or Empire, that podcast is very good. There’s Second Captains. I’d listen to any audiobook. The one I’m listening to now is The Ratline by Philippe Sands about Nazis getting out of Western Ukraine at the end of the Second World War, trying to escape. So anything like that.”

As you can probably tell, it’s all go, go, go for Kieran Cuddihy. Does he find it hard to switch off?

READING THE PAPERS

“With a job like that, I don’t think you ever really do,” he reflects. “I think anyone in this industry finds it hard. Like this week, I’m off because the kids are off. But in the morning, my alarm goes off and the first thing I do is start reading all the newspapers, from front to back before I get out of bed, to see if there’s anything we should be talking about in the show, even though I’m not gonna be on the show.

“On some level, you realise that whatever is happening this week you could be talking about next week, so you have to stay across it all. With Liveline, when you don’t know where it’s gonna go, it’s good to try to stay informed about as many things as possible. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert at anything, just know a little bit about lots of things.”

Kieran is clearly someone who’s naturally interested in people and things. You don’t get into that line of work unless you’re genuinely curious.

“Definitely, you have to be interested in other people and their stories,” he nods. “I mean, you could fake it for a while like anyone could, but you wouldn’t be able to keep it up. You know if you’re ever out in a group and there’s that person, you realise after like half an hour, that they’re just talking about themselves and they haven’t asked you anything about yourself? You can’t be that person. People like that have no interest at all.”

We all know people who talk at you, rather than to you!

“Yeah, exactly! You have to be interested in other people, their take on the world, who they are, and what they’re going through.”

• Listen to Kieran Cuddihy on RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline, Mon-Fri, 1:45-3pm.