No More Mr Nice Guy

At one point it seemed like this interview would never appear in print. At least until after Mike Murphy had passed on. You can run it when I die, Joe, he told me on the morning after we d spoken in his office near St. Stephen s Green in Dublin.

Why the eleventh hour decision to draw back from what had been a pretty satisfying interview for both parties concerned? At precisely the same time as we were recording the two hour conversation, the Evening Herald was hitting the news-stands with a story headlined My Marriage Split Nightmare Mike Murphy reveals pain of break up . More to the point, the newspaper claimed in an interview with the Evening Herald Mike describes which Murphy himself says was total bullshit, given that the interview it was based on was 18 months ago and the personal quotes they used came, instead, from an RTE Guide interview of two months ago. Either way, the tabloid tilt the Herald put on the tale had caused great distress to Mike Murphy, his partner Ann Walsh and his wife, Eileen, and their family. Not all, it seems, approve of Mike s admittedly rare tendency to talk publicly about his family life. Or his decision to write about it in his 1996 biography, Mike And Me: A Memoir.
In fact, it was Murphy s fear of hurting these very people that made him desist from doing this hotpress interview for at least the last four years. It was originally planned to take place when he published that biography. However, Mike Murphy himself suggested there will be a better time, a few years from now , a prediction that came to pass when it was recently revealed that he intended retiring from The Arts Show after eleven years as its presenter.
As a regular guest critic and summer presenter on The Arts Show, I have watched Mike Murphy s status change from a man who was very much mocked by the powers-that-be in the Arts world to a point where the Irish Times recently acknowledged that the programme is probably the most important single outlet for coverage of the Arts in Ireland.
I have also been aware, for quite some time, that he is a multi-dimensional man with a one dimensional media image. That s one of the reasons I pushed him to do this interview, despite his initial and continuing reservations. But let s hear his story as told by Mike himself, who finally agreed to let this interview enter the public domain now rather than at some later date in the hope that it may help flesh out the real story behind all those tabloid headlines.
Joe Jackson: I have just read your book and had I been a member of the Arts Show team at the time you were there, I would have been queuing up to punch you, because of your lack of application, your niggardliness and your general negative demeanour. I m paraphrasing a question you once used to kick off an interview with Eamon Dunphy, but it s not really something I could say about you, is it?
Mike Murphy: Probably not! But I remember that (interview) quite well. I hadn t met Eamon before but I had read his book, Only A Game, and, firstly, I admired what he did in stepping outside the norm and being as honest as he was in it. But I also thought if I was one of the team I d kill the little bastard! I didn t intend to be offensive when I said that to him. What I was doing was knowing he was a combative individual I figured, I d be well able to look after myself in a little verbal scrap and he ll be able for this kind of thing so we ll have a bit of fun. But he answered in a very peremptory manner and was, I gather, very taken aback by the question. And afterwards I heard from a number of people about how he spoke very disparagingly of my cheek in opening an interview like that. And it started a trail of misunderstanding between myself and Eamon Dunphy.
The irony, of course, is that later Eamon, in the Sunday Independent, mercilessly attacked people like Pat Kenny.
Those attacks were merciless. And he was very hard on Pat Kenny. And on Jack Charlton. In fact, at this stage Eamon is guilty of a little revisionism, in terms of Charlton. We are now getting kindly words on Charlton. But they re words Charlton could well have done with when he was the man in charge. Yet I admire what Eamon has done in taking on an evening show and making a success of it. Frankly, I believe any society needs someone sticking pins in it. I don t have any problems with him now. He probably has, with me. I ve no doubt he has.
He once called me one of RTE s flowerpot men which I didn t quite understand. But I take it that it s not quite complimentary! Yet I enjoy him. And I drift between his show and Five Seven Live if I m in the car. I don t find Navan Man or the drunken politician particularly funny or particularly appetising. But I like the idea that they leave time for discussion and that Eamon is doing it on an ad lib basis, taking it wherever the show will go.
You once said, in the Irish Times, that you reject your own nice guy image and that you can be quite savage at times. So do you feel hemmed in by that image?
If I do let fly at somebody, verbally, it s not a pretty sight. And I don t like to do it because I always get pangs of conscience afterwards. For some reason or another, I was granted a very barbed tongue and I know that, as a child, I could offend my brothers and sisters very deeply. Say the cruellest things you could imagine. And I think that because I m generally easy-going certainly in a work environment and don t lose my cool very often, that when I do it s a shock to all and sundry when they see what chaos I can create. I can turn very nasty. Particularly when I drink! So I stopped drinking whiskey because after three I would turn on whoever was nearest! That s what I threatened to do with Pat Kenny if he asked me any personal questions on the Late, Late Show.
But as for losing my temper, that would only have happened about five times throughout my career. But they would be pretty savage. I ve done it with one or two producers on the Arts Show. But in private. Not in front of the team. I don t like to see people humiliated.
You ve also occasionally let your savagery shine through, on The Arts Show. I remember mentioning the name of Nanci Griffith and you, basically, annihilated her verbally, said you couldn t stand the woman.
Absolutely! But when I interviewed Nanci Griffith I didn t like her. She came in with that glossy, wide-eyed, girlish approach to yet-another-interview. She was smiling charmingly at me, but I knew there was solid glass in those eyes. The guests I dislike are the guests who are broadcasting to the nation, as distinct from having a conversation with me. I can see it in their eyes. Actors are the worst. Very difficult to interview. Because they are performing the role of interviewee. (Adopts RADA voice): I am now acting the part of an interviewee. I m an actor! How am I sounding? I can t stand that!
So you must have bitten your tongue a lot on The Arts Show!
I did! But there was a famous incident the team wish they d kept on tape. It was a guy who was, basically, trying to get people to buy something other than Waterford Glass for golf prizes. So he was getting little sculptures. But he came into the studio and we were recording the interview and all the time he was considered and broadcasting to the nation. So I finally said Listen, will you, for Christ s sake, cut the crap. Stop fucking talking to the nation, talk to me. Do you understand me? I am not going to sit here and listen to you giving your Robert Emmet speech from the dock! Talk to me. It s a fucking conversation between you and me. Okay, let s try it again. So we tried it again. And he was terrific. But I really lost my cool.
Let s go back to where it all began for you in terms of the Arts. As a teenager you loved books, movies and music. And you still remember the first records you owned: Mountain Greenery , Heartbreak Hotel , Hound Dog , Why Do Fools Fall In Love and Singin The Blues .
I loved those 78s! And used to go off into the dining room, which was always freezing, and sing along to all of those songs. And I remember when I was fifteen I was singing at some family party and Tommy O Brien, the dance band leader, was there. He was performing in the Crystal Ballroom and his singer got sick. So Tommy asked my father would Michael come down and sing two or three songs? And I sang The Story of My Life ; Around The World and Blue Moon. I lived on that for years! Became a real hero! Even though it was only three songs, for one night!
Even so, there s a dark subtext to your tale about singing along with those records in your living room. In the sense that you ve said you d sing along with all your heart and pent-up emotions . Wasn t that a way of discharging those shadows in the Murphy family home, defying what you called your dad s oppressive silence?
You re getting into this area now, Joe! I know the (interviewing) technique! (laughs).
But wasn t singing along with those records a form of emotional release?
It was, yeah.
And you were actually silent at the time when it came to having to break up rows between your father and mother and even, at one point, throwing a bread knife at your dad.
Never did tell anyone. And that was not a good thing. But then this was all before counselling, before talking, before Marian Finucane, before all the people you could tell your story too. So there was never a question I would talk outside the house. But, yes, my father God rest him and my mother, did not have a happy marriage. And my father was one of those silent types. As my mother used to say, street angel and house devil. And it was very distressing for me. I was the eldest. Sensitive. Spirited. And the records were a form of release. But the unfortunate thing about my father is that I never got to know him. I never, ever, ever, ever had a conversation with him. Then he turned out to be a very good grandfather and used to make calls to all and sundry. He wouldn t ring me, in later years, because there was too much between himself and myself. But he d ring the rest of the family and call to the house and dangle the kids on his knee. He was a colourful character. And all the people in the garage we owned and in Harold s Cross, loved him.
So people in Harold s Cross wouldn t have known there were shadows in the home?
No. My mother would never speak of them outside. Nobody would. You kept that behind your own four walls. But then my father was trapped in this marriage too. And I do know he had a really bad experience I heard about, he never told me where he went to confession and the priest threw him out of the confession box. This was big time. This was when he was married. I don t know about my mother and father s personal relationship but I think they didn t sleep together after their late 30s. Because my mother was in ill-health. That must have had a very bad effect on him.
Didn t your dad also put his head in his hands and cry on his wedding night, the time you, presumably, were conceived?
I was born in October, they were married in January so, yeah, that is possible. Yet I don t know why my father cried that night.
Later you were told, by a neighbour, that your mom said she couldn t bear all that close, intimate contact.
I d even be afraid to hazard a guess on that. But I do know that my mother s family did not approve of my father because he was a mere motor mechanic. And she ran away to marry him. Now, did she arrive on his doorstep and say I m here, I ran away to marry you and did he say God, I didn t intend it to go this far ? Certainly there were no physical relations before marriage. There wouldn t have been at that time. And he was, basically, a very nice and decent man so perhaps he felt the obligation to get married. Perhaps that s the root of the whole trouble. That he felt he was pushed into this. I don t know. It s only in later years, when I can rationalise what may have happened, that I m able to come to some sort of understanding of what did happen between the two of them. But it certainly didn t make for a pleasant or particularly good character-building childhood.
For you?
Yeah.
There is that story about you flinging the knife at your dad.
It s rubbish. That was an emotional night.
But perhaps more telling than the throwing of the knife that night is the fact that according to your biography you also said you wanted your father dead.
Did I really want him dead? I don t know that I did.
Either way, when you went back downstairs you saw that your dad was, again, crying.
He was very, very upset, yes.
So as you get older do you grow closer to a sense of what he might have been feeling that night?
Absolutely. But, like I say, I wish to God he had made the time to talk to me. But then it s not fair to him to even say that. He wouldn t have known how to make those feelings known to me. But I do wonder did he feel, that night, oh God, I ve lost Michael. Did he feel anyway, he s a narky little bastard. I honestly don t know. Because I was a narky little bastard. I used to fight a lot. I d fight anyone. I was quite unpleasant in those days. There was a real bad side there. And that s where there is that aggressive thing in me, still, where I could turn on people.
When your marriage was breaking up, didn t you, for the first time, go to psychoanalysis to try to deal with a lifetime of pent-up resentment? Did that help?
It helped me rationalise my relationship with my father. Or rather, my lack of a relationship with my father. I know he was very proud of me. He used to tell all the people in Harold s Cross he was proud of me. But he never told me. He couldn t.
You also felt a strange range of feeling in relation to your mom?
I did. But I was very close to her and she was very good to me, in terms of encouraging me to be different and do the things I want to do. Travel, not to be ordinary. For example, she gave me Delight, a collection of essays by J.B. Priestley, for my thirteenth birthday. An interesting choice. And I enjoyed those essays. But then my mother was far ahead of her time. She had a modern way of thinking. Yet because I was the eldest she did treat me like a surrogate husband. The one she would talk to. And she would talk about da and, of course, I was being turned against him. I don t know that she was doing that intentionally, but I was being turned against him.
Part of you hated your mother for doing that.
Later. When I was going to get married. And I got married very young. I met Eileen and I fell in love with her and wanted to marry her but I hadn t even a job! But one of the motivating factors was definitely that I wanted to leave home. To get out of the house.
Your mother, in turn, didn t approve of you marrying Eileen.
Because she could see I might leave and didn t want that.
Eileen s mother also called you a runner.
That s right.
And your dad, at the same time, told Eileen you were, basically, a worthless bastard .
He did. And I was very angry he said that. He was right, I have to say!
In the book and on a Late Late Show at the time you said that if there is a hereafter you don t want to meet either of your parents.
That was a terrible thing to say. But when I did the Late, Late Show and the book, it was after the trauma of the break-up of my marriage. And that break-up being made public. Even a couple of years later, now, I can look back and reflect on what happened. My marriage had broken down. And that was bad enough, for all involved, because it is such a huge, catastrophic change in your life. But then for it to be in the newspapers on a very regular basis made it all the more difficult for everybody. So the wounds are open. You re suppurating for a long time afterwards. I was. During that period of time I wrote the book. So I think because I felt so open, so exposed, so damaged myself, that I lost an element of my normal judgement. That s why, now, I don t feel as angry at my parents. And I probably was unjustified. Damn it, they were only trying to get through their lives as best they could. They didn t know how to handle it either. And I now wish I hadn t written, in the book, that whole thing about their marriage.
One of the worst experiences, ever, for me, was walking into a shop at the time the book was released and seeing that Evening Herald headline I Tried To Kill My Father Says Mike Murphy . I just thought oh God, the poor man did not deserve that. Okay, I threw a knife at him in a fit of temper but I didn t try to murder him in his bed, or anything. I was angry and I threw a knife at him. Yet it does read worse than it actually was. And it sure hurt him a lot more than it hurt me. Because, as I say, he was very upset about that whole night. Though, again, we never spoke about it. The book was probably ill-judged in its timing. If I were doing it again I would take a more benign view of my parents than I did at the time. And actually that s why I ve changed now. I would very much like to meet my father in the hereafter. Get time to talk to him. But major events like a death or a marriage break-up do damage people.
You were going through psychoanalysis while the marriage was breaking up, so surely your analyst also was advising you to confront rather than continue to evade your pain.
That s true. I was told to do that. And that, too, probably is part of what came across in the book.
But all the pain was compounded, you say in that book, by the way the Terry Keane column in the Sunday Independent kept hammering out that story week after week.
One thing I ve learned is not to whinge about newspapers. I take it on the chin. It hurts nonetheless. But I do go by the old edict don t let the bastards know you re hurt .
That particular lesson you apparently learned as far back as your earliest days in broadcasting when Tom O Dea said you were a marshmallow !
That hurt, too. But there is tough, hard side to my personality so when Tom O Dea said that, I knew he was wrong. He meant marshmallow to mean soft-centred, no depth. And the same with Eamon calling me a flowerpot man which, presumably, meant the same thing. But they re mistaken. And the way I handled my own career was that when I wanted to leave something, I left. I always got things done the way I wanted to do them myself. I still do.
Nevertheless, some people in the Irish Times have always maintained that you actually are a marshmallow . As in a lame-brain, a man with no intellectual weight or hunger at all.
They re wrong. What I m actually doing is functioning for listeners. I m not showing off. I know a great deal more than I pretended to know. And what I did with brilliant teams on the Arts Show and that has to be emphasised, the fact that the Arts Show was a huge success, partly as a result of the teams I ve had working with me was turn around this feeling of timidity in certain areas, about the arts. Ironically, I now actually believe the Irish Times has assumed much of the ethos of The Arts Show. Let me explain that this way. Back at the beginning of the series there certainly were those people in the Irish Times who were highly sceptical about my doing The Arts Show. I had some Irish Times Arts editorial people in those early shows. And I remember one or two of them being incredibly patronising with me. The person I m thinking of is Paddy Woodworth, Arts Editor at the time. I made some joke about stamping grapes, saying it was stamping the tomatoes to death. And he said no, Mike, that s wine. I said did you think I meant that I thought peasants actually tramp tomatoes? I knew it was wine. And he said I thought you mightn t have known. And I thought you arrogant little fucker . There were a lot of these people in the Irish Times, as well as academics, who actually made me realise I had a greater breath of knowledge than most of them! Yes, they might have specialised in literature or theatre but across the board I had a greater breadth of knowledge. And as the years went by I did garner more knowledge, more information than most of my critics.
But you were a clever bastard, because when it came to your weak spots you brought on board various Irish Times critics.
Look at how things have changed there. Its cultural agenda is almost driven by popular music, now. And that s what I m saying, in essence. If you look at the emphasis, in terms of the arts, in The Irish Times and I m not picking on The Irish Times, I m citing it as the best paper in the country from the time I started The Arts Show, there were those people who really did feel they owned the arts, that they had a special insight and would disseminate this information, for the great unwashed. As in, people who didn t really need to know about the arts but needed to know what I, the critic , the mediator , think about the Arts. So I said, from the start: no, I want to know about the Arts themselves. I don t want people to think I m the clever dick who s going to tell them my interpretation about the Arts. I d like to get people, who can communicate enthusiastically, to talk about what the arts are. As distinct from hearing, say, most academics who come into The Arts Show. There are some extremely good academics who come into The Arts Show, Declan Kiberd, Brendan Kennelly and others. But many of them we drop immediately. Why? Because they are broadcasting to the faculty!
Give us an example of such guests!
Many of the people who write the introductions to catalogues in IMMA and for some of the Art galleries are writing profiles of the artist that the artist himself doesn t recognise. And they use words that have to be dug out of a dictionary and sentences that I, and many people like me, don t understand. But I, in my case, am willing to say, I don t understand what that sentence means. But these academics are only interested in the fact that it s a publication on my CV and the other academics, curators will take heed of that and be impressed. That was the stuff I was trying to, at least, put a dent in. I did see that there are a lot of people, like myself, who are enthusiasts and not purporting to be experts but who would like to know a bit more about the visual arts. And would like to feel a bit more comfortable about stepping into galleries. Or discussing an artist s work. And, as it turns out, I was right. And you can see that I was right by reading the Irish Times now. It is, as I say, doing what The Arts Show has done down through the years. The same is true of The Culture section of The Sunday Times. It s an Arts Show formula. That s why I say the Arts Show formula won out in the end. And I m glad I m taking the name with me!
We talked earlier about your mom and dad maybe having reservations when it came to their physical relationship, but you seem to have been free from such inhibitions from the start. As in, that time when you were a fly catcher !
What s a fly catcher?
Remember, your mom caught you kissing Grace O Shaughnessy and you guys tried to tell her what you really were doing was trying to take a fly out of Grace s ear. With your tongue!
God, yeah! And my mother saw us through the bushes! And we started pretending. Grace even called to the house to explain what we d really been doing! It s pathetic, isn t it? But, yeah, I was always comfortable in my own sexuality. And I enjoyed the company of women. And, of course, I was attracted to women and, in some instances, they were attracted to me! But when it came to sex, you ve got to remember that the fifties were the days of confession, fish on Fridays, mortal sin if you didn t got to mass on Sunday, eternal damnation. So sex wasn t a big player!
Those were also the days when if you even thought about sex it was a mortal sin!
They were bad thoughts. That s why masturbation was out.
But you didn t have such inhibitions?
I did, yeah! I used to tell the priest about them.
Then go and think them and do it all over again!
It was an inevitability! What were you going to do to try stop yourself?
So you didn t have the kind of Irish childhood that was blighted by sexual inhibitions?
It wasn t blighted by these inhibitions but, like many others, I feel sore as hell that men as distinct from a God put these rules in the way of my actually feeling more free about myself as a person and as an entity. I do resent that now. They can so easily change the rules. So it s no longer a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday? Well, damn you lot for making it a mortal sin for all those years.
My father got thrown out of the confession box. The poor man might have said he would use a condom. So the rules change. Yet all this did screw up the sexuality of a lot of people. Let s not forget what was imposed on the psyches of people through that period. It made for difficult lives. And that is part of the reason why there was the sort of silent behaviour that occurred in terms of my parents. And in many other marriages at the time.
That also was a time when, say, John McGahern s book,The Barracks, was banned because a soldier masturbated into a sock!
Absolutely! And I remember reading The Barracks when I was very young, because it was a banned book! And I never saw anything wrong about what he did. I just thought the idea that a sock might be put on afterwards a bit repellent!
Another form of censorship imposed at the time was the banning of Tennessee Williams The Rose Tattoo because, at one point, a condom falls out of the trucker s pocket. A parish priest in Dun Laoghaire, my dad once told me, had the play closed down.
And the police were brought in! It was crazy stuff. And negative. And dangerous. And it brought about its own problems, particularly in Church people and what we now know about all those abuses in orphanages. These were the fruits of those nonsensical rules. It was a restrictive way of life. It restricted your own intellectual growth and character. Because it forced you to be judgemental. So, somebody was having an affair? That was a mortal sin! That person was to be ignored. That person was reprehensible. In other words you, the laity, were forced into a position where you were encouraged to be judgmental about people who were in sin. That was totally unhealthy.
Did this idea of someone who is in sin deserving to be marginalised, socially, manifest itself when you left Eileen. Would you, as one of the main presenters in RTE, have been seen by some as less of a role model for people because you did walk away from a marriage?
There were those who held that view. I was conscious of some people ignoring me or not speaking to me at the time. And I ve no doubt a lot of things were said behind my back. But, in the main, people were very supportive. And many of my colleagues in RTE actually wrote me letters of support, which was very touching. That attitude had changed, to whatever degree, by that time. And the other thing is that although I had done something that, to many people, was anathema and deeply offensive, there were others who just might have felt it must have taken courage to do that. Leave a marriage.
Or, to be more specific, fall in love with someone else?
Yes. But a lot of my friends, damn it, have gone with women, had affairs, had relationships and are still in their marriages. And in some instances I would be very aware that it s simply because of convenience or lack of courage.
But, like your friends and no doubt countless married men and women, could you have remained in the marriage and continued to live a second life secretly?
I wouldn t have done either of them the dishonour of doing that. So, ultimately, it had to change.
Are you, at heart, a romantic? As in the kind of person who would give up everything for love?
Very much so. I am a romantic. I love the idea of romance in people s lives. I think it is one of the most valuable things that can happen to a person.
So you obviously mean what you wrote in your book, that your life with Ann is low-key, exclusive, interesting, loving and, most of all, fulfilling ?
I do, yeah.
So perhaps by leaving your marriage you also gave some people a sense of hope in terms of getting a second chance at love? After the end of a marriage?
I believe that is true. And Eileen is a lovely woman. There was absolutely no question that it was a bad marriage I had to get out of. What happened was that we married very, very young in our early 20s and although we had a really good marriage for many, many years, we did gradually grow apart. We were different people in our 40s, by a long shot, than the people we d been in our 20s. And I suppose I had gone off on a certain route, following certain interests.
As in the Arts?
The Arts, yeah. I m sure Eileen would attribute some of the responsibility for the break to my becoming involved in The Arts Show.
You also admitted you were a workaholic.
I was. As such, I have regrets about my children. I didn t see enough of them when they were young. And I wish I had that time again. But you must remember that, back then, it was the man s role to get out there and earn and support. And it was the woman s role to bring up the children. In other words, the years the children needed the man the most, coincided, precisely, with the years he was struggling hardest to consolidate a career. It was actually unfair on the man.
But in your case, during those early years of broadcasting, you also developed a cheery Mike persona at home, keeping everything light, trying to avoid perpetuating the shadows that dominated your childhood. Yet this, you later realised, left its own flaw in your family life, in the sense that you rarely discussed subjects in depth with your children.
Absolutely. I came to believe that. I had tried to make things sunny, happy, lively, good and optimistic, suggesting that everything is just fine. Even when I was going through really bad times at work I would never show it at home. Never. I was determined not to bring those things home and risk creating the sort of atmosphere I d known as a child. So it did create an air of unreality, where you re not able to sit down and talk about the things that really are affecting you. You can t say I m down, I m upset, I m hurt, let s talk about it. So your children see you as some all-conquering hero, who s never disappointed, never down, never discouraged, always seems to be on-the-up. That s not good either. It s over-compensation.
Also, their fall is all the more steep when you fall as in, for example, leaving the marriage.
That is correct. And that is part of what happened.
Have you repaired your relationship with your children?
I really work like hell to do it.
And when you left home did you have to fight like hell to retain their love?
I had to fight for it, yeah. But I have a very good relationship with all the children now. And with Eileen.
In terms of your early days as a broadcaster, in the late sixties, isn t it true that Terry Wogan, yourself and Brendan Balfe, partly under the influence of pirate stations like Radio Caroline, broke the imitation BBC mould in Radio Eireann by loosening up broadcasting in a way that later led to 2FM and the likes of Gerry Ryan?
That is totally true. And if you want to know how bad things were originally, I remember Terry Wogan playing a record by the Clancy Brothers that had the word bloody in it and he was hauled over the coals! You couldn t say bloody on the air! Or damn . It was bad language, bad taste and, yes, very much a model of broadcasting taken from the BBC.
Metaphorically, you did have to wear your best suit while speaking on Radio Eireann! It was only when Wogan started off this seat-of-the-pants type broadcasting and I followed, with Brendan, being looser, more improvised, a bit cheeky, that things began to change. And we were breaking the mould. I was reprimanded by the powers-that-be many times. A lot of people didn t like my style in radio, at the beginning. Even performers. I remember slagging Big Tom s record Gentle Mother on the air and later he stopped me in the corridors of Radio Eireann and said in future, just play the record and say nothing. He had a fringe like a mobile thatched cottage!
Marian Finucane has often spoken about the importance of the producer/presenter role in radio and cites you and Gene Martin, your producer on Morning Call as the best combination she encountered. Gene introduced you to the world of the visual arts, didn t he?
He did. We were a great combination. In every sense. We were great pals. And it was a strange life. Early mornings. But then I used to drink quite heavily at the time, and go to pubs even before you d go on air. We d go to the early houses in the markets. Occasionally. And we d always go and have a whiskey after the show. At nine o clock in the morning.
But didn t you, at one point, realise that drinking before going on the air was not the most professional way to behave?
Yeah. After a Cattle Market report I did where people couldn t make out my bullocks from my (pause) store heifers! I was slurring so much they had to fade me off! So now I m very careful about drink before doing a show, though I might have one glass of wine or something. But to get back to how Gene Martin influenced me, and the direction my career would later take, he and I really did go to the Art galleries and auctions after the show and I did learn a hell of a lot about the visual arts from Gene. Definitely.
In your book you recall some classic Radio Eireann cock-ups, like someone enquiring of Sandie Shaw, who was famous for singing barefoot and showing, as you say, as much of her beautiful legs as possible
(Cuts across) Legs apart, what s Sandie Shaw really like? That is what John Skehan asked! While interviewing some pop promoter! Then he said I m terribly sorry! And the other great one was Una Sheehy, during Hospitals requests, leading into the half one news, fading the record and then saying in her best Radio Eireann voice: Well, patients, there I m afraid we must leave Harry Belafonte with his Hole In A Bucket. But I was nearly as bad! One day, probably after being set up by Brendan Balfe, I actually played the record If I Had A Hammer for Dick Organ, a member of the Dublin Naturist Club!
What you don t reveal in your book is the name of the black entertainer who was having sex in Elvis s penthouse in the Hilton Hotel, in Las Vegas, which you visited, for a Murphy s America documentary, soon after Elvis died.
It was Bill Cosby!
That was a great show you did on Elvis because you caught his friends like Gordon Stoker, from The Jordanaires, when they were really angry at Colonel Parker and really let rip.
That was John McColgan s decision. To do that show.
He, I know, is a big-time Elvis fan!
That s right. And Elvis died while we were over there and John just said let s try to do a programme on him, as we go. So we did that show on the hoof and it did turn out to be very good. It was sold around the world by RTE as part of the Murphy s America series. But the point is that, again, in the beginning, RTE was, collectively, against us doing that series. Because neither John nor I had made a documentary in our lives. And then Dick Hill gave us the go ahead. But many people in RTE were still saying are you out of your tree, sending those two gobshites to do a major series on America?
John McColgan is there, on screen, during what many people would argue was probably the funniest and most famous clip from your Live Mike TV series. That time in Trinity when Gay Byrne, thinking you were a stupid Frenchman intent on ruining his broadcast, turned and told you to fuck off.
John McColgan is there. Seamus Deasy is there. And, yes, that probably was one of the funniest moments in the Live Mike series. It s the one most people seem to remember. If only because they keep repeating the damn thing on The Late Late Show !
But given that Gay was always a highly competitive broadcaster, was there ever a time he might really have said to you would you fuck off Mike? Say, when Live Mike was vying with The Late Late Show for the top slot in the ratings?
He was never like that. With me. Because, curiously enough, we always got on well. He knew that I wasn t going to challenge him, personally, for The Late Late Show. I made that clear from the beginning.
But you weren t originally in the running for The Late Late Show when it was conceived by Tom McGrath as a form of evening at home with an Irish family and Gay was chosen to host it because he could play the role of, I think, the younger brother
It was the younger brother! And you re right, that s how it all started. And, no, I wasn t even in broadcasting at the time. So Tom choose Gay. But Tom taught Gay and myself a great deal.
Years before he took over The Late Late Show you suggested that Pat Kenny s desire for perfectionism sometimes blinds him to his own limitations and that he doesn t elicit information or emotion with the same shrewdness as Gay.
I do believe that. And I stand by that comment. But I still think Pat is a terrific broadcaster. Gay, on the other hand, couldn t have done a current affairs programme. He couldn t handle some of the interviews Pat handles. Neither could I. Just like I couldn t handle some of the interviews Gay handled.
But what s happened is that Pat has gone into a formula that was ready-made for Gay Byrne. In other words, the formula and Gay became one and the same thing. So Pat had to walk into that formula. But he s not Gay Byrne. So, in a sense, he s put on Gay s overcoat and it doesn t quite fit. But as Pat Kenny he s excellent. And the two interviews I thought he handled absolutely superbly were Gerry Adams and David Trimble.
I know people have made the argument that they were more current affairs than they were Late Late Show style interviews, where Gay would have said and what does your wife think about all that? That s not a question that would come into Pat s remit. And yet the people watching are saying I wonder what the wife thought of that? So Gay would ask that question. But it s not part of the equation for Pat because, in his mind, this is a straightforward really important interview.
That s the difference between the two. And me. I would ask the question about the wife. I d have the suss to know what the people watching wanted. But I do believe the public will get used to Pat s presentation of The Late Late Show over the years.
So you also obviously think he should persist despite the fact that producer Colm O Callaghan is leaving and there is talk of Pat s tenure as host of The Late Late Show ending a season or so from now.
I ve heard those rumours but, yes, I definitely think he should persist. And when he took over The Late Late Show I advised him to give one major interview then keep quiet for two years. Because whoever took over The Late Late Show was going to get hammered anyway. Now I know he s entitled to handle his own career the way he sees fit but I believe he allowed the media to smell blood. And now they ve smelled blood, seen his weakness, they ll continue to bite his ankles.
But he should persist because he s the best presenter in RTE. In an all-embracing sense. I think Gerry Ryan is a wonderful radio presenter but his TV record is not good. Marian Finucane is easy going, a bit like myself. In fact, Marian and I are probably closest, in terms of similarities. And I m very fond of Joe Duffy. Joe could do The Late Late Show very well, but he has yet to prove himself on TV. So Pat is the best presenter, for this particular job, in RTE.
Despite your retirement from The Arts Show, you re not leaving broadcasting entirely?
No. But all I m doing after this is one radio series of twelve programmes on Irish literature and then goodbye. To radio. But I ll continue to do Winning Streak for a few more years because there are bills to be paid and it s a bit of fun. I enjoy doing the show. And Winning Streak is immensely popular.
But is there any sense that you now are forsaking the world of the arts and culture simply to become a money-making machine?
It s not that at all. It s merely to try and make some kind of security for myself in my latter years. That s the motivation.
But why has this suddenly become so important in your life, as opposed to, say, five years ago, when your marriage broke down and you were apparently relatively broke?
Well, in terms of assets Eileen and I had at the time, they were okay. So I would have been better off had our marriage stayed in place. But it s because I had to start again that I now have to build up some security. Five years ago I simply couldn t afford to draw back from broadcasting and focus more on my business interests. I needed to earn the money from broadcasting to build this base. So it s only now that I m in a position to earn sufficient money to support myself. Ann supports herself, but to support our lifestyle and my own life and commitments to Eileen I do need to earn a great deal of money.
Did you ever feel you were under-paid by RTE?
Never. The organisation owes me nothing. Nor do I owe the organisation. We both benefited from each other. I got a very good career and a good standard of living from the organisation. And the organisation, in my view, got damn good value out of me. I have no pension from them because I was always on contract so when the door closes, it closes.
I ve always encouraged people around me to stop thinking an organisation owes you anything. If you re not being paid sufficiently for the work you re doing then leave the organisation. But don t start whinging that the organisation owes you. I am a great believer in the code of the individual. You stand on your own two feet. And you survive by your wits, your talent, your working abilities. You are not dependent on others. I believe, intrinsically in that. I don t believe in organisations as a support mechanism.
But has adhering to this code of the individualist really led you from being relatively broke in 1995 to now being one of Ireland s wealthiest celebs to quote a recent Sunday World story?
That s a total lie. Pat Doherty is the owner of all the companies. So it s a fallacy, it s another example of lazy journalism. And misleading journalism. Worse things could be said about you.
Than to say you are a billionaire?
It s a fallacy. It s badly researched. It s cheap lazy journalism. The guy didn t bother checking the register of shares. I m not the owner of these companies. He quoted all these companies. I don t own a percentage point in the bloody things.
Phoenix magazine also recently reported that you own a 20% share in Holiday Homes Abroad Ltd?
That s right. But that s only a start-up company. It hasn t made any money. It s just getting by.
The same report also claimed you lost out when Emdee s premises on Sherriff Street were sold to Harry Crosbie for #1.75 million, because although you originally had a significant share in the property, when the time came to re-finance it you were so stretched as a result of the marriage break-up, that you couldn t.
That is true. My marriage had broken up and I hadn t got the #10,000 to put into it.
So what about the Phoenix claim that Mike Murphy now is making up for lost time and if that means evicting people from retirement homes and shifting holiday homes to the filthy rich, then so be it. They were referring, in part, to the controversial Clonmannon retirement village which is owned by Tara Court Properties, another Pat Doherty project of which it s said you have 10% shares. So did you try to turn old people out of their homes to make way for the rich?
Some guy phoned me from Phoenix, I can t even remember his name. He wanted me to verify certain facts he was going to quote. So I verified, yes, certain elements. But in the Clonmannon dispute I took the point of view of the majority in Clonmannon. A tiny group of dissidents went to court to give the following reasons why they were refusing to pay their rent. This goes back over years. So I, at the meeting, took the majority view that they had no right to be avoiding paying rent. And they went to court and they lost on every single count! The judge took the same view I had. And that the majority had in Clonmannon. There will be no rich people going into the place. But the bottom line is that if the people who took the court case want to appeal they can appeal. You re talking about 5% of the people in the place. If they want to pay their back rent, like all the others have, then they stay. There is no problem.
So you re not worried that stories like this will upend your public image, make people see you as some kind of carpetbagger?
I m not a carpetbagger. I don t do that sort of thing. It s just not my style. Not my philosophy in life. It never was. If I d gone around treating people like that, in RTE, do you think I could have sustained my career and frankly popularity out there for all these years? No way. And though I hate beating my own drum like this I do have to say that, in light of those accusations in Phoenix.
Do you have any fear that if your divorce case goes public, you and your loved ones will be dragged through the dirt again?
No. That won t happen. It will all be done in private. Besides I really am sure that I can stand over pretty much everything I ve done in my life. And my career. I m not really that concerned about what the public think of me. What matters, at the end of the day, is how my family and my loved ones see me. And, as I said, after a hard struggle things are working out, at that level, fairly well for all concerned. That really is what matters most of all to me.