The Gospel According To John

John Creedon celebrates 25 years with RTÉ this year. One of the best-known voices and faces on the national airwaves, he’s a broadcasting “everyman” in that he has appeared on both radio and television in virtually every type and genre of programme: from music, comedy and documentary to cookery, health and reality shows. Over the years, he has presented music-based radio programmes at every time slot of the day, from early morning to late at night.

With his own comedic creation, Terence – the camp Cork hairdresser – he was a frequent and popular contributor to The Gerry Ryan Show in the early ‘90s while he won a Jacob’s Award in 1992 for his RTÉ Radio 1 morning show, Risin’ Time.
His “core” job these days is radio presenter. He presents an evening weekday show from the RTÉ Cork studios, where he plays his own choice of music, mainly American singer-songwriters – favourites being Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and John Prine – along with folk, jazz, soul, world music and whatever takes his fancy.
In recent years, he enjoyed an increasing amount of time on national TV, variously as judge on Ireland’s Got Talent; winner of the reality show Fáilte Towers; learning a musical instrument alongside Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons and footballer Andy Reid in the TG4 series Faoi Lan Cheoil and most recently presenting Creedon’s Cities, where he took to the streets of Ireland’s major urban centres meeting ordinary people and unearthing curiosities and mysteries in his own trademark style.
Born in Cork, where he grew up in a large family, he still lives in the heart of the city with his wife and four grown-up daughters. A proud Leesider he drinks Beamish stout and supports Cork City FC, rarely missing a match. Affable and genial, Creedon greets Hot Press in the lounge of a Dublin 4 hotel, where he is staying while presenting a music/sports show from the Radio Centre in Montrose during the final week of the London Olympics. Fond of expressions like “cool as a breeze” and “game ball,” Creedon can literally talk for Ireland. Ask him a question and he’ll go off on a circular tangent, telling stories, relating anecdotes, even delving into various strands of philosophy – and at one point stopping to give the friendly waiter a quick lesson in the Irish language. “Sorry, what was that question again?” he asks more than once during our encounter!
COLM O’HARE: Your profile has never been higher. Does it surprise you that you’ve become such a well-known personality after all these years on the air?
I suppose my story, if there is one, is that I’ve worked right across the spectrum and right across the channels over the last 25 years. I’ve even been on Podge & Rodge and Killinaskully. The thing is, though, I always thought I’d peak as an old guy. When I had notions of writing as a teenager, I always felt I didn’t really know enough yet. One of the RTÉ brass said to me once, ‘You’re like a Paul Madeley around here’. Madeley played for Leeds United in almost every position and spent his entire career with the club. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll settle for that’.
How big was it for you to win Fáilte Towers?
It was a great boost for me. I felt great about it. I never win anything. This time around the fat guy won. It was a great victory for blunderers everywhere (laughs). When I was moved to Late Date on Radio One it opened up more opportunities and I was asked to go into Fáilte Towers. I said ‘no’ initially. Katie, my eldest girl, was fundraising for Crumlin. She said, ‘You could make thousands for them’. So I said ‘okay’. I thought it would be all sitting around on couches, Big Brother-style, philosophising into the night. I never expected to win. I was even keeping the head down in terms of the cameras. I came across as the quiet fella, the steady fella, washing the pots and the pans. I think I know why I won now. I hadn’t played the game. If I have a tip in the car I’d phone the garage. Some people would phone the media.
You grew up in a large family in Cork city?
Yeah, I’m number 10 of 12 kids. We lived in a big old house. Actually two townhouses joined together, with three storeys and an attic and two shop fronts, at the bottom on the street. My parents had let out one of the shops as a betting office and we had a small grocery store/newsagents in the other. Dad went out to work as a bus driver for CIE at one point as well.
What were your parents like?
My old man was brilliant, just the sweetest, funniest, most gregarious, passionate person you could ever meet. He could have been anything. He’d listen to the BBC World Service, and the opera and draw on all the references. His language was so colourful. He had a lazy style of picking words off the shelf, even making up his own words for things.
And your mother?
My mum was one of 10 girls. She grew up on the side of a mountain on the Beara peninsula in very poor circumstances. What always amazed me was that my mum and all of my aunts were almost aristocratic, intuitive women by nature, with beautiful handwriting, a love of literature and the arts, yet they’d all left school at 12. My mother’s family name was Blake – her father was a William Blake – not that one – my uncle was Edmund Blake and I’m thinking, ‘How did a William and Edmund Blake become small Catholic farmers out on the Beara peninsula?’ It would appear that way back, there were two Protestant brothers, John and Edmund Blake. I found out that one of them married a local Catholic woman. The result was my great-great-grandmother.
It must have been tough with so many mouths
to feed?
My mother was literally worn out, as she ran the shop and looked after us. We also took in anyone who needed help. It could be relatives, friends, or people from her own parish. I remember my father literally stopping the car and picking up this guy who was, to put it bluntly, manky and bringing him home. We’d a couple of rooms on the side that were rented out. The people my mother brought in were always colourful. We had a Sidney Poitier lookalike called Dr. Nguryganda who wasn’t a doctor at all. He was a med student from Kampala Uganda. There was one guy, Mick Mortell who went on to become President of UCC, and there was a guy from New York called Joey Canas who was a writer for Time Life. He used to wear the porkpie hat and chain-smoke Lucky Strike all day. He was always on about Steinbeck and Kerouac. So there was all these guys as well as two of my aunts, a girl who worked in the shop, 12 kids and two dogs, a couple of cats, frogs, hedgehogs – even at one stage a pet piglet. All under the same roof plonk in the middle of the city centre.
What was the plan they had for you, career-wise?
My mother would have preached conservatism. But she lived by art and colour. She would have begged and encouraged us all to get a real job, even though she knew the apple never falls far from the tree and that we were all free spirits. Virtually all of my brothers and sisters are in the arts. One of my sisters, Nora, the eldest, toured with Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri and people like that. My sister Geraldine is an artist. She did the Rory Gallagher bronze memorial in Cork. My brother Don is a good uilleann piper, singer and guitarist, Conall is writing full-time. My brother Blake is a sub with the Irish Examiner and their wine correspondent. So none of us work for a living (laughs).
Did you go the college route?
It was suggested that I might have made a good lawyer. I don’t think so – my sense of justice is too deep. I was actually going to do law. In the end I decided to do a BA and picked English and Philosophy: two subjects that made sense. I also picked Logic and Italian. At the time my parents weren’t too well and there was no money around. We were skint – so I quit college and got a job as a
city librarian.
Did you experience or witness any violence or sexual abuse at school?
I went to the “North Mon” for primary and to a boarding-school in Kerry for secondary. I certainly never experienced anything in the sexual abuse department. There were physical beatings, of course. People say a slap never did us any harm. I’d like them to stop right there and think a minute. May
be it didn’t do me any harm. People react to
things differently.
In fact, I think it did affect me. Sometimes I think I give away my authority very easily, in an argument or in a negotiation. I’m inclined to say, ‘Yeah, sure, fair enough, thanks anyway’, and walk away. When you grow up without power of attorney over your body, can be beaten for not agreeing with someone, there is no argument – he’s got the stick or the leather and you don’t. Also, what I’ve always wondered was, who made those leathers? Who designed and fashioned them? They were made for only one purpose.
You seem to be angry about it, even now. Do
you think you’ve been suppressing that anger over
the years?
I dunno. I was the youngest kid in every class I was ever in – even in the scouts or on the football team or in the FCA. And because there were so many of us at home, it was very important to teach the nipper how to tie his shoelaces and how to dress himself and get out and get on with it – because there’s always another one coming along soon. So, I would say by nature that I’m sensitive. I’m a great man for the old lump in the throat, whether it’s watching Katie Taylor win or whatever. If I have a tender spot at the moment, something that makes the hair stand on the back of my neck, it’s injustice. Even if I see it in a taxi queue, I’m inclined to get involved. More often than not, I’ll take a good deal of crap myself and not do anything about it. When it comes to someone else, I’ll weigh in. It gets me into trouble from time to time.
What kind kind of trouble?
A few years ago in Cork I saw an unprovoked attack and foolishly, or otherwise, I got involved. I had seen two guys harassing an elderly couple in a car. They gave the windscreen a bang. The couple were locked in the car, afraid of their lives. I remember saying to my daughter, ‘do these guys have a mother at home or a granny, I wonder?’ About ten yards further up the road, there was a young guy, holding a bike by the handlebars talking to a girl. They were both third level students. As these same lads went by, one of them punched the guy and, as he fell, they kicked him in the leg. So I dropped my bag and ran at them.
So John Creedon is a have-a-go hero? That might come as a surprise to your listeners!
Well I’m a big guy. Fisticuffs are not my chosen subject, so I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I literally rhino-charged him from behind, he fell on his knees and I shouted at him, ‘Stay there!’. He started screaming out names – ‘Tony, Jimmy’ etc., and the next thing I knew there were about ten fellas coming down the road at me. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded. For some reason, I took a real bad attitude to them and I shouted, ‘Right, I’ll take you all together or one at a time, I don’t give a fuck’. Then in those couple of seconds I felt someone grabbing me from behind, dragging me into a shop and banging the shutters down. The people in the shop – it was a carpet shop – had seen what happened and rescued me. For a day or two the adrenaline was pumping. Then I hit a bit of a low.
Was that an isolated incident?
Well, it happened again recently in Galway where I saw a woman trying to get a free meal in a restaurant by complaining, for no good reason. She was as high as a kite and she spoke down to the manager. Everything she was saying was unfair. I just said, ‘Excuse me, I don’t want to get involved. I’ve been sitting here all night and I hear you complaining about the noise. The only noise I heard was you screeching on and on about your gym, and about your walks in Salthill and everything else. So with respect, I think you might regret this in the morning’. She said, ‘I didn’t come out to pick an argument with you’. I said, ‘Nor did I with you but I think you’re being unfair to this woman [the manager]’. She eventually cooled down.
So it’s a case of ‘Watch out if Creedon’s about?’
I just can’t stop myself in these kinds of situations and I think it might be because as a kid, there was no-one there to speak up for me. It’s not just me, I think there’s a lot of it in Ireland and there’s a lot of it in our generation.
You’re a staunch supporter of Cork City FC.
Yeah, I have a huge passion for it. For me, it’s been League of Ireland since I was a kid. I was a Cork Hibs fan originally. Anytime I’d come back to Cork fromboarding school, I’d go to Flower Lodge with my tribe, wearing my scarf and my hat. Back in the ’70s Ireland was, as Bob Geldof said, “police and priests”. But soccer was rock ‘n’ roll for us. It was guys with English accents, silky shorts, tans, running around the place with blondes. There comes a point where you reject your own culture and along with countless lads of our generation I certainly did that, including the Irish language. It was, ‘Give me soccer, give me Top Of The Pops’ that’s all I need’. One of the reasons I like League of Ireland so much is probably because it’s never easy for us. An honourable draw in Europe is a fantastic result. To bask endlessly in the reflected glory of Manchester Utd’s success is too soft.
How did you get into music?
There was always music in the house. We all played various instruments. The Beatles’ sheet music book was around. At night Radio Luxembourg would come through and you’d hear a bit of that, but I think it was through my brother Don, who is about nine years older than me, and was big into music. I was in a boarding school in Kerry in second year and Don had been working over in London for the summer. He came back wearing a buckskin jacket, flower-power shirts and had the long hair. He brought back a bunch of vinyl records and gave me Fresh Cream and the Best Of Cream. I loved the sound of them so I brought the two LPs back to school after the holidays. He’d also brought back a few really groovy shirts and he gave me a couple of them as well and I had a pair of salmon-coloured cords. So I went back to boarding school dressed like Jimi Hendrix and on the first day back I’m walking around the yard with these two Cream albums under my arm. One of the coolest guys in the school, one of the senior boys was a fella called Cat – he looked like Cat Stevens – and he said to me, ‘What have you got there? I thought he was going to beat me up and rob my albums but he said, ‘C’mon’ and brought me down to the Leaving Cert common room where I was the toast of the place with my two Cream albums. I was now one of the lads hanging out listening to records and smoking fags. That’s where it all started.
Later on, I’d go to a lot of gigs. We’d a couple of very good rock venues in Cork, places like the Arcadia. I remember seeing The Beat, The Specials and The Cimarrons there on one night. I worked there as well, doing the odd gig.
Did you ever get into drugs?
No, I was always fairly mellow in that department. And in fairness, there wasn’t a heavy drugs scene in Cork back then.
So it was pints? What’s your current favourite tipple?
Yeah, it was pints of stout and all that kind of carry-on. My attitude to stout these days is, when in Rome, so I drink Beamish in Cork and Guinness when I’m in Dublin. That said, I’m getting pernickety in my old age. I’ll walk into a bar, walk up to the counter and ask the barman what’s flowing well today. There’s nothing worse than a boring pint.
How did you get into radio?
I was involved in pirate radio in Cork in the late ’70s. Like everywhere else in Ireland at the time we were plugging a gap where there was little or no pop or rock radio. I was drawn to the production end of things. It was always about making mad promos and creating crazy characters, so it was the combination of that and my love of music. I was in heaven. As far back as ‘82 I was using the American Zoo radio format.
Zoo radio?
Back in 1985 in the middle of the recession, I decided that I couldn’t make a living here. I wanted to stay in the same trade. So I went to the States, armed with a bunch of demo tapes, to see if I could get a gig over there. While I was there I heard the Zoo radio format for the first time on stations like WNBC who were doing that kind of crazy stuff which I loved. As kid I remembered shows like Get An Earful of This with Rosaleen Linehan, Des Keogh and Bosco Hogan. It was brilliant, a comedy show with songs thrown in. It was madcap, indie radio and it was a revelation
to me.
Who else did you admire in broadcasting terms?
As a youngster growing up it was mainly Radio Éireann and people like Brendan Balfe. The sponsored programmes bring me right back into the old kitchen where we had a radiogram with big speakers. The magic that was pouring out of this thing, hearing Irish people with posh voices was incredible to me. I’m a huge fan of Donncha O’Dulaing as well. He’s a complete loose canon, full of mischief. And I love a bit of oul’ mischief.
You joined RTÉ Radio One in 1987. How did you get the gig?
I had previously applied for 2fm around 1981. They had a vacancy for a weekend show. But my interview in RTÉ Cork was called off because some of the Union members said they would put a picket on the door if a pirate crossed the threshold. I didn’t see myself as a pirate, I saw myself as a 23-year old with a couple of small children looking for a job. In those days, things were different. Everyone was being bullied. I went away with a lump in my throat but I got over it. When I eventually came into RTÉ I was shifting between a FÁS Start Your Own Business course, the dole, pirate radio and promoting gigs around town, trying to scratch a living in that whole zone.
So how did it happen?
There was a public competition. I spotted an ad in the paper with a picture of Gay Byrne on it. They were looking for the next Gay Byrne. As I said, I’d gone over to New York with demo tapes and about $30 in my pocket. Nothing came of it. I got one or two interviews. That’s about it. So I came back from New York to hear that I had been offered an interview for the RTÉ job. The hype at the time was that 2,000 people had applied, so I was chuffed to get that far. It was, in fact, a whole series of interviews and auditions with demo tapes etc. They did a real trawl and 16 people were short-listed and sent on a training and assessment course, at our own expense, I should add. Eventually it was whittled down to one, which was me. So I got the gig. I had made it and was delighted. Then, I saw my first contract. And it was for four weeks. But I lumbered along on that for a few months and took a chance, moving the family up to Dublin. I was replacing Pat Kenny on a Drivetime kind of show for the summer, a show called Music On The Move. People like Joe Linnane would have done it way back.
They say getting your foot in the door is the hardest thing with RTÉ.
Keeping your foot in the door is the challenge nowadays and I’ve had plenty of body blows along the way. Some people have a notion that RTÉ is a middle-class man who is paid loads of money. But RTÉ is just as much about the gardeners, or the electricians who are fixing the bulbs on the back of a set, or the Hungarian girl behind the checkout in the canteen. RTÉ is all of the above. I must say and I’m not saying it out of some false sense of loyalty, I’ve found RTÉ a wonderful place to work. It’s like a campus. It’s been my university in many ways.
Is there much competition among the RTÉ broadcasters?
Not really. I think the trade is big enough in Dublin for it not to be competitive. In Cork there are probably about 24 full time radio and TV presenters. In Dublin, there are probably 350 or so. So why would you care if, say, Jimmy Greeley got an ad and you didn’t get it? Dublin is big enough and polite enough to accommodate everyone. I’ve never sensed any bitchiness.
How did the character ‘Terence’ – a camp hairdresser from Cork, who appeared regularly on Gerry Ryan’s radio show in the ‘90s – come about?
When I came back from the US I started doing that oddball stuff on a pirate station in the afternoon. So when I came to Dublin to work with RTÉ that energy was still in my head. I was struggling along on Radio One and Gerry Ryan was doing his thing on his 2fm show. So I went over to Willie O’Reilly [then of 2fm] who has a brilliant nose for the radio game. I suggested this idea. Even as a kid, it struck me that Cork was high camp. There was a load of it about. There was a gay bar and a gay nightclub on my street. This was in ’70s Cork. And Cork people wind each other up in a camp kind of way. When you think about it, over the years, you have people like Graham Norton and Danny La Rue. As a nipper going to the Opera House there was a revue kind of thing that was mad high camp – all the women played by men.
Is Terence based on anyone in particular?
There’s probably a chunk of myself in there. His background would be inner-city Cork like my own. He was an apprentice in a hairdressing saloon and had never been promoted. The kids would kick sand in his face and he’d say, ‘Arra, sure what harm?’ He lived at home with his mammy and did the meals on wheels. The wonderful thing about Gerry Ryan was his ability to enter the dream world of Terence. He was so serious about it. He would throw a curveball and expect me to catch it. It was mostly improv – there might have been a couple of gags or scenarios prepared in advance.
Wouldn’t Terence be considered very non-PC these days?
It wasn’t PC back then either. Gerry didn’t give a toss. Terence would say something like, ‘We’re off on Saturday on the parish pilgrimage, to Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Gerry’. Gerry would say, ‘Oh Terence, I believe Las Palmas is the AIDS capital of the world’, Terence would say, ‘Is it Gerry? It’s very short notice but maybe we can organise a container to help them poor people out’. It was mad stuff.
Did you become friendly with Gerry Ryan at
the time?
I would never say we were close friends, or that we were mad about each other. We worked together, did a few trips together. Paris was one I remember. With Gerry, there was all this bluster. Behind it all I think he was quite shy actually. On one occasion we were down in Bunratty doing a gig and as it turned out one of my girls, Martha, had a chest complaint – she was prone to that kind of thing. Gerry started talking about some herbal remedy, Slippery Elm or something like that. Anyway, we were discussing it in a restaurant and next thing he disappeared for about a half an hour and came back with it. He had tried several pharmacies before he found it. I thought, for all his bluster and bombastic nature, he did something that was just out a genuine concern for someone.
How did you hear of Gerry’s death?
I was in West Kerry. Someone phoned or texted me. I had seen him at the IFTAs about a month before and we gave each other a big hug. Shortly after he died, people would say to me, ‘Jaysus John, you must have known Gerry well?’ I’d say, ‘I worked with him a few days a week for a few years a long time ago’ that was about it. After that, I’d have met him at the odd opening or launch.
Terry Wogan once said that anyone could do what he does, and that you don’t need any qualifications to be a broadcaster. Would you agree?
Well, I find the core job on radio easy and I love doing it. I mean, I’m a shopkeeper’s son. I love talking and I love tunes. I’m definitely at home on the radio. When I think about it, I’ve been on the air five days a week since 1977, including pirate stations. That’s 35 years. At a certain level, I’m at my granny’s. Radio for me, is like an extension of my own day: I’m not one bit academic about it. I’ll forget who produced this or that. I’ll forget names of albums. I don’t really care. Some people get bookish about it. If it’s hitting me in the solar plexus that’s all I care about. And I don’t care what’s hip or not: if something moves me I’ll play it. I played Ian Dury & The Blockheads ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ the other night and I just thought, ‘Yeah, I love that sax solo’. A lot of Bob Dylan and John Prine songs got me through the lonely nights.
You’re now settled into the evening slot on
Radio One. How does it compare with working on daytime shows?
People listen to the music during the day but they don’t really listen to it. It’s on in the background. Sometimes you’re wasting your time doing a reflective piece or even a Bob Dylan tune or whatever. At my time in the evening, people are at home doing the ironing or mopping up after dinner or they’re in their cars driving somewhere. It’s a reflective time of the day and you can play a suite of songs and people go ‘yeah, I like that, it means something’. I did a series called the five-minute philosophers, the point being that most philosophy is taken in through music these days. People are listening to three and four minute songs, whether it’s a rapper or a Bob Dylan track or Gil Scott-Heron or Leonard Cohen. There is revelation in songs.
Where do you stand on playlists or quotas, say for Irish music?
There is a playlist and I’ll often pick something from it. I tend to use the rhythm method. If I was programming a radio channel, quotas are something I’d think about. I’m given a blank canvas. If I wasn’t addressing Irish music, I would probably be asked why, and face some kind of censure. There is no challenge in terms of playing Irish music for me. You could run an oldies station playing Irish music alone, given the talent we’ve produced. One day I could go in a jazz or soul direction and as a result, the Irish quota would be down on that day. On another day I’d go all folkie and I’d play Bob Dylan, John Prine, Guy Clark and Christy Moore. As a general rule of thumb I keep an eye on things such as noticing that, say there are very few females in the running order. I wouldn’t want to shoe-horn stuff in for the sake of it. It would be like telling a painter to use the same amount of blue paint as he uses red. My feeling is that I play Irish music for all the right reasons – because I’m enthusiastic about it. Not because someone is telling me or because I’ll be more popular if I do.
Is being based in Cork a disadvantage when it comes to getting gigs in RTÉ?
It depends on what you consider advantageous. Last night I saw Cork City playing a match and that’s something I couldn’t have done when I was an exile up in Dublin. So for me, it fills my tanks to be amongst my own. The source and the well for what I do is at home. The last thing I want to sound like is a Cork chauvinist because we’re constantly portrayed that way and I don’t believe it’s true. But it’s down to critical mass, we have 500,000 people, we have a university, we have an airport, we have a local football team and we win the odd All-Ireland. Cork people don’t hugely feel the need to go to Dublin. It would be much harder for me to work at home if I came from a much smaller town.
But it must be limiting in some ways.
When I go back up to Montrose I’m in the canteen having a cup of coffee and I’ll see six or seven people I haven’t seen in years. The next thing is, six weeks later you get a call from a researcher saying something like, ‘We’re doing a cookery programme – would you be game for it?’, and you realise that’s because I saw your man in the canteen about six weeks ago. I’m a great talker but I’m not a great hustler. I wouldn’t play golf with people I don’t like just for the sake of it. So yeah, in terms of opportunities, I would have lost out by moving to Cork. But I took that chance because in fairness to RTÉ they facilitated the move. They said, ‘We’d like to have a presence down there, the technology is there, and it’s not going to cost the organisation anything more. I’d like to think they recognise the “Éireann” in Radio Telefís Éireann.
How do you react to bad reviews from the radio or TV critics?
I’d be a liar if I said it doesn’t hurt a little bit, although less so now because as a young broadcaster you’re hanging on by your fingernails for your next contract. I’ve read criticism of work I’ve done recently and it was fair. It was stuff I felt myself, stuff that reflected my own reservations. So I had to take that on the chin. I’m old enough and strong enough to be able to say he or she has a point. There’s other stuff where you’re actually misquoted. It happened to me recently and there’s no-one you can ring up and have it put right. I got a very nasty review a few years ago where the critic described me as a ‘third-rate presenter’. When I came in from work, my then 15-year-old daughter Nanci said, ‘I saw what the woman wrote about you in the paper’. I said, ‘Yeah well, that goes with the job’. She said, ‘Well Dad, I’d rather be a third-rate presenter than a first-rate critic’. I thought, ‘That’s one I’ll remember’. But yeah, I do stupid things, I cock-up and I’m sensitive. The only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Creedon’s Cities brought you out and about around the country. What’s your take on what’s been happening here over the last five years or so?
One thing struck me and it’s that everything hasn’t gone away. The oceans and the mountains are still there. It’s still a beautiful country. We have a road network that has clicked into place and a lot of the environmental stuff that was done during the Celtic Tiger is still there. The country is in fairly good physical shape. I’m making a living, so it’s easy for me to talk. But I do think we needed to let a little air out of the tyres. We were running away with ourselves completely. My heart goes out to people who are affected in loads of big and little ways.
Do you think there are reasons to be hopeful for the future?
Oh yeah. I still love Ireland and I find the Irish people to be very decent. We celebrate eccentricity; we’re not narrow-minded or overly conservative. One of the joys of the job is that people will often spot you and come up and say, ‘C’mere to me, I’ve something to tell you’. It’s a cliché, but as a young nation we’re coming through a very turbulent adolescence. It’s like any abused child: we were handed from one abuser to another who pushed us around. When I was growing up we didn’t know how to say ‘no’, we trusted our betters. We’re outing a lot of that stuff. The cloak of Rome still weighs very heavy on Irish shoulders and in fairness we’re doing a good job in that we’re outing the bullies. We need to look at another few groups, such as the legal fraternity. And maybe then we should have a nose around the medical world and then maybe we should have a quick look at academia and see how that’s run. We’ve been talked down to by our betters for far too long.
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music?
Oh God … let me think for a minute. Okay I’ll settle for Gil Scott Heron’s ‘B Movie’ along with anything from John Prine. When I’m around the house I’m usually listening to John Coltrane or Stan Getz or some kind of modern jazz.

Hear John Creedon on RTE 1 Monday to Friday 8.30pm