The Hot Press Interview: Marty Whelan

Marty Whelan – proud bearer of the most famous soup-strainer in Ireland – has lost many things in RTÉ over the years, but today it’s only his employee security pass rather than yet another TV or radio show. We’re walking the corridors of the national broadcaster’s Dublin radio centre retracing his recent path from the reception area to the studio.

“Oh God, I’m really sorry about this, Olaf,” the 58-year-old Dubliner says, apologising in that oh-so-familiar tone. “Just that if I don’t find the damn thing, I won’t be able to get in to do the show in the morning.”
“Surely there’ll be someone here to let you in?” I say.
Whelan chummily squeezes my arm, the same way he does to reassure contestants on Winning Streak. “Not a chance!” he laughs. “People don’t believe this but, sure, most days I quite literally turn the lights on in this place.”
His current show is the soothingly upbeat Marty In The Morning, which goes out weekdays on Lyric FM from 7-10am. I’m not lying when I tell him that I regularly listen myself.
We’ve never actually met before, but I feel like I’ve known him all my life. We’re meeting to discuss his new double album, Marty Recommends, a compilation of his “old favourites and timeless classics.” Very much the typical soundtrack to his show, his selection ranges from Van Morrison, Imelda May and Sammy Davis Jnr to Pavarotti, Alfie Boe and Ennio Morricone.
We give up looking for the security pass and go in search of coffee instead. The father of an adult son and daughter, Whelan gave up smoking when they were young, but is insistent that I have one in the courtyard before we begin (“Jesus, I know what it’s like”). In person, he’s as exuberantly warm, witty and self-effacing as you’d expect. He’s certainly a popular guy in these corridors. Just about everybody we pass says a cheerful "hello".

OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s your earliest memory?
MARTY WHELAN: I’m an only child, and one of my earliest memories is watching event television with my folks at home... because there was only three of us, obviously. Unless there were others they didn’t tell me about, but as far as I know there’s only three! And you’d watch the Eurovision Song Contest, you’d watch the Late Late Show, you’d watch the Rose of Tralee, you’d watch these big events on the telly, so I have a memory of that. I have a memory of watching Green Acres on the television, sitting around together, the three of us – because we were a very happy family and that was the way it was. They’re the sort of memories I have. There are dinners, Christmas mornings. It’s about family, in terms of memories.
Were you a spoilt child?
Absolutely! I was loved by my father, and doted on by my mother, so there’s no doubt that I was well minded and they were very attentive. The thing about an only child, of course, is you can’t get away with anything because you’ve got constant attention. So there’s a plus and a minus.
Did that lead to you becoming more outgoing and exuberant?
When I was a teenager I was as shy as they came. I know it doesn’t seem likely, but you wouldn’t get a word out of me. I was very quiet. It was only through school pals and music and watching mad things on the telly, and getting a sense of that, that you become a different person, but growing up I was desperately shy.
Was it a religious household?
Yeah, it would have been. My parents would have had great faith all the way through their lives. They would have been rocked by the recent events, my mother particularly.
Do you still go to mass?
Not as often as I feel I should. And I do miss it sometimes. I like the fact of sitting there and contemplating. I like the idea of being able to take myself out of myself for an hour every week. I think it’s good for your head, I think it’s good for you in many ways. That doesn’t make me a zealot, I’m not in any way, but I do have a faith. It’s shaken sometimes, I mean, you’re back to Stephen Fry – “Dear God, please explain...” I mean, we all have those moments. I do have those moments. But my actual faith in a god has never really been shaken, for some reason. I’ve always said, “Whatever about everything else, I still have...” You see, I’m one of these people who actually finds it comforting, if I’m honest, to believe that I’m going to see my folks again. Because I want to see them again. It matters. And on the basis that it matters that I see them again, if I don’t believe then there’s almost nothing to look forward to. That sounds somewhat childish, and I don’t mean that to be as simplistic as that, but that’s all we have. No one can disprove what I say or prove it, one way or the other, so in here (lays hand on heart) I have a need to see them again. I’d quite like to meet Frank Sinatra as well (laughs).
Maybe he’ll be in the other place...
Well then, I may have a choice!
What were you like at school?
Rubbish. I went to Belgrove and then St. Paul’s in Clontarf. I loved school, but I wasn’t academic ever. I’m one of these people – obviously it’s changed – but when I was in school if I liked it, I did it. If I didn’t like it, I tended not to bother. But the things that I enjoyed, I relished, I went for. I was a voracious reader.
What age were you when you took your first drink?
I was probably 16, down at The Beachcomber. A fine establishment. Then we’d all go off to The Grove – you’ve heard of The Grove, right? Well, The Grove is where I met my wife. There was a DJ there called Cecil Nolan, so you’d go out and have a couple of pints and then you’d go to The Grove and that was what we all did. Except we were the guys that loved the music. We were the guys who used to sit at the foot of the stage and talk to Cecil about music. We weren’t overly interested in dancing and craic, we were just kind of there. And it wasn’t that we were too cool to care. Music is what we were about so that’s what we did and there were a bunch of us. And we all eventually formed little bands and whatever. That was the beginnings of that whole world for me.
Did you experiment with drugs at any point?
No, I was always petrified of drugs. I would drink my beer and it didn’t necessarily agree with me. I don’t really drink beer at all now. I would rarely, if ever, drink a short. Somewhere you might have a gin and tonic or something, but red wine is what I really love. But I was always afraid of drugs. Frightened me. I started to smoke when I was a teenager, and I think something clicked in me, “You’re smoking. Have you got an addictive personality? Could you be one of those lads who might just go down that road?” So it was fear. I can’t hold up a banner and say, “What a great fella!” It’s fear that I just could be slippery-sloped, get out of this one.
Did you do the Leaving Cert?
Did the Leaving, and got through that, and then got a job with the PMPA – which is now Axa – and the PMPA was incredible because it was kind of a young company in the ‘70s. So when you got in there you’re with people your own age who are also starting out, and that was pretty good because you’ve got the camaraderie. You’d gone from school to that. No third level for me. And I was very happy there. I mean, it wasn’t for me.
In terms of your radio career, you started off in the pirates.
Yeah, I was on Radio Dublin and Big D, which followed us. The history of the pirate thing is fraught with all sorts of strange stories that I can never figure out because I never knew how it all worked, except I knew when I was on the air I got no money. I figured that out fairly early! But I was on Radio Dublin for a while and then there was a split and I went with the splitters to Big D. I had a friend at the PMPA who asked me did I want to join Radio Dublin, and I said, “I don’t know nothing about radio.” My love for the radio was under the sheets at night, Radio Luxembourg, RTÉ, all that.
Do you remember your first day on air?
Thankfully no because that would have been Radio Dublin and I would have been fairly average to say the least.
Were you nervous?
I had to be nervous, yeah. You have to be nervous if you broadcast live, no matter what you do. If you’re going to do it live, radio or TV, there has to be a nervous energy, which is a good energy, and I’m a great fan of that. But that was the beginning, so I owe the friend in the PMPA the fact that I was ever able to be on the air, therefore be heard by individuals in RTÉ, and then when the auditions for 2FM started I was one of the people that they had heard. So it was an auspicious beginning.
Obviously you left the PMPA?
Yes, much to my father’s delight. Couldn’t believe it, couldn’t understand, couldn’t figure it out. Old school! Cannot leave a pension! “You’re leaving a pension job, you’re insane!” But that was the deal because this is what I wanted to do.
You left 2FM in 1989 to join Century Radio. Bad move?
I’m not convinced. It was a bad move insofar as it didn’t survive. I went there and did the breakfast show, enjoyed it, I was working with a great team. But I left, I did what I did, and it died. It cost me a radio career for years, there’s no doubt about that. It didn’t cost me television, however, because when I came back there were individuals who said, “We have no problem with this. You left, it didn’t work, OK, so here you are,” and slowly but surely I built a career back in television with people who I hadn’t burnt any bridges with, thank God. And I’d like to think I hadn’t burnt bridges in radio either, but there were individuals who were against the idea of me coming back to radio. It took a long time for me to get back into radio, and I missed it tremendously, but I made a career in television.
What was your first TV experience?
Handing a cheque – you see the way you remember stuff vividly because it mattered – handing a check to Gay Byrne on a telethon for whatever amount. A door opened and Gay went “Ah!”, as only Gay can, and there I was, and the show was produced by Moya Doherty, that was the first thing I had done. I mean it wasn’t a gig, it was just an appearance, but it was like RTÉ kind of saying, ‘it’s OK,’ and slowly but surely then things started to change. I moved into daytime television with a very forward man called Noel Smith who’s now retired and we started to build up the afternoon show and to create another world that we inhabited for years and loved.
You eventually lost that gig, too. In fact, you’ve lost loads of gigs over the years...
I have, yeah, but I’ve taken a lot of chances over the years.
Are you reckless like that?
No, not in the slightest, not a bit reckless. That’s what’s weird. I wouldn’t be perceived as reckless, but I tend to say, “You know what, this is a good opportunity.” Century was a great opportunity! It could have worked. It didn’t work, and don’t forget it was at a time when you couldn’t own more than 50 percent of a radio station, for example, and be from outside the country. That was the deal, and the people who wanted to buy it couldn’t buy it. Cash flow problems, etc., but the station was actually doing quite fine and I look back at it now, and I know there were opportunities that could have come had it worked. It didn’t work, it was before its time. And now you have – some of the stations that are out there, Today FM and Newstalk and all the rest – who now have very successful schedules and run very well and the competition is there, like Pat [Kenny] can go from here to there and Ray [D’Arcy] can go from there to here, whatever. That wasn’t the way when I was there. People need to remember that if you’re talking about my career: I ended up in a situation where people were not happy that I had left.
Are those people still here?
Not many of them! He said with a glint in his eye (laughs). The fact is Ray was here, left, and then came back. He did no different to something I did fifteen, twenty years ago but the difference is that when it was me I was like the flag carrier. I was the one who went out first, and there were quite a number of people who were not pleased by that and I’m not convinced that they didn’t stand in my way. But you never know.
Is there a sense of us against them here?
Oh no, it’s not that. Don’t forget, there would have been individuals who didn’t feel that way. I wouldn’t have been in television had there been an us and them argument because let’s face it, at a corporate level, one has to presume that the heads of radio and television are all in the same room chatting with whoever, so I don’t know. I don’t ever think there was a corporate decision. I don’t think anyone ever said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a black mark, good luck on that one,” because if there had I couldn’t have been in television. And the television happened very quickly. And don’t forget, when I came back I ended up – I remember, I’d left – I ended up, very shortly, presenting a series with the concert orchestra called Off the Record which had guests coming in and I met a load of my heroes, which was fabulous, so we had that. We had the lottery. My career with the lottery was around that time. I did a talent show called Go For It and the Rose of Tralee. Now there couldn’t have been animosity at the highest level in here if I was offered the Rose of Tralee. It’s not possible. So you have to say look at the facts, and the facts were, no, I think there were individuals who felt it. I don’t believe it was the organisation, no, not in the slightest. Because it couldn’t have been and there’s the proof.
Ryan Tubridy replaced you as host of the Rose of Tralee in 1997. Did that piss you off?
No. Because it happens. At the time you’re not delighted. At the time you go “Oh, OK,” but lots of things happen in a career. Because what I do is very public, obviously, and high profile, a lot of it, if you do ads for Tesco and the ads end because they want a new direction or for fifteen reasons, whatever they want to do, and they make a decision. They make a decision and it ends. And people say (adopts cynical Dub accent), “Oh, there he is now, knocked off the shelf,” and it’s all hilarious. But it’s not hilarious for me! But it’s hilarious to those who aren’t affected by it.
What’s the longest you’ve been out of a gig?
Not long. It was a few months with the Century thing. That was all it was because things started to slowly happen and people started to say ‘hang on a second, he’s available, isn’t he?’ and suddenly you found yourself walking into positions that you might not have even thought of yourself, and that was great. And then Daz [TV commercials] came along, god bless them. See? You forgot the Daz so quick! The Daz thing came along at just the right time. I’ve been very fortunate. Yes, I’ve had some kicks along the way, but good stuff has come along the way as well and it has sustained us.
Are you prone to depression at all?
Never. I don’t get down. I’ve always been able to lift myself when I’m feeling a bit down. If you’re pissed off you’re pissed off and you need to get out of it, but it’s not always easy. Some people can’t do that and I understand that, for some, it’s very difficult and you go to a dark place and they don’t have whatever’s at the back of my head that lets me lift myself, but I’m lucky.
Did you get burnt in the economic crash?
No. We built our house in Malahide. Burnt to the point that did we built it at the height of the thing? Yes. Will I be working till I drop dead? Oh, absolutely. So yeah, we got burnt at that level. But we didn’t get burnt burnt, you know what I mean?
You used to fill in for Gerry Ryan on his radio show. Were you friendly with him?
Yeah, we went to school together. We were in the same class. My wife and I were at his wedding, and he and Morah at ours. I loved Gerry, he was great fun. And the thing about Gerry was he was mad as a brush; you knew there was going to be a story and adventure or whatever. I liked his company very much. I liked filling in for him, too, I enjoyed that very much.
Were you shocked when he passed?
Oh please, yeah. I was down in the corridor and John McMahon, who’s now with The Late Late Show, was head of 2FM at the time. I was walking down the corridor with Larry Gogan, living legend that he is – or as we call him Gary Logan – so myself and Gary were out for a walk and John came out ashen-faced and just said he just got this call, said that Gerry was gone. And of course you do the stupid thing, “Gerry’s gone,” and I did the old “where?” Because what else would you think? But no, gone, and I’ll never forget as long as I live the shock of that. I had lost a colleague and a friend here, Vincent Hanley, back in the day. Vincent was a star of stars, he was great. So over the years as you lose people, you don’t become immune to it, but you do cope better. But the shock of Gerry was because no one expected it. The shock of Gerry was I had talked to him two or three days previously outside and we were acting the maggot. In fact, he was talking to Harry Crosbie, who I think was on crutches, and I was just on a wind-up, but Gerry wasn’t somebody I’d go out for a drink with. We weren’t that friendly but we were friends, we were pals, we would talk and all the rest.
Were you aware of his cocaine use?
I never saw it. Never saw it once. Gerry liked a fine whiskey, I knew that, no more than I would like a fine wine or a decent red, but he liked that sort of lifestyle. He lived it large. Whatever about the lifestyle, whatever about enjoying a drink or a meal or whatever about the other stuff, you can’t do it all at speed. You can’t do it all, all the time, and the word now of course is that he did. Well, that’s going to hit you, no matter what happens. So I was shocked, yeah. But I suppose in a way, when it all unfolded, I was more angry at him and more upset for Morah because I was very fond of her. Because I would have known her too when we were all growing up because she was a Clontarf girl as well – still is, clearly! I would have known them at that level, so I was really upset for her and their gorgeous children. There was all of that loss, and going down to the house to see him and going, ‘Sweet God, who is this I’m looking at. I know this guy in front of me lying here, this is ridiculous.’ It’s a strange one, you know?
His death was a huge loss for the station...
The station misses Gerry, they miss him at 2FM clearly and it has altered dramatically since and his parting is obviously what triggered all of that, but yeah, I loved him. He was a great guy, but he’d break your heart too. He’d be telling you stories you wouldn’t know if they were true or not, he’d make them up and stuff, but he was the same in school. It wasn’t quite, ‘I had lunch with Peter Gabriel,’ but it wasn’t quite far off, you know, and you’d be going ‘Really? Did you?’ And then he’d be telling you about The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, do you remember that album? It’s a Genesis album from back in the day, and it was one of his favorite albums! I remember we’d be talking about it and – again, it’s not like he said he had lunch with Peter Gabriel, but it would almost go there! His dad was a dentist so they were all quite exotic, and his mum was in theatre, so a very theatrical family. But sure, look, if I’d stayed at the PMPA what would I be like? You get all these elements that this business brings you, no more than you interviewing people that you’d never get to meet perhaps. I don’t mean me, obviously, I’m talking about real names, and you think, ‘Wow, look at what’s happening here!’ So it’s a great game. I love it.
What do you make of the new lottery show?
It’s very different to what Winning Streak is. It’s a new show, it’s not Nicky’s [Byrne] first foray into television, of course, but it’s structured in a very different way to Winning Streak. They’re trying something new. What can you do?
The general consensus seems to be that it’s a disaster.
Well, I can’t say it’s a disaster for very obvious reasons, but it’s not the way we present Winning Streak. It’s a very different show. It runs in a different way, so from that point of view it’s a very different animal. It’s an experiment, perhaps, in some ways and they decided to try and do something different, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Will you be voting on the marriage equality referendum?
I’ll be voting for the right for same-sex marriage. Absolutely. I have no qualms about that. I have had gay friends all my life.
Well, obviously. You’re in showbiz!
Ha! Well, not just showbiz! I’ve had people who’ve transpired to be gay but weren’t in showbiz, but you’re right. In our business, it is not uncommon. I love them equally, as I love our other friends, we can all sit around the table and have dinner and have laughs, and many of our gay friends, for example, are in longstanding relationships. Now whether or not they necessarily want to get married is entirely up to themselves, but they can have the right.
Tell me about your new album.
Oh, did I mention I have an album coming out? (Laughs) Let me tell you about the album! Marty In The Morning – you listen to the show so you know what we do. We take James Taylor and we marry him with Puccini or we take whoever it is and we marry it with something that might not necessarily seem to fit. I’m told that there hasn’t been a CD like this, which is one kind of classical and crossover and what you would call contemporary. Like you have the great American songbook – Ella Fitzgerald meets Van Morrison and it meets John Martyn, meets Jethro Tull. It’s a very different sort of a mix.
Did you choose all the music yourself?
I chose it all, blank page and away I went. Now you don’t get permission for everything, there was some stuff I wanted to put on I couldn’t get permission for. Maybe down the line there’ll be another one, who knows, but the point is you have to get permission and Universal went off and said, ‘Right, we’ll get the permissions,’ some came, some didn’t. We couldn’t get The Beatles! And you know the Beatles song I wanted? The last track on The White Album, ‘Good Night.’ We used to sing it to our children when they were babies, but I couldn't get it.
Do you have a motto in life?
It’s Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’. It’s when you’re down, you have to get up. It’s picking yourself up, dusting yourself down, and getting back in the race. But you see, I’ve always had to do that. In my career it has so often been the case because you get the knock, and all it is is a change in direction, but you don’t know it at the time. At the time you think you’re finished. So I’ve been finished about eight times, but I’ve worked it out nine times! If you can do that, you’ll be alright.