For some he’s the embodiment of septuagenarian grumpiness – and worse! – but George Hook couldn’t be more affable as he ushers Hot Press into a vacant Newstalk production studio. Our chat took place a week after a dust-up with Colette Fitzpatrick on TV3’s The Late Review had confirmed his pariah status among his foes.
“In the Irish Times last Saturday Una Mullally took a half-page to criticise the TV3 interview I did,” he says, referring to the piece in which he was accused of indulging in “pointless and tired sexism backed up with nothing but scowling petulance” and “doing a disservice to 74-year-old men everywhere.”
“I think if you hand it out you have to take it,” Hook resumes. “I don’t agree with Una Mullally, but that is her privilege. My job is to speak my mind as honestly as I can. There are guys who take it personally and, to be honest, they need to grow up. An Irish rugby player verbally assaulted my then 19-year-old daughter at a club. He called her four- letter words; but it wasn’t in any way her fault. The player subsequently came to me and apologised. I’ve had enormous regard for him ever since, because he realised he was out of order. I admire that. A really close friend of mine is Conor O’Shea who I called a ‘rhinoceros on dope’ when he was playing for Ireland. He reminds me of it regularly, but he took it for what it was – my opinion.”
What did George make of Una Mullally’s high- profile – and some would say heroic – campaigning during the Same-Sex Marriage Referendum?
“If you’re gay, how else are you going to vote in a same-sex marriage referendum? A lot of people might have been gay and didn’t necessarily say they were gay. Politicians like Leo Varadkar had to come out. They may never have come out if not for the referendum, because they couldn’t possibly have talked about it and been in the closet. The real thing for me was that ordinary people decided. You know, ‘I think it’s pretty fair for two men or two women to get married'. I almost changed my mind because there was this belief and it was very loud that, "If you don’t vote ‘yes’ then there’s something wrong with you. You’re a bigot. It’s a no-brainer." Every time I heard that anyone who wanted to vote ‘no’ was brain-dead I got very upset. I got very upset by American multinationals like Google getting involved and putting out videos of their staff saying, ‘It’s a no-brainer'.”
Now that gay marriage has been legalised there are many, including Equality Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who reckon that the next battleground is repealing the Eighth Amendment.
“I’m opposed to abortion in all its facets, which includes repealing the Eighth. I can’t get my head around it and never could get my head around it and therefore I’m opposed to it. There’s this sense that there’s something wrong with you: ‘Why aren’t you like the rest of us? Why aren’t you voting the way we want you to vote?’ There’s an incredible pressure like that and that’s why the issue of free speech is becoming harder and harder. It’s harder for journalists, whether print or broadcast media, to state opinions that are not accepted by the majority.”
What would Hook say to the 3,500-plus vulnerable women who’ll be made even more vulnerable by having to go to the UK this year for an abortion?
“We’re a country of rules. The country’s laws in relation to abortion are what they are.”
Does he feel any sympathy for the women who have to make that journey?
“Well, of course,” he responds. “Hard cases make bad law. You always feel sorry. You feel bad for that young person having to go over for an abortion, but then you look at what’s happening in London – how late they are now aborting babies despite what they’re supposed to be doing. There is no doubt there’s a very strong lobby here for abortion on demand. And this whole thing of, ‘You’re carrying a baby and the baby is dead'. No human being doesn’t feel sympathetic about that.”
RTÉ staff were issued with a very strong directive telling them not to comment on the Same-Sex Marriage Referendum in a personal capacity. Was there a similar Communicorps edict as to what could or couldn’t be said by employees?
“The amazing thing – and I know you’re going to go, ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ – is that in 13 years, Denis O’Brien has only rung me up once.
It was in relation to his pal Leslie Buckley, who’d just started a charity in Haiti. ‘Look, will you interview him?’ And I did. The Twitterati every single night think he’s in the chair next to me listening, but I haven’t spoken to Denis O’Brien, good, bad or indifferent, in at least two-and-a- half years.
“I hear ‘balance’ all the time and I just don’t believe in it,” George continues. “That is why you will very rarely find two people on my programme. If I get Ronan Mullen or Cllr Michael O’Brien from the Anti- Austerity Alliance in, I’m supposed to be the balance. Also, for years, I’ve opened the programme the same way. ‘This is news, comment and opinion'. I believe opinion is important, so I give listeners mine.”
A self-confessed Blue Shirt or not, Hook must find it frustrating as a broadcaster that Fine Gael – and their leader in particular – are such a hard party to get on air.
“Varadkar answers a question, but you’d struggle to find a second one,” he agrees. “Fine Gael have been a pain in the ass since my mother showed me how to vote for them when I was seven years of age in 1948. Fine Gael are experts at finding a molehill to trip over. Their whole history has been making a bollix of it. Only Fine Gael could deliver Irish Water. I think they’re a party that has enormous integrity and always get called in to clean up the mess but, Jesus Christ, they drive me insane! In the four- week build up to the last election I didn’t have a single politician on the show, not one. I said, ‘If we have an issue about hospitals, let’s get a doctor in’. If we have an issue about homelessness, let’s get somebody who’s homeless in’. I don’t want some bloody politician coming in and faffing.”
Perhaps as frustrating as Fine Gael are Sinn Féin, a party who do engage with the media but are so insistent on their members adhering to the party line that you know exactly what they’re going to say beforehand...
Sinn Féin are brilliant,” Hook interrupts before I can get to the end of my sentence. “It’d be great if Fine Gael spent a few weeks with Sinn Féin to learn how you do it! Sinn Féin knows how to do it. They are incredibly disciplined, incredibly organised. I’m not sure they’re ever going to get into power in this country though.”
How would he feel if they did? “I’m a democrat, so whoever it is...” Has he ever had a problem shaking Martin McGuinness or Gerry Adams’ hand?
“I have a problem with the thought that 50% of what they tell you is probably a porky pie – like that Gerry Adams was never in the IRA, all this spin stuff. I think what Mary Lou McDonald did was outrageous in terms of naming the seven people as tax evaders. She has never been disciplined, she does what she likes. I’m a huge fan of Dáil privilege but when Dáil privilege is used in that way – she must know it’s wrong.”
Hook’s opinion of the Anti- Austerity Alliance’s Paul Murphy is not much more flattering. “If I was the Garda Commissioner I would have said, ‘Get to Murphy’s house at seven o’clock in the morning before anybody knows, before he’s awake and get him down here',” he responds when asked about the rights and wrongs of his arrest in February, after the alleged trapping of Joan Burton in her car. “Murphy said, ‘All they had to do was ring me and I would have turned up at noon at Tallaght Garda station'. He would of course, with 5,000 people behind him. The cops didn’t want that. That’s smart policing. To turn that around – Murphy is a master self-publicist because he’s exceedingly clever. I have to say, though, these mavericks are great from a broadcasting perspective!”
While RTÉ’s failure to secure the rights means he isn't on the telly every night talking about the Rugby World Cup, Hook’s attentions are fully focused on it.
“Ireland won’t win it,” he insists. “The World Cup’s only been won by four teams; the three major southern hemisphere ones and England. Unlike the soccer World Cup where, on a good day, there are a lot of possible teams that might win it, that’s not the case in rugby. The Rugby World Cup is very predictable.”
Where does he see Ireland falling short?
"I read newspaper articles about ‘strength in depth’ – if Johnny Sexton gets hurt we might as well not enter. It’s not like when we had O’Gara and Humphries and Campbell and Ward – this is different. We’ve got one international quality fly-half and then we’re in trouble. What’s more, based on the matches he played in the warm-up series, he looked decidedly undercooked. Joe Schmidt may well be of the opinion that he needs to play the early games.
“It’s really interesting that Schmidt is taking Cian Healy, even though he didn’t play a warm-up game, and he has a recurring injury. He realises that Healy could be the difference between winning the France game or not. In the professional era, the players are treated in the same way that a company director deals with machinery; it’ll pack up in ten years’ time, so we’ve got to get the maximum amount of hours out of it.”
“For the last 60/70 internationals, we had O’Driscoll and D’Arcy in the centre. Now you have rookies running out. We have one of the weakest centre pairings of the decent nations, behind Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, England, Wales... Jared Payne is the only outside centre that we’ve effectively tried.”
With Hook describing him, rather unkindly, as “a second-rate foreign player” after Ireland’s 23-16 defeat to Wales in March, we can take it that he’s not a fan of Ulster’s New Zealand-born number 13.
“I’m not a fan of anybody – whether for Ireland, Scotland or South Africa – who comes in, rents an apartment for whatever length of time and says, ‘I’m Irish, I’m Scottish or I’m South African'. That’s a fairly old-fashioned view, but I think it creates a big problem for the game in Ireland. If you’ve a granny from here like John Aldridge and Ray Houghton did, fair enough, but I don’t think living in an apartment for three years entitles you to play for Ireland.”
On the plus side, the Six Nations campaign saw Hot Press interviewee Robbie Henshaw emerge as a player of real pedigree.
“Henshaw is very exciting, but how do you win the World Cup? Presumably you score tries. Ireland lost one match in the Six Nations, to Wales. Why did they lose? Because Wales made 299 tackles and didn’t miss any, so Ireland couldn’t score. Ireland’s single biggest weakness is that we have trouble scoring tries. It’s hard, therefore, to think that you can beat major nations.”
Hook’s post-Cardiff criticism of Payne didn’t go down well with Joe Schmidt who professed to being “incredibly disappointed with one of the so-called pundits slating one of our midfield when I thought he’d played a good game. It’s one of those unfortunate by-products of having people for entertainment value as opposed to people who are a little bit more in-depth in their analysis.”
“Joe Schmidt doesn’t like me,” George acknowledges. “In fact, during my years in television I think all of the coaches haven’t liked me. If the positions were reversed and I was the coach and there was a guy on TV giving me a hard time, I probably wouldn’t like him either. But I’ve always said it; I’m not paid to be a fan. When he came to Leinster in his early weeks I was very critical. I said he had got it wrong and that the players didn’t really get what he was trying to tell them. That Schmidt subsequently got everything right doesn’t alter the fact that he was wrong at the beginning. He’s admitted to being very bruised by that, which wasn’t my intention, but like I say, my job isn’t to wave flags and blow bugles.”
And George isn’t overly-swayed by Schmidt’s enormous success while in Ireland, either.
“The test of a manager is not when he’s in charge of Manchester United, but when he’s in charge of Hull. How does he get on when he has a bad team? Joe took over Leinster at their pomp; the centres still there; Sean O’Brien and Cian Healy fully fit. Now, he’s got a very different challenge. Don’t forget that Eddie O’Sullivan won three Triple Crowns, and Declan Kidney won a Grand Slam. I’m not buying the beatification of Joe Schmidt at all.”
In any case, Hook is serious about not being a fan.
“I never watch rugby for pleasure. In fact, I hate it with an unbelievable passion. I can only watch rugby now if I’m paid to do so, which has never been the case in my life. Why? Well, firstly, because it’s incredibly dangerous. I’m less concerned about the international guys who are earning an awful lot of money, but amateur players shouldn’t be taking the type of hits they are. The powers-that-be are barely addressing the thing about brain damage. It’s a great story to say we’ve got five doctors on the touchline when Ireland are playing, but how many doctors are there when Mary’s thirds are playing Terenure thirds? “
Lest we forget – and a lot of people do – George Hook coached the USA at the 1987 World Cup.
“To go to that first World Cup in Australia with a totally amateur USA team was an amazing experience,” he reminisces. “The second grade teams always have a goal not to be last in the group. Our goal was to beat Japan and come second last and we beat Japan. Interestingly, the USA didn’t win another match in the World Cup for 12 or 16 years. I’m pretty chuffed that I was a part of that.”
Did he feel out of his depth?
“No,” he concludes. “There was a wonderful comment made by American wing Mike Purcell afterwards in relation to me changing the defensive system: ‘When George Hook arrived in Australia the lights went on'. I was very proud of that. I’ve been there and done it in terms of coaching at the World Cup.”
Indeed, that’s not the end of George’s experiences in international coaching.
“I was the first ever coach to the Irish Women’s rugby team,” he proudly states. “It was just before the first Women’s World Cup, in the early '90s. I also coached all over North America, and the De La Salle Palmerstown Women’s side in Ireland. Women are easier to coach than men, because they don’t come with any hang-ups. Because they’re not physically huge, they have to rely more on skill; whereas men believe in running through a wall, women realise it might be a good idea to go around it or over it.”
George contends that the women’s game in this country may be in better than the men's.
“The women’s sevens team have a very good chance of qualifying for the Olympics, while the men have none. The women have beaten the All Blacks, while the men never have. The women reached the semi-finals last time out; the men won’t be in the semi-finals next month.”
Next year, however, we may well see an equal opportunities crowd- pleaser hitting the shelves of all good bookshops, as George turns his hand towards the world of erotic fiction. Earlier this summer, he revealed that his attempt at a bonk-buster was without a publisher – but things seem to be taking shape now.
“It’s coming along,” he reports. “And it’s getting more and more erotic by the minute. I have a publisher, though I’m sure he wouldn’t want me talking too much about it before I deliver it.”
While a provisional date of early 2016 is doubtlessly being scribbled into diaries all over the country, he’s not willing to reveal much in advance.
“You’d never know,” he laughs, “I might set it in a rugby club.”