Feeling phantastic

As I stroll into the Phantom 105.2 studios on a weekday morning, two extraordinary-looking men are on their way out the door. I later learn that their names are Space Cowboy and Goliath, something I find rather difficult to digest at 9am in the morning.

Pure Mornings presenter Richie McCormack (who has been awake since 4.30am) explains it all as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“We just happen to have a bloke on, who’s four foot tall who can lift a grown woman on his shoulders,” he shrugs. “It’s somewhat normal to have a guy who can swallow 27 swords and drag 414 kilograms with his eyelids on fishhooks.”
Is it possible that I’ve called in on the most surreal day in the history of the station?
“We’ve had some strange people on the show, now that I think about it,” McCormack laughs.
Co-presenter Charlotte Flood chips in, “We had a mind-reader on recently. She actually did freak us out.”
“We had Beardyman singing ‘My Lovely Horse’ a couple of weeks ago,” McCormick adds, “which was an experience. But when you get up at four or five o’clock in the morning, which is the middle of the night really, anything can seem normal.”
While your average morning show relies on outrageous gags and fluffy news items to entertain the masses, Pure Mornings was born out of Phantom’s eagerness to put the music first.
McCormack again: “Initially people got the impression that we might have been of the, ‘We’re a wacky zany morning crew!’ school – but neither one of us had it in us to do that. The breakfast show before that was like minimal talk, but they wanted to move away from that. They wanted company for people who were driving to work.”
“We still play more songs than most stations,” Flood clarifies. “We try to fit as much in the hour as we can, but you can’t really do that without having a conversation as well and giving people a bit of the daily topic. We obviously try and keep away from Cheryl Cole getting kicked off X-Factor and stuff like that, but you still want to keep it as daily as possible so it kind of relates to someone going into work, and they find out something they didn’t know about that morning.”
“It’s finding the happy medium between Cheryl Cole kicked off X-Factor and Bracko Popovic tried for war crimes,” McCormack laughs.
While McCormack and Flood each have a decade of radio experience behind them, Michelle Doherty first came to the attention of the nation through the medium of a mysterious glowing box in their front-room. The Donegal native presented Night Shift and Day Shift on Channel Six until 2008 and currently co-presents When Under Ether on RTÉ Two. I presume it’s easier as a radio jock, to plug into the minds of her audience.
“That’s for sure,” she agrees. “You never know with TV, you don’t get that instant feedback. You don’t know unless someone maybe comes up to you when you’re out. The listeners are always really sweet – but don’t worry, if there’s something for them to pull you up about, they’ll pull you up about it!”
And that’s where social media proves mightily handy.
“You can’t get away without it, honest to god,” she stresses.
“The last two years have been incredible with Facebook,” McCormack adds. “The Phantom page has 22,000 likes, that’s 22,000 people that might check their phone and see what’s on. It’s another way of getting people on board. Ditto for Twitter. It’s great to have that level of instant reaction.”
Doherty’s Finest Worksongs has been soothing and stimulating the ears of Dubliners for three years now. Did Michelle have a game plan in mind when she started the show?
“Personally, if I’m listening to radio I don’t want to hear someone shiteing on about what’s going on in their day, I want to hear music. I want it to be my escape – so that’s the way I wanted to do my show.
“I approach it like I’m just having a conversation and it happens to be on air, I like to think of it like that and hopefully the listeners do as well. Four hours is a long time on air, but when you’re playing your music, you kind of get lost in your wee zone and you get to know the people who listen as well. There’s banter back and forth through text messages and stuff, so it does fly – but by the end of the week I know about it. I’m exhausted! But I do what I want and I love what I do so that’s half the battle, really.”
Anyone can tell you it’s been a rocky couple of years for Irish radio. What’s been the biggest challenge for the Phantom crew?
“I suppose it’s the same every day,” McCormack says, “to try and relate to people.”
“It’s hard for breakfast radio now,” Flood adds, “because not that many are doing nine-to-five jobs anymore, so it is quite difficult. You can do one thing one week and it could work and the next week there’s no response, so it’s really hard to tell. That’s the biggest challenge, to engage the listener.”
Michelle nods. “You’re constantly thinking about the listener: that’s why you’re on radio, because you want to keep them entertained, you want to keep them hooked. You’re constantly thinking about them. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day.”

Pure Morning airs from 6am to 10am and Finest Worksongs airs from 10am to 2pm on Phantom 105.2.