A riled-up Ryan Tubridy came out swinging yesterday - revealing a side of him we’d never seen before.
The presenter showed his anger at being portrayed as: “the face of a national scandal.”
He showed media savvy with his catchy statement: “The seven untruths” of the RTE scandal.
Read More: Ryan Tubridy tells Oireachtas committee of grim fate on his radio show
He started off sounding like JFK: “I’ve always believed in the importance of public service, I was brought up that way. I’m truly sorry for any part I have played consciously or unconsciously in this debacle.”
But he veered into Nixon: banging the table with his fist, clenching his jaw, and narrowing his eyes at some of the stupider questions.
He blamed RTE for everything - and directly contradicted the national broadcaster on key information. Then he said he just wanted to get back to work for RTE.
Such volatile outbursts look very similar to tantrums. And with Tubridy repeatedly looking back to agent Noel Kelly for answers, there was an element to his performance of that of a spoilt child.
No doubt the last few weeks have been a terrible stress on the broadcaster - and he believes he is the victim of it all.
“I’ve been dragged into a mess not of my own making,” he said, while talking about the “frenzy” of the media coverage, saying: “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He talked about being “under siege” and how it was his “darkest hour, both personally and professionally” and claimed he had been “cancelled”.
The coverage has been unprecedented and relentless. But he wasn’t cancelled. He was free to speak up any time over the past three weeks.
Instead he stayed away and stayed silent, as the story rolled on. If he had addressed the whole debacle on Day One, all of this could have been avoided.
It may have been a live show, but Tubs’ Oireachtas appearance seemed to me to be heavily rehearsed, between agent Noel Kelly filling in all the blanks and their solicitor jumping up and down with documents.
Kelly did him no favours, repeating the mantra: “We were just following procedure” in what TD Catherine Murphy called “the Nuremberg defence.”
Tubridy spoke of RTE’s “fog of confusion” but whenever Kelly opened his mouth, it was all smoke and mirrors.
Kelly went off on tangents about TV chefs on his books and his working-class background. But possibly the biggest clanger was when Ryan veered close to Swing-gate TD Maria Bailey territory when he described the past three weeks as “a humanity bypass.”
Bailey said similar during her compensation controversy in 2019 when she memorably claimed: “humanity has been crossed.”
There was plenty of victimhood and blame-shifting, yet it was effective.
Tubs was more human in Leinster House yesterday than we’ve ever seen him. It will likely swing the public more towards him - if not RTE.
