AT the end of hours of witness questioning, Labour TD Alan Kelly said he was as confused as ever about the Tubridy/RTÉ debacle. I felt Alan’s pain, so I checked out Prime Time (RTÉ ONE) last Thursday night. You know Prime Time – where they give a summary of what’s happened and then explain what happened. Perfect.
They started off by saying it was a matter of who was involved, who knew what when, who signed off on it. I could feel the ground of understanding sinking beneath me already.
Senator Marie Sherlock then appeared and said RTÉ had made “a grubby deal to placate Tubridy”. A man called Fintan Drury, who apparently was with RTÉ but is now something in sport, said it was time to put the politicians under the microscope. RTÉ had had very few scandals down the years, and he wasn’t even sure this one was a scandal. He reminded us that Tubridy is/was an entertainer, not a journalist, which was a good point. Another good point from Fintan was that we should “first define what we want by way of public broadcasting”. RTÉ, he said, kept going on about the puny size of the TV licence; what it should be focused on is what we want. And, Fintan concluded, a grubby deal was only a grubby deal if both sides of the table “consummate it.”
Well. By this point I was really feeling Alan Kelly’s pain. I thought the whole affair could be stripped down easily enough. Tubridy’s salary was published, but to keep him sweet RTÉ said they’d get him a deal with Renault, sssh, say nothing, you’ll have an extra €75,000 a year, and if Renault welch on the deal, we at RTÉ will pay you, Okay, Tubs, baby?
Right – let me be clear. I don’t particularly like Tubridy, I think he’s overrated. But I also think the Irish people have flocked to watch this public hanging of a man who once was the Prince of the Airwaves – a latter-day Gaybo, Late Late Show and all. But he broke no law when he was offered and accepted extra money, money above and beyond what had been declared to the public. So step into the glass house yourself – what would you have done? We all envy rich people, true; but why pick out Tubridy? Because he seemed to be our Friday Night Friend. And here, while we were struggling to get by, he was coining it, and coining even more behind our back.
Not nice.
