150KTubs - future career in Virgin Radio and other soulful pursuits **Mod: Read OP**

I'd say one of the brainstorming ideas that Team Tubs is pushing now is "the Bookman".

Since he has been dethroned as The Toyman, they need something else.

Not quite. It's the perfect get out of jail/plausible deniability for the inevitable return. Say the figures get bad and VM want to move on Q102 would probably take him standalone along with a sponsor (which tbf NK has the contacts to get him one). All they have to say is CnaM are unhappy and they do not want to go up against them. Turn it to an Irish show from Dublin and voila he's back home in an Irish presenting job, without being cast as a failure in London. The game here is clearly a return home anyway and eventually to RTE so even adversity will be used to reach that goal. Callans package shows that RTE has actually learned nothing so it is only a matter of time.

As for his MoS article: I think it's highly likely that is done the same way that they'd do their ex intercounty hurler type articles. A 20min phonecall where they spill their thoughts and a young journo has to put structure on it and do the writing. It also ensures it fits with the house style without too much editing. I doubt he's getting much for it as he benefits more than MoS for it imo. Keeping the name alive over here is necessary for the comeback as the only worse thing than him being talked about is him not being talked about.

Do they want him to present the Booker Prize? Have they tried to get Amazon to sponsor his show?

Regards...jmcc

In the 80's the only plausible way to get to London involved a 3 hour ferry that got you as far as Hollyhead. Now you can get a 45 minute flight into London, so not only is going for the weekend plausible, I'd say most 20-30 year olds have already done it. It's not the far off land it once was. The way he talks you would swear he had moved to New York, or outer Mongolia.

Think that BBC gave him a few chances but they never worked out. Not sure that he's Radio 2 material though.

Regards...jmcc

To be fair it's hard to know if they did or didn't work out as he was prohibited by his later RTE contracts from other work, specifically BBC work. Now of course that might have suited Tubs to have that in there to give the illusion to RTE that he was in demand elsewhere. An easy concession to throw for a €100k or so if there was actually no other work or no desire to do other work. In any case he had nailed his feet to RTEs floor even if an offer did come in, while in contract.

I'm not asking whether the BBC are interested, nobody here would know that, I'm wondering would something like Radio 2 be Tubridy's own first choice ahead of RTE...presumably if it is he has NK under instruction to suss that out...

Certainly fooled the people in RTE if so. It was cover work from what I remember but there was an attempt to get him into the UK market with that "The Irish Are Coming" book and there was a ryantubridy . co . uk domain name registered in 2011. It was like the intended move to the big time of UK broadcasting didn't work out.

Regards...jmcc

Before Ryanair, flights to the UK were insanely expensive, thats why I said plausible when referring to the ferry.

You are right of course, even in the 80s, London wasn't the big mystery that Ryan seems to be painting it as now in 2024.

Yes, he did.

Doing a faux German accent on UK Irish radio. Even Lord Haw Haw had to be half cut before he attemped that act!!

Airline deregulation crashed the prices, not Ryanair.

(Long block of text not really relevant here:

Ryanair were consistently positioned as being £1 return cheaper than Aer Lingus to London, and competed instead on serving regional airports (they did Donegal to Luton for instance) and on Stansted being, at the time, easier to get to and nicer to get through than Heathrow. Theres an old TV ad showing off their business class for instance!

1978/9 fares were the easiest for me to find - an advance special airfare was £44 and advance special ferry + train £26.80. If you were skint you'd clearly take the ferry, but you'd well eat in to that £17.20 difference with the food you'd need to buy in two full days you'd lose on the way.

As soon as you needed to book closer to the time of travel, the air fare would go up much much more

Sailrail now starts at €52 one way, flights 9.99 or whatever - travel really has got very cheap)

Yes if unsuccessful in Virgin and he doesn't progress in the UK to bigger things, he will return to Dublin, stay with Q and will likely be moved to Breakfast. This will be syndicated to other Wireless stations - by that time they will have acquired more local stations.

If he was offered €30k for a radio slot on RTE vs £300k for one on the BBC, he's be back in Monkstown in a heartbeat, no doubt accompanied with an address to the nation about the warmth of Ireland/coldness of Britain, nowhere like home, "I owe it to the irish people to heaer me locally", blahblahblah. Then once its a foot in the door, time to climb the greasy pole again - Maximise income, Minimise effort.

The though of actually having to work for your money, in a cutthroat company where not everything is handed to you on a plate probably terrifies him, as much as his postcards from London would not attest to it.

Tubs replace Dobbo!

Thanks for giving me a laugh.

Could you imagine Tubs trying to do a job like Dobbo? Surely he can't speak properly, doesn't finish sentences, can't think on his feet, is a terrible interviewer.....I could go on.