Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
SpunOut.ie Blog
SpunOut.ie on Tubridy!
Blog: Listen to Youth Editor Paddy Duffy on The Tubridy Show.
SpunOut.ie Youth Board member and student radio whizz, Paddy Duffy, recently spoke on the Ryan Tubridy show.
Paddy gave the youth view in a discussion about young people and relationships. Well done to Paddy for telling it like it is on national radio!
Listen online:
http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-tts-thetubridyshow-2007-10-04.smil
(Paddy talks at 16:25 minutes into the show)
Below, Paddy talks about the Tubridy experience:
There aren’t many things in the world that would make me react with a high-pitched “yay!” after getting word of it. Spurs winning the League; that would do it. Finding out Keira Knightley quite fancied me; you better believe that would do it. Getting an email asking to do a slot on Radio One’s Tubridy show; well, this one actually did.
There are a few reasons I got so excited. Firstly, as a budding radio-type person the opportunity to get on Radio One is a damn good one, and secondly Ryan Tubridy is a bit of a hero of mine, I’ve interviewed him a few times in the past and he’s always been very accommodating and helpful and generally a real gent, so it was nice to talk to him again!
We were going to be talking about young people and relationships, and I initially thought, “Wait, am I the right person to do this?! It’s been so long since I was in school, I wasn’t exactly great at dating and the likes when I was, sweet Jesus I’m going to bomb!”
Thankfully all fears were quelled when Tubridy’s producer, Tom Donnelly, rang me up to discuss what we might talk about on air, as my recall over the whole turbulent era was surprisingly clear, and I was able to get across the complexity of angsty teenage romance reasonably well.
So the following morning I was due to get the call at 9am for the first segment of the show, and I don’t mind telling you, I was nervous. But instead of that nervousness exacerbating the falling-into-orchestra-pit complex I’ve had since I was sixteen, it gave me the adrenaline I needed to get through the piece with limited stumbles and having pop-culture references at the tip of my tongue for mirthful use (Listen to the piece and you’ll know what I mean, I talk in TV code or something).
I was joined on air by Yvonne Joy, a mother whose son was getting to “that difficult age” and the author Ruth Gilligan, who is probably best known for having a hugely successful book published when she was in about fifth class of primary school.
While I empathised with what Yvonne, who seemed a pretty cool Mum by all accounts, had to say about her son’s progression into sexual awareness and the like, I was expecting Ruth’s story to be diametrically different to mine, what with her being South County Dublin in female teenage form and me being a rural northerner, but we did have some common ground.
After Ryan asked for some explicit details of teenage life, Ruth alluded to the practice of, how should I put this, girls going to a disco, as the French might say, sans underpants. I don’t know why I’m being so delicate now, cos Lord knows I wasn’t on air, as I disclosed to Ryan and a few hundred thousand listeners that such a practice was called “bushing”. Yep, I talked about bushing on Radio One at 9 o’clock in the morning. I’m sure I accounted for a few monocles being broken.
While I felt the time just flying in, overall it was very enjoyable: I think I came across OK, we had a lively and funny discussion and brought important youth issues out in the open on national radio.
It wasn’t bad on a personal front either, I was inundated with congratulations and well wishes, and my Bebo profile showings spiked out of control between 9 and 10am when I was on. Not bad for a morning’s work!
By: Paddy Duffy
