We’re sitting in the front room of Ryan Tubridy’s mews home in Monkstown, south Co Dublin, where we are meant to be enjoying tea and cake.
But neither of us is enjoying it – Tubridy forgot to get milk for the tea and I bought a terrible cake.
Tubridy is trying hard to be his trademark winsome self and be polite about the barren Bakewell. It is drier than a brick.
“It’s not that bad, really,” he says, lying through his teeth. Arid cake crumbs fall from his mouth – I can hear them bouncing off the coffee table, like pebbles.
“How’s the tea?” he says.
“It’s grand,” I say, lying through my own teeth, as I swirl the black brew in a cup.
“Sure, who needs milk anyway?”
We chat amiably for a while with the rain pelting off the windows. The January weather has turned bad outside, and the late afternoon light is beginning to fade.
But it is growing darker inside too. Tubridy heaves these big, heavy sighs and I see the tension all over his face. The air is thick with it. It’s not the tea or dry cake. It’s because he knows what’s coming next: I’m going to ask about that thing the RTÉ payments scandal that blew up his life in June 2023.
Tubridy heaves another sigh, a big foreboding one. Then we begin.
“In the midst of it was really dark. It was heavy stuff,” he says. “I didn’t understand half of what was going on. Then, the attention was so intense. I was just … I was just down.”
He puffs out his cheeks, pushes away the cake and sits back in his couch, elbows out, fingers interlocked in a grip on the back of his head.
“I wasn’t out, but I was down. I was on the ground. I saw myself as a character in this story that I wasn’t writing. I was being buffeted all over the place. It was traumatic. I won’t sugar-coat it and say: ‘Oh, it’s fine. That’s life.’ It’s not life. It wasn’t normal.”
The complex financial controversy blew up when it emerged RTÉ had publicly understated Tubridy’s pay by a total of €345,000 between 2017 and 2022. It meant RTÉ could say publicly that his pay each year was below €500,000 while he had been presenting his Radio 1 show and also The Late Late Show on RTÉ television, which he left in May 2023, weeks before the financial scandal emerged. In fact, his total pay was higher.
Some of Tubridy’s remuneration was secretly funnelled to him by RTÉ through Renault, the former sponsor of The Late Late Show. It was paid via a so-called “barter account” in Britain. Reports by accountants Grant Thornton found that neither Tubridy nor his agent, Noel Kelly, had orchestrated the scheme.
Ryan Tubridy in Dún Laoghaire. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
But the wider public recoiled at the revelation that it had been actively misled about the pay packet of the State broadcaster’s biggest star. It was an incredible fall from public grace.
The fallout convulsed the nation during the summer of 2023. It also ripped the lid off a wider financial scandal at RTÉ, which, it emerged, had also used barter accounts for lavish corporate spending. Trust between the Government and RTÉ broke down over the broadcaster’s governance and perceived profligacy.
Tubridy took the brunt of the opprobrium, though he says it wasn’t really his fault, which may rile some of his critics – of which there are many.
He accepts blame for some of it, but “not the bulk”. He was lambasted in the media and by politicians for not challenging the public fiction of his publicly understated pay, which he acknowledges was a mistake.
“I think if I had my head screwed on better, and if I was a bit more attentive to that side of my life, I would have shouted louder. That’s on me. I accept that, and to those who are annoyed, I hope that gives some class of an answer. I understand their irritation and I don’t want them to think I haven’t thought about that or I don’t care. I do care, but I can’t take the blame for the entire organisation.”
Tubridy says the criticism he got was so bad during the controversy, he attended therapy to deal with the fallout of being the face of a national scandal. He compares his mental state during it to that of George Bailey, the character played by James Stewart in the classic 1946 Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
I think I felt so constantly attacked and, you know, hung out to dry
— Ryan Tubridy
He says he told this story to guests at his wedding last month. In the film, Bailey tries to kill himself after a financial scandal. Tubridy is clear he wasn’t suicidal.
“I wasn’t about to throw myself into the water. But I was the guy at the bar with my knuckles in my mouth, saying: ‘God, I’m not a praying man, but if you can get me out of this corner, I’d appreciate it,’” he says.
“Then your guardian angel comes down and says ‘Look, it’s not as bad as you think. Look at your beautiful daughters. Look how they’re thriving. Look at your partner. Look how amazing she is. Look at how your brothers and sisters have just dropped everything to support you. Look at the people you have around you’.”
Tubridy says through therapy and the support of those around him, he realised he wanted to “embrace the world” again. “I feel like I’m in Bedford Falls now.”
I ask about his summer 2023 appearance alongside Kelly in front of the Public Accounts Committee, where he was criticised by politicians who were examining the RTÉ crisis. I tell him his tone sounded off at that meeting. He seemed too unrepentant, unstable.
“I wasn’t in the whole of my health. I think I felt so constantly attacked and, you know, hung out to dry that I couldn’t bring myself to see the bigger picture. I probably would have done things a little differently if I was on top of my game, but I wasn’t.”
Ryan Tubridy has left Virgin Radio UK and is starting a new YouTube series as well as radio projects in 2026. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
We’re sitting in Tubridy’s front room on this rainy Wednesday afternoon because in recent weeks he has moved back to Dublin from London, where he had been working for Virgin Radio. He also got married last month in Galway to clinical psychologist Clare Kambamettu, a former Rose of Tralee who he met on his radio show in early 2023, shortly before everything blew up.
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Tubridy left for London in January 2024, seven months after he stopped working for RTÉ. Last month, his Virgin show ended, although he has other UK projects in the works – Tubridy says he wanted to leave Virgin anyway.
He will also do a weekend radio show in Ireland for Onic, the radio group here owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, for which Tubridy also works in London.
He will also return to Irish screens in coming weeks as a guest on Virgin Media Television’s new show, The Assembly Ireland, where guests are questioned by a panel of neurodivergent people.
Tubridy will still work roughly half of each week in London, but Dublin is now home again.
To lighten the mood I ask about life with Kambamettu. It doesn’t lighten the mood at all. Until this point, Tubridy has managed to largely keep a grip on his emotions. Soon he is struggling again.
His relationship with Kambamettu developed through the spring and early summer of 2023, through his 50th birthday and also his departure from The Late Late Show, which had exhausted him.
Then one day in June, they were in Clifden. Tubridy says he got a call telling him that the scandal was breaking. “Everything went black,” he says.
“I was like: ‘What? [to the caller]. ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’ They said: ‘You’ll know all about it soon enough.’ Then, bang, it was all destroyed. And, my God, doesn’t Clare shine then. She didn’t patronise, she didn’t cry and moan. She just shone. I thought, Wow. And that went on for months and months.
“And, you know, I said to her, you can … you can go,” he says, suggesting that he sought to free her from having to sit with him through the darkness.
Ryan Tubridy and Clare Kambamettu on their wedding day. Photograph: Aoife Herriott
Tubridy’s voice breaks. “She didn’t go. It was an extraordinary test of a relationship. It was so difficult and, you know, she stuck around, and more. Then the sun came out again, and I kind of went back to normal in London, to who I was, but different, if you can be that.”
At one stage in August 2023, months before he left for London, Tubridy was close to sealing a return to his RTÉ Radio 1 show for a reduced salary. The details were agreed with RTÉ’s new director general, Kevin Bakhurst, whose predecessor Dee Forbes left during the scandal.
Everything was ready to go for his return. Then Grant Thornton filed its second report, which broadly cleared him and Kelly of blame for the financial shenanigans, although he was still being criticised in the media for not having contradicted RTÉ’s understatements of his pay.
Tubridy released a public statement welcoming the Grant Thornton report and suggesting it had basically exonerated him. He also suggested that in some years the public figures weren’t wrong. But that didn’t take into account the Renault money – €150,000 of which he had already promised to pay back, as it was linked to corporate appearances he hadn’t been able to complete because of Covid.
After this statement, Bakhurst ended the return talks and said RTÉ would “move on” from Tubridy, although he hinted the door might remain open for him in future.
Does Tubridy regret blowing up his return?
“I get on well with Kevin. I thought he was a very reasonable guy. I think there’s a fairness to him. But ultimately, you know, we parted ways. I always got the sense that he might have been pushed into that [ending the talks].”
Pushed by whom? The RTÉ board?
“I think the board might have been a little bit enthusiastic about my departure. I think [Noel Kelly and I] were very happy that I was vindicated, and not everyone was happy with the vindication.”
This week, RTÉ told The Irish Times: “That characterisation of events is incorrect. We have no further comment.”
Tubridy acknowledges he might be wrong about the board nixing his return, and if so, he is being “terribly unfair”. But he still feels “pushed out to the front” by RTÉ as “cover” for the wider scandal.
I’m a different person now to who I was a couple of years ago. I’ve evolved
Last August he repaid the €150,000 he had promised in 2023 to return. Why now? Despite his previous lofty pay, Tubridy suggests he had to make it before he could pay it back.
“As soon as I was in a position to repay it – and it took a while, of course – I did.”
He says the return of the cash was not part of any deal to come back to RTÉ. He acknowledges he met Bakhurst last summer, “just for a coffee”, and that he is not in talks about working for RTÉ.
He and Kelly have a data access request in with RTÉ covering mentions of them inside the organisation during the period the scandal erupted. More than two years later, he still hasn’t received the information – it has been reported RTÉ has spent €100,000 so far, including legal fees, on the request.
“I don’t know where that information is. It’s a simple request. We just want to clarify a few things to see what went on. We’re human, we’re curious. But for some reason they seem to be spending an awful lot of money with a lot of lawyers. Why? I don’t know why I don’t have the information.”
Does he think he will ever work for RTÉ again?
“Why not? It would depend on the project. I am a guest on Miriam O’Callaghan’s programme on the Sunday before The Assembly Ireland, which will be the first time I’ve gone through the gates of RTÉ since I left. So that’s kind of interesting.
“The RTÉ Guide were also on. We all had a smile at that. They want to do a cover story. I didn’t think that would ever happen again. So who knows? Life is so peculiar. I’m not a grudge guy. It’s such a waste. We will all be dead. What’s the point?”
“I’d hate to be hit by a bus tomorrow thinking that was the end of my relationship with RTÉ. It was a very important place to me,” he says.
He says he never, at any stage, considered ditching Kelly as his agent. He says they are “best friends”.
Noel Kelly and Tubridy leaving the Public Accounts Committee. Photograph: Colin Keegan/Collins
“We’ve been through stuff together, personally and privately, and we stick together. We respect each other and we have great fondness for each other. It would have been lousy to ditch him. I don’t think people who ditch their friends because the weather’s bad are good people.”
From next week, Tubridy will be in London most Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. He has given up his rented flat in St John’s Wood in London.
He says Virgin is tilting the station away from talk radio and back towards music, which is why his show won’t continue – but he says he would have moved back to Dublin anyway.
“Two years in London was enough. I was ready to come home.”
He will stay working for the Murdochs’ News UK through several projects. One is a series of podcast interviews with sports stars who have been knocked down but got back up again. It will also be broadcast on the group’s TalkSport station.
“It’s about resilience. They thought I’d be a good guy to do those.”
The second is a YouTube series of online obituaries of people who seem likely to die soon. It’s called The Late Show, which he says is “cheeky – but at least I dropped a ‘Late’”.
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“For example, if Dick Van Dyke [the 100-year old US actor] dies, I’ll have already recorded a conversation about him with the entertainment correspondent for the Times. In the event of him dying, that podcast is banked, ready to go. I’m going to record a batch of them for various people, starting next week. It’s a bit grisly, I know. It will also go out on Times Radio.”
The third strand to his new deal with News UK is a new project with Times Radio that he says he cannot talk about until spring. He also suggests he is in talks about further broadcasting work in Ireland, but not with RTÉ. “It’s still under negotiation,” he says.
After our chat, Tubridy shows me around his attractive but modest-sized mews house. His little red Ford Fiesta is parked outside. If he really is “Tubs-o-cash”, as one tabloid called him during the RTÉ scandal, he either hides it well or he has spent it all on books.
His sittingroom is lined all the way up to the top of its double-height, vaulted ceiling with rows of books. He can only reach the higher ones via a treacherous-looking ladder.
“It’d be a good way to go,” he says, miming falling. “Falling off the ladder, banging your head off the piano.”
Tubridy says he took stuff “way too seriously” before.
“I used to be too sensitive,” he says, insisting London and his RTÉ exit changed him. “I’m a different person now to who I was a couple of years ago. I’ve evolved.”
He acknowledges he had “a little bit of a moment” with his emotions earlier. But he insists that, overall, he is happier now than he has ever been.
He says he is also grateful for the support he gets from ordinary Irish people.
Ryan Tubridy photographed in Dun Laoghaire. Photo: Bryan O’Brien / The Irish Times
“I needed a break from Ireland, time out. But maybe I’ve fallen back in love with it again. It’s like we broke up. But maybe now I want to hold Ireland’s hand again.”
Then he throws back his head and laughs. Hopefully at the corniness of the line.