{"id":601960,"date":"2026-08-23T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601960\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T08:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T08:24:09","slug":"shane-coleman-on-why-he-has-no-time-for-people-who-threaten-and-belittle-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601960\/","title":{"rendered":"Shane Coleman on why he has no time for people who ‘threaten and belittle’ politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

AS SHANE COLEMAN steps into the presenter seat for The Tonight Show full-time, the Dundalk man has hit out at the abuse and aggression shown towards politicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worry about it if I\u2019m being totally honest,\u201d Coleman told The Journal ahead of the new season of Virgin Media\u2019s flagship current affairs show next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think most politicians, the vast majority of them, are in there for the right reasons. Yeah, they get things wrong, absolutely, but I think they are trying in the main to do what is best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman said he \u201creally dislikes the aggression\u201d increasingly levelled at politicians, both online and in real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cParticularly towards female politicians, it\u2019s a huge issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I worry that we\u2019re going to get to the point where people will say: \u2018Why the hell would I go into politics? You know, I can earn just as much money in the private sector. My hours are going to be a lot shorter, and, most importantly, I don\u2019t have people threatening me or threatening my family or being really hostile.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I have no time for that hostility towards politicians. And, you know what?\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think you can do a better job, go and stand for election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have massive respect for anyone who puts themselves forward at an election\u2026and I have very little respect for people who trash that and attempt to belittle it,\u201d Coleman said.<\/p>\n

Coleman, who also co-anchors Newstalk\u2019s Hard Shoulder programme with Ciara Kelly, was announced as the Tonight Show\u2019s permanent host in June of this year after the departure of former presenter Kieran Cuddihy.<\/p>\n

The Tonight Show has been in the midst of a transition period since\u00a0the departure of Claire Brock and Ciara Doherty in November 2024,<\/a> with a rotating set of hosts since then.<\/p>\n

Cuddihy was announced as the permanent host in February of last year, but left the gig less than nine months later to replace Joe Duffy on RT\u00c9 Radio 1\u2032s Liveline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following the exit of Brock and Doherty, the show was also cut from four nights a week to two amid a changing media landscape, where more people are getting their news and analysis online rather than via traditional television.<\/p>\n

Asked if he thinks the show can be returned to the glory days it experienced under veteran journalist and broadcaster Vincent Browne, who anchored it for 10 years up to 2017, Coleman said he isn\u2019t \u201cgoing to try and be Vincent Browne\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cVincent was a legend. I mean, he is one of the giants of journalism, never mind broadcasting, over the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe show was brilliant when Vincent did it. I was regularly a guest on it, and I loved being a guest. You just never knew what was going to happen next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not Vincent Browne.\u00a0I\u2019m not going to try and be Vincent Browne.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither am I Kieran Cuddihy or Matt Cooper or Ivan Yates or Ciara Doherty or Sarah McInerney, you know. I mean, there\u2019s been a long series of really good, really professional presenters on the show. Hopefully, I\u2019ll put my own stamp on it. I\u2019m not going to try and be any of those people. I\u2019m just going to be myself, basically, and we\u2019ll see how that goes,\u201d Coleman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coleman, who has published four books on Irish politics and has previously worked as a political correspondent for the former paper The Sunday Tribune, said his plan for the Tonight Show is to offer people informed debate and expert analysis on issues that are being discussed by ordinary people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think of The Tonight Show, if I think of my typical viewer, I\u2019m thinking of a couple who work hard during the day, they\u2019ve got kids, life\u2019s a bit hectic, they\u2019re maybe picking up a bit of news here and there, and at the end of the day, they just want to sit down and they want to be entertained.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s really important we\u2019re entertaining. We\u2019re not here to give a tutorial to people or anything. But also, we want to inform people and give them incisive, informed analysis so they can get up to speed on the issues of the day,\u201d Coleman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the ambition. I don\u2019t think social media can do that, and that\u2019s why I think shows like The Tonight Show are so important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AS SHANE COLEMAN steps into the presenter seat for The Tonight Show full-time, the Dundalk man has hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,7038,1650,91313,282,255080],"class_list":["post-601960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-politics","tag-shane-coleman","tag-tv","tag-virgin-media-tonight-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}