He Talked The Line
To some, Liveline presenter Joe Duffy is the nation's unofficial agony uncle, a voice for the disaffected and downtrodden. But the programme’s ‘open mic’ policy has landed it in controversial waters on more than one occasion. As his extremely personal autobiography is published, the host of RTÉ Radio’s No.2 programme accuses Trinity College of elitism, talks about the crusade against head shops, discusses his brother’s addiction and hits out at David McSavage's send-up of Liveline.
Olaf Tyaransen, 30 Nov 2011
Joe Duffy looks ever so slightly wary as Hot Press approaches him in the resident’s lounge of the Galway Radisson Blu on a bright Saturday morning at the end of October. It’s only to be expected. On page 196 of his newly published autobiography, Just Joe, the controversial Liveline presenter warns, “Beware of print interviews, where you cannot control what ends up on the page.”
He laughs when I mention this. “I think I was advocating the power of the unedited radio interview where you’re live and what you say is what people hear. You know yourself. By the way, I presume this is a transcript interview?”
Opening with a lengthy, and occasionally somewhat grim, account of his family history, Just Joe chronicles the life and times of “the boy from Ballyer” who went on to become one of RTÉ’s biggest, and best paid, stars. While some of his memories of growing up as an impoverished working-class Dub cover familiar ground, he’s commendably honest about his late father’s alcoholism and his younger brother’s ongoing struggles with drug addiction.
Determined to break out of the poverty trap, having done his Leaving Cert, Duffy studied hard at night classes, and eventually went to Trinity in his early twenties, one of the first from his neighbourhood of Ballyfermot to do so.
A natural-born campaigner, he ultimately became president of the Union of Students in Ireland. At one stage he served a fortnight in Mountjoy for his involvement in a protest over the threat to take medical cards away from students.
After Trinity, he became a probation officer, before unexpectedly landing a job as a producer in RTÉ. While his career at the national broadcaster hasn’t been without its hiccups – he was unceremoniously dropped as roving reporter for The Gay Byrne Show in 1996 – he has consistently grown in stature. He took over the Liveline mic permanently in January 1999, and has since made the show his own. Today, with an average daily audience of 400,000, it’s the second most popular radio show in Ireland.
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