INTERVIEW ENOUGH PEOPLE and eventually you’ll have a few encounters that go slightly off-the-rails.
Ryan Tubridy’s been talking to people on television since 2004, when his Saturday night chat show debuted.
And while few of his interviews have registered a 10.0 on the awkward scale in the same way as that infamous exchange between Michael Parkinson and Meg Ryan, or Terry Wogan’s hair-raising clash with a mono-syllabic Anne Bancroft - the Late Late host has had some, as he puts it, ‘slightly odd’ experiences in the interviewer’s chair recently.
Remember that recent Late Late appearance by Ryan O’Neal?
The veteran Hollywood actor was in (to say the least) an odd mood – speaking in-depth about family issues and at one point calling his daughter Tatum “the devil”.
Then there was his radio chat with Patrick Guinness earlier this week, when the Guinness heir spoke about filling the family home with Syrian refugees “preferably female aged between 20 and 30″.
How do you deal with an awkward guest?
Tubridy dropped by TheJournal.ie‘s offices this week. Amongst the topics for discussion – what happens when an interview goes ever-so-slightly wrong?
“Ryan O’Neal spoke about his daughter in a way that I don’t think any man should speak about his daughter and it was a little uncomfortable to say the least,” the Late Late host said.
“Much like the interview on the radio this week with Patrick Guinness – I wasn’t sure whether this guy of a certain vintage was being droll and funny in his world or whether he was being passive-aggressive. I didn’t know quite where he was going with that.”
The interviews may have been about completely different issues, but both were similarly awkward.
Says Tubridy:
“They had similar sort-of peculiar senses of humour if you like.”
Is this live?
Straight after the Ryan O’Neal interview, Russell Crowe saved the day to some degree, diffusing tension in the studio by asking “How f*cked up was that?”.
But then that encounter got a little (in Tubridy’s words) “What the…?”.
The Gladiator star eventually agreed to sing a song, but spent an age fidgeting with the microphone and warming up, as the host tried to fill the silence with off-the-cuff jokes.
Turns out, Crowe (who has a reputation for being obstreperous) thought the show was pre-recorded.
He was used to US and UK shows which are almost always pre-taped – and no-one had told him otherwise when he arrived at Montrose…
On the other side of the mic
There was also the “slightly odd” recent exchange between Tubridy and Brendan O’Connor, as the former Saturday Night Show host finished up in his summer fill-in slot on Radio 1.
The Late Late presenter was on the show to talk about his move to the station from 2fm – but as he attempted to thank his production team, he was swiftly cut-off by O’Connor who told him he was being a bit “wanky” (cue strange-looking TheJournal.ie headlines).
Tubs (diplomatically) puts it down to him not quite ‘getting’ Brendan’s sense of humour:
Note: There’ll be more from our Tubridy interview in the next few days.
(All videos: Nicky Ryan)
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