We now know what Ryan Tubridy was doing for the last two weeks or so. He was in front of the mirror at home, rehearsing his address to the nation, reaching out to plead and reassure.
His opening remarks to the Oireachtas public accounts committee was more like a speech from the dock, appealing for a reprieve for his professional life. He was passionate and direct, brandishing his seven untruths that had to be slayed, striking a practiced pose for the cameras.
Beside him sat his agent, Noel Kelly, who has been characterised in recent days as his consigliori. Mr Kelly looked and spoke like a senior civil servant, many miles from the photos in the press which have projected him as an extra from The Sopranos.
Tackling ‘untruths’ with straw men
Tubridy explained that the whole shebang has been one whopper of a misunderstanding, or a series of mistruths that may have strayed into full-blown lies. He was not the greedy, tone-deaf TV presenter portrayed in RTÉ’s side of the story. He was, instead, the victim of the deceit that has been recorded.
“Full transparency [on RTÉ’s part] would have avoided this,” he told the committee members, all of whom must have been basking in their five minutes of media fame. Then he came to the untruths, taking them down one at a time.
“The claim that I did not take a pay cut is untrue,” he said. There was no such claim. This particular untruth he listed resembled a straw man.
Another untruth was that he had left The Late Late Show because he knew his world was about to implode with these revelations. The straw man made another appearance here. There was speculation that he may have known, but nobody stated it as a fact.
“The decision to leave [The Late Late Show] was very personal,” he said. “It was made in the heart and in the soul”.
Other untruths included that it was out there that he had attempted to conceal payments and that there was a secret agreement with Renault.
Committee room as TV studio
In the round, it was an address never seen before in an Oireachtas hearing, directed not at the members sitting before the witness but at the wider public and personnel in RTÉ. The delivery was professional, complete with pauses, eye contact, all the bells and whistles to be used in performance.
There is no doubt Tubridy and his agent feel hard done by and they may well have a case.
What remains unclear is which of the two irreconcilable versions of events has closer fidelity to the facts.
From Tubs’ point of view, he took a big pay cut, amounting to €525,000 over five years and he forewent a loyalty bonus on a contract of €120,000. RTÉ underwrote a commercial contract he had with Renault but that had nothing to do with him.
Noel Kelly told the PAC he was ‘instructed’ by RTÉ to invoice to a company unknown to him, and he just went along with it, as he did with an instruction to falsely list the services as consultancy. Picture: Oireachtas TV
The underwriting was not a device to guarantee that Ryan got a few extra bob (€150,000). Instead it was about covering for the possibility that a new sponsor may come in, although what exactly that was about is unclear. Tubridy’s agent did not put pressure on RTÉ to ensure that Ryan’s pay cut was minimised.
That’s the bones of their case.
Pleading ignorance
As such, the thrust of the appearances of Tubridy and Kelly before two Oireachtas committees was to plead ignorance of any deceit or misleading information around his contract.
All of this is a long way from the narrative, largely retailed by RTÉ executives, that has been floating around the public square for the last fortnight. Just as trust with the public has been the issue around Tubridy’s money travails, so he and Kelly suggest it was a crucial deficit in their relationship with RTÉ when it came to raising invoices designed to, as described in committee, deceive.
Kelly was “instructed” by RTÉ to invoice to a company unknown to him, registered in the UK, and he just went along with it, as he did with an instruction to falsely list the services as consultancy.
“We trusted the process,” Kelly told Imelda Munster. Trusting the process is a term very much in vogue with GAA county managers but those boys have never had to deal with barter accounts or taking The Late Late Show on the road. Tubs and Kelly trusted the process as dictated by RTÉ is how they remember it, and look at where that has landed them.
On one issue the presenter had little in the way of a credible defence. When he saw that his published earnings did not align with what he was being paid, he stayed schtum. Why didn’t he point out the discrepancy in order to level with the public and colleagues?
“I understand the room for perception issues,” was his response when asked how he didn’t notice the money he was receiving in a separate account, through the underwriting deal, was also coming from RTÉ.
Kelly had another untruth to slay. He was not tight with Dee Forbes, RTÉ’s former DG. He is not, as has been suggested by sources, the real DG of the station.
“Would executives be afraid of you,” asked Brendan Griffin. Kelly scoffed: “How could you be afraid of me, all five foot six of me?”
Ultimately, the exhausting grillings in the bowels of Leinster House represented Tubridy’s shot at redemption. “I could be out of a job by Friday,” he said at one point.
It was all about the performance
He didn’t drop any clanger, he didn’t come across as shifty or guilty. He was smooth and composed, but you’d expect no less.
Some questions remain but this was all about the performance.
Those who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt during his period of silence will have been reassured. The cohort for whom the whole affair represents another tale of excess among the elite will not have been convinced. The big swathe in the middle were the real audience — them and the staff and management in RTÉ.
We should know the real result in the coming weeks.
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