Enda Brady goes on the record

29:02And the moral of the story from the great man himself, Terry Wogan, was never change. Be yourself. And that, when more and more people, you just don't appreciate how many millions of people used to listen to him on the radio. I had people coming up to me for weeks after going, jeez Terry Wogan loves you and eventually I was lucky enough to meet him at a function in the Irish Embassy and I thanked him for that because that could have gone either way Did you come across Tubberty at all since when we was over in the UK? We have met for coffee yeah Tubber's a great guy He meets them all for coffee it's all behind us now I love his energy I love Ryan and he has given me great time over the years he's given me great advice and he's a wonderful broadcaster and Ryan Ryan is doing really, really well here.

29:50I love social media. He is embracing life and he's a guy who lives life and loves life. He's in a very peculiar situation, isn't he, Enda? It's a really peculiar situation that not many people have had to go to. First of all, I'd echo your sentiments there. Tuberty and I would know each other fairly well. Obviously, having appeared on his television show 20 times over the years and the prep that goes into that and the crack we would have had together. Socially, at the beginning, we knew each other quite a lot as well. But it's a very peculiar situation he's in. the idea of being sort of you know the main sort of entertainment TV personality over in Ireland to be suddenly knocked over into your perch and in your early 50s then to go over to next door neighbour the bigger neighbour and sort of dream it all up again and start from nothing it's a very unusual position isn't it?

30:36It takes resilience look people get knocks in life I think of Shane Filan from Westlife he had a very difficult situation there maybe 10 or 12 years ago and look at him now, absolutely flying. I think Irish people have great resilience about them. And Ryan, to land in the UK where he was not a household name, you know, when he was on Radio 2, I had people saying, who's the Irish guy? Have you heard of Ryan Tuberty? And you're like, he's an absolute legend in Ireland. You know, the Late Late Show, Ryan Tuberty, Radio 2 FM, everyone knows Ryan Tuberty. So coming over here, the problem I think with a lot of people in the UK is they're not very worldly.

31:14they don't look outside the UK they've no clue what is going on in Ireland and it's 50 minutes away on a flight Just you mentioned Shane Filan there one of the interviews you said which was one of the most one of the best interviews that you've done or one of the most touching interviews he's done was with Ronan Keating isn't that right? So after Stephen Gately died a few weeks after the funeral I had covered the funeral I'd covered everything for Sky News I knew Ronan reasonably well and a couple of the other lads. I did not know Stephen Gately at all and God rest him and his family are wonderful people.

31:52It was a very, very difficult situation to cover and what happened was in the aftermath then I had a phone call from Ronan asking if I would come to Dublin for a day with the camera crew that the surviving four members of Boyzone wanted to do one interview to pay tribute to Stephen and that they would never, ever speak again as a foursome as they now were so I went to Dublin and it was a very nice house on the keys um we chatted for precisely one hour and I let the guys speak it remains my favorite ever interview because I was very proud to be asked they paid tribute to Steve and a guy they clearly loved as a brother and you will never see Shane Mikey Ronan and Keith in the same room together doing an interview like that ever so I'm not an expert at interviews but I just thought this is their story I'm not going to talk all over them I want to hear them speak and at the end of it I had tears in my eyes and to this day I still have people who will say I love that interview or that was well done and I just thought out of respect to Stephen and his family I want to be this to be the best ever but why I regard it as my worst interview was because the heartbreaking tragedy of a young guy dying at the age of 33 and his friends having to go through all of that um you get you'll get people i think irish society can be quite chippy sometimes and negative they are amazing guys they are wonderful men every now and then i would get a whatsapp from shane wishing me well you know we've had drinks over the years i don't know mikey very well keith is flying now with his touring with brian mcfadden and what have you and ronan is a gentle gentleman and north of 15 million quid raised for breast cancer research by himself very very good guy yeah um did you see the documentary i did they asked me to the premiere and i thought that was a nice touch um i thought it was very very good very respectfully done and and it kind of told the story of a crazy time you know being in a boy band all the adulation and being everywhere and then the god-awful situation where a phone call comes and Stephen has died in Mallorca at the age of 33.

34:13I mean, it's devastating but I have huge respect for them and then the icing on the cake really for me was Christmas just gone. Ronan asked me to host his Emeralds and Ivy fundraising night for Marie Keating Foundation and Cancer Research UK in London and he raised a million quid in three hours. And I'll tell you a funny story, one last funny story, Mario, about that night. had my own dressing room but I had to share it with Tom who's the main man in Keene if everyone knows all the big Keene bangers over the years somewhere only we know this is the last time so get into the dressing room we're having a chat and he said to me that he'd written some new music and he said to me what's the vibe like at this thing and it's Christmas everyone's up for a party and I said no new music no no no I said go big go early and go home and he said but what about this you know I've written this new and I said you don't want to be George Michael at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics you might remember he played all his new tunes oh did he yeah people just wanted the bangers because I love George Michael yeah yeah well his new music just watch that set back sometime it was not great people want the wham bangers the George Michael classics they don't want your new music so I very diplomatically suggested to Tom from Keane that maybe just stick to the big ones and fair play to him that's what he did and he smashed it and I loved it to be able to play the piano and see that guy he's a genius Tom Ronan of course and the boys in Boyzone they were very much they've been very much part of Gift Grub all down through the years as well fair play fair play please God in fairness fair play plays God in fairness and we found out early days that apparently Ronan didn't like it now remember he would have only been about 22 at the time or 21 you know in his Harley Davidson days with Yvonne on the back of the Harley Davidson going into Captain America or wherever they would have turned up you know or Planet Hollywood or something and you know but then I think what happened later then was Keith who I was also doing on Gift Grub how are you buddy and all that sort of stuff Keith would have found Keith would have been more pragmatic and we're going look buddy You're better off on it than not on it, buddy, because it means you've done something.

36:36Then Ronan went the other way and he went, yeah, I love Mario on the old gift club. In fact, I named my boat Fair Play. So he overcompensated it for it. But Keith was on the podcast, this podcast as well. And one of the best interviewees you can have because he has a great line in being straight about stuff. He doesn't mind saying it. He doesn't mind going there. He doesn't mind saying it. And he's a brilliant interviewee. He's got a lovely line in authenticity and candour. And he's a little unfiltered, but in a deliberate way, not in a kind of I'm on the spectrum way. He's unfiltered deliberately.

37:18He says, no, no, I'm going to say this. I'm going to come out and I'm going to say it. And I believe what I'm saying. And that's the way he sticks with it. obviously a lot of rancor between themselves and Louis over the years I personally thought Louis was edited quite unfairly maybe in the documentary you know there was there were clips of Ronan after the Stephen stuff there were clips of Ronan going you'd come back camera would catch Ronan and he's in tears and then the camera would go to Louis holding the paper going oh they printed it on the front page and you're going Jesus Christ lads you're laying into him here do you know that kind of thing where editing is everything yeah Oh, look, I think in any drama or any presentation, there's a hero and there's a villain.

38:00Everyone has their opinion of Louis. All I would say from my own personal interactions with Louis over the years, he has been good as gold with me. He has provided interviewees. He's a PR man and that's what he does. And he's fun in his own way. But these guys were working with him. They've got their own relationships and they have their history and everything that went on. But I like Louis. He has been good to me. But, you know, if you were to pick a handful of guys to really represent Ireland on the world stage and what they've achieved and what they've done, you can't get better than Ronan and Keith and Mikey and Shane and Stephen.

38:39I thought they were wonderful. Listen, Enda, let's move on, because I wanted to just get your thoughts on this, maybe just to thank you for all those stories. and like a good newsman, you tell them so succinctly, like little nuggets that we can use. But I want you just to maybe be a bit more thoughtful about this next part. And that is, you spent a long time in the UK. I consume a lot of UK news. I listen to a lot of LBC. I watch religiously Channel 4 news every night. I record it. I watch it the entire hour of it. I listen to the Today Show when I can as well. And I read some, I read The Guardian and I read The Telegraph as well.

39:16and that sort of stuff, just to get sort of both sides of the spectrum over there. The UK is being in a funny place for a long, long time now, starting from maybe 2010, 2011. There's been no growth in the economy for 14 years. It's been stagnation. The country looks as if it's going backwards. It wasn't going anywhere economically. And then in 2016, it almost gave itself a kick in its own bollocks. Why would anybody kick themselves in the bollocks? And since then, there's been a downhill since 2016, no matter which way you look at it, whether it's culturally, culture wars, knife crime, the economy, investment, political divisions, a lack of political talent the idea that the worst people are rising to the top where are all the good politicians for all his faults and we know there are many one particular you could never deny the calibre of politician that Tony Blair was how he lifted the country economically how he was a master politician how he was respected on the world stage we won't mention the Iraq war right now because that would be another day's podcast for which he made a gigantic mistake in hindsight but an incredible politician a politician of world calibre surrounded by other politicians of world calibre Gordon Brown people like that doing business with other politicians of world calibre people like Bill Clinton who again with our caveats and now who have we got what is happening to Britain.

41:08Do you have any observations, Enda, about where UK is at? The UK is going backwards at a rate of knots. Now, I've been here since 1993 and what I've observed is decline year on year. So there's no growth in the economy whatsoever, flatlining. They've 9.2 million Brits of working age, 18 to 65, doing nothing. Not in employment, not paying tax, not in education or training. Nothing. Tumbleweed. Same people are paying the high taxes, keeping this whole show going. Brexit has been catastrophic. It is like an arterial bleed and nobody is prepared to get in there and provide a tourniquet for it. So the UK right now is in a very, very strange place.

42:00And as you mentioned, the calibre of leader, Blair, who I've met and interviewed many times over the years, super smart guy, great communicator. Everyone knew what was happening all the time. Landed his message and delivered with the one major flaw being foreign policy and Iraq and the love affair with George W. Bush. However, year on year, you think Brown then takes over, Cameron gets him out and Cameron can't fight what he called the swivel-eyed loons. This is Cameron's own words. Now, I know David very well. I've been around his house many, many times. He lives up the road for me in Oxfordshire.

42:36And because of geography, I used to be sent to do that interview a lot. Cameron then, to kind of head off these swivel-eyed loons, his words, he gives them the Brexit referendum. We get people like Michael Gove appearing on TV saying, oh, we don't want to listen to experts. You know, if you've got something wrong with your body, who are you going to go and see? If you've got an operation to be had on your body, do you want an expert surgeon or some random fella? this is the narrative that was sold to the British public because of their history winning two world wars the British Empire Bobby Moore in 1966 they think they can fly so they're sold deliberately a pup they're told they're better than everyone else we don't need Europe oh we don't need this look at the Irish they're skint we don't need the Greeks they've gone bust we'll be grand and guess what it hasn't been grand it has been terrible it's like watching a funeral cortege that never ends and year on year it's getting worse and worse culminating I think in Liz Truss getting the job then Sunak I don't know how on earth they picked him a guy who left the D-Day ceremony early I mean you know I'm no politician but if I was the UK Prime Minister D-Day you turn up you go and shake an awful lot of hands of old men who were on those beaches in Normandy shed a few tears get yourself on the front pages and win the bloody election Starmer wiped the floor with them.

44:04What they're now heading towards slowly is the prospect, and I just tangle it out there as a prospect, Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister in four years' time. Wow. I think that's really succinct. You got it all in there. And now Starmer. And for all the hope, because I listened to James O 'Brien a little bit on, you can hear the dying hope in their voice. They thought maybe they'd get something out of Starmer. a man of the law a man of letters a former you know chief prosecutor is looking like a vegetable as Prime Minister you know and for for Egypt's like me satirists when when people start looking weak like that you start seeing what is it what is it the worst thing about them he sounds like Zippy from Rainbow for starters you know he has that Zippy had the Zippy Zippy has that thing in his voice and we are doing very well as a community He sounds like, yes, Geoffrey, we are doing extremely well.

45:03He sounds awful. He's completely, he's the man who's doing nothing. He's the man who is making no decision about anything anywhere. All I would say, Mario, is he inherited a complete basket case, a hospital case of a country. There's no money. You've got all these people who want a lifestyle, who aren't prepared to work. 9.2 million, the dog walkers, as I call them. I'll see them out on a Wednesday or whatever. And I say to my wife, what's he doing? Why isn't she working? And my wife will say to me, well, they probably think the same of you. I run a lot cross country. So I see these people out walking their dogs.

45:40No one wants to work. Everyone wants to work from home. There's not enough tax coming in. Starmer has been left with massive debts. There's no money. And you can't get an economy going when you've decided to tell your biggest trading block that adios, lads, we don't want to know you. we're going to be ground by ourselves because guess what? We're doing a trade deal with India. So Starmer's biggest problem is one of communication. He has, his right-hand man is Morgan MacSweeney from McCroom in County Cork. He's a super smart guy. But they need someone to sit down with Starmer. And someone asked me advice last year about communication.

46:14Senior person in Ireland who I won't name. And I said, you need to think like a sniper. I see all these people getting up on stages with a machine gun, firing 40 bullets, 40 messages, no one's listening. You need to get on stage, one bullet in the chamber, one message, look your target in the eye and land it. And Stammer's not capable or prepared to do that. So he's got a huge fight on his hands. And mark my words, the next election, if he still is Labour leader, it's not between him and the Conservatives because Kemi Badenoch will be gone by Christmas. It's between him and Farage for the keys to number 10 in four years' time.

46:51Yes, you're right. The man, fond of doing cameos, which he goes, and a big shout out to Chucky Orlaw. This kind of character. A fascinating character, a master media performer, I would add. One of the best I've seen. One of the best I've seen. If you are not politically literate, you will look at him talking and go, I like that guy. He's making sense. Look, Mario, I'll tell you a story. I had a young girl on work experience when I was at Sky, around the time of the Brexit vote, and she was from Sunderland. Now, the only major industry up there is car manufacturing. So I said to this girl, what does your family do?

47:30And she said, oh, my mother and father work in the, I think it's a Nissan factory in Sunderland. We get talking. Farage pops up on the TV screen in front of us. And I said, what do you make of him? And I'm thinking, young girl, 20 years of age, you know, it's useful to kind of see what people think or how he cuts through. And she says, oh, yeah, yeah, my parents love him and we all vote for Brexit. And I said, why did your parents, why would you vote for Brexit? Why did I like Farage? And she says, oh, my dad thinks he's the only modern politician he'd like to go for a pint with. And I said, do you do realise what Brexit is going to do to car manufacturing in the UK?

48:09And she said, what? So it's going to decimate it. There will be no car manufacturing in the UK. and that is what we are nearing now in Britain. And yes, he punches through, you know, the politician that people want to go and have a drink with. Farage, it's very, very odd. It's worse than that though, or rather better than that or worse than that, depending on which you believe, because in a one-on-one with both characters side by side and a split screen on the television, Starmer and Farage, you'd go for Farage all day. He's far more politically articulate. it. He's far more message driven, like you were talking about a minute ago.

48:46And he makes his point succinctly, whereas Starmer is unsure of what he's even trying to say. This is the thing that old saying, that the intelligent ones among us are full of doubt. The idiots among us are sure of what they're saying. And this is what it is. Farage and these people, these monsters, are totally sure of what they're saying, which makes you feel I buy this guy whereas the ones who are the more intelligent and nuanced and troubled and the ones who have the more difficult sell look as if they don't know what they're talking about Yeah look I would say Farage gets a very easy ride in the UK media and that is on presenters and journalists and broadcasters Yes giving him an easy pass and they'll make it sound as if they're being confrontational The most difficult interview Farage had I think it was Claire Bourne Claire Bourne tore him apart on RTE a few years ago.

49:45Absolutely wiped the floor with him. And I'm guessing he hasn't been back with Clareburn since because his people will say, oh, Nigel doesn't actually want to do that, blah, blah, blah. So look, Farage is a good communicator, but a lot of people see him as a snake oil salesman. Scratch the surface. What's he going to do? How's he going to stop the boats? How's he going to improve the economy? How is he going to get Britain working again? Again, he has no answers for anything. And stopping the boats coming across, this is, again, another major issue that will be a talking point in the run-up to the next election here.

50:2025 ,000 people have come across that stretch of water this year so far, breaking into the UK, effectively breaking in illegally, and there doesn't seem to be any answers. I just find it absurd. I heard one guy the other day on TV, just a member of the public, stopped in the street, and he said, You're telling me Britain was able to defeat Nazi Germany and we can't stop dingies. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But one of the things is one of the biggest programmes of the early 1970s and was World at War, the World at War, the Laurence Olivier narrated series that was hours and hours long in depth. Another one, Civilisation, the great series, the legendary series.

51:06We're now living in an age of Love Island. What I'm talking about is education. The reason why Donald Trump and the MAGA, sorry, the Donald Trump and that cohort of Project 25 guys can get away with what they're getting is because the public that they're preaching to are completely uneducated and uninformed. and the number they need, the vital number, the whatever you call it, 51 % or the 46 % that they need are uneducated and informed. And this is what's happening in Britain as well. And you've just illustrated it. The person who is voting for Nigel Farage does not know that that person will close down the car factory that they live next door to.

51:47And that's the crucial thing. They don't know that they're kicking themselves in the bollocks by voting for these things. So it's education, education, education. You know, and it's gone. It's the ignorance. It's the forced and willfully imparted ignorance onto the populace that is making them dumb, ill-informed and subject to any snake oil salesman that comes their way. Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. And that was the first thing Blair said when he came to power in May 97. Those words three times, education, education, education, landed the message. Unfortunately, the education system in the UK is not good.

52:28So you meet these people who went to private school and public school and they went to all the correct kind of tick box places like Eton and then they end up in Oxford doing PPE, politics, philosophy and economics. And then, you know, what's next? Oh, I'll try to become an MP. And then they suddenly end up in the Conservative Party and then through family connections, they get given a junior portfolio and then suddenly they're in the cabinet. it. Britain has many, many problems. The class system is at the heart of everything that has gone wrong here. Farage making himself out to be a friend of the working class.

53:02He's establishment, privately educated, ex-hedge fund manager. Multi-millionaire. You know, multi-multi-millionaire. And the earnings have gone through the roof since Brexit. And then when there is a major crisis, he will head off down to the local pub. He will be seen pictured with a glass, one of those old-fashioned glass tankards of an English ale and everyone loves him. I tell you what, if he becomes Prime Minister in four years' time, last person left in England turn out the lights. Another thing about Britain, I mean, I don't need, I'm not trying to start it, I'm not trying to be political here overtly, but I was talking to some Thai yesterday, another person on the podcast, and I was saying from the outsider's point of view, just listening to UK media, you would think there's a man, there's a man they call Jeremy Corbyn.

53:51And this man they called Jeremy Corbyn, you would be forgiven for thinking that this guy was Satan with two horns. Beelzebub, who had destroyed the country single handedly and was quite honestly an evil man, obviously out for himself. Maybe he had 10 billion in the bank. He was also a virulent anti-Semite running around trying to kill Jews. And from an outsider's point of view, I'm an Irishman living in Ireland who's followed British politics over the years. And as far as I understand, this man called Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most deep, meaningful parliamentarians that has existed in a very much Tony Wedgwood, Ben kind of frame of mind.

54:27A person who believes deeply in egalitarianism, equality of opportunity, education for the poor, then a real national health service, not just nodding your head, tugging your forelock to a national health service that he believes in bringing people up. and this man is being made out to be a monster. I don't understand. It's turned upside down in Britain. You mentioned we met Nick Ferrari the other day. Well, Nick Ferrari will be joined in a minute by Nigel. Ask Nigel. Ask Nigel. Nigel's going to be in for another hour. You can get your questions into Nigel Ferrari. Meanwhile, we hear that monster, that fucking idiot, Jeremy Corbyn, is in the news again.

55:06Ha! Does anybody even remember him anymore? Call us. And you're there. Are you serious? Is that the way? is that your media literacy now that you think Jeremy Corbyn is Satan but ask Uncle Nigel the question where are we? Where has it gone? So you need to understand that you have large chunks of the media here owned by a very small percentage of the population so you've got the Daily Mail you've got all the right wing shock radio that taxi drivers listen to and that is the narrative Corbyn evil Farage good Boris good And if you watch the front pages as well, you know, they will refer to if Sunak had a policy or Johnson, it would be Boris, Rishi, Liz, Nigel.

55:51Starmer is Starmer is Starmer. So they portray all right wing politicians as your cuddly, friendly uncle or auntie. But Corbyn is the devil. Tell me a little bit about TRT, what you're doing now. I've really enjoyed this, by the way. You've been brilliant. And tell me a bit about TRT, where we can check you out and find you. Yeah, please do. My show is called Roundtable. It is a European current affairs show. We're on air every day, four o 'clock in the afternoon, repeated at half past ten at night. And Roundtable is me as the host. We pick a topic, so it could be Irish presidential elections.

56:26It could be UK political fragmentation, deep fake legislation in Denmark. What have we done recently? A show about Zelensky. We take a topic, we get the experts round the table. If they can't be with me in person in the studio in London, We get them up, Wonders of Modern Technology. They'll be in Kiev or wherever, bang, bang, bang, all the European capitals. We travel a lot with the show. I take it on the road. We get top, top experts and voices. And I see myself just as the conduit to get their opinions. It's a half hour show and I absolutely love it. And believe it or not, it's just a humble brag for you or a not so humble brag.

57:04Roundtable gets 280 million viewers worldwide every day. Flipping hell. And that is, yeah, 50 plus times the population of Ireland every single day. So, yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. I miss Sky, but I was never going to be in a position to get my own show because all the best gigs were clogged up by Kay Barley and others. And Lord Rothermere. And Lord Rothermere's of the world. So here we are. Enda Brady, listen, an absolute pleasure talking to you. A really, real pleasure talking to you. And hopefully maybe sometime you'll come on soon again. I will, Mario. Thank you. Thank you, Enda.

57:40And my thanks to Enda Brady for telling me all about his fascinating life story so far. And long may he continue entertaining us and informing us in the world of journalism. My thanks again to deluxebathrooms.ie. Their blowout August sale goes on until August 31st. 70 % off, up to 70 % off bathroom tiles and furnishings. Make up that dream bathroom that you've always dreamed of. And go visit deluxebathrooms or deluxebathrooms.ie online. Thanks to you for listening, of course, the most important element. If you can, tell one other person about my podcast and I'd be delighted. Thanks.