Ryan Tubridy is in London on Thursday to present the Irish Post Awards in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel. Speculation is rife in British media circles that the former RTÉ presenter may also be picking up a valuable prize himself – a deal with Virgin Radio UK.
Ever since his comeback talks with Kevin Bakhurst, the RTÉ director general, ended abruptly in August, we’ve been awaiting Tubridy’s next career move.
While the former Late Late Show presenter has not been commenting publicly, the word is he has held “advance negotiations” with Virgin, which is owned by the Wireless Group, itself a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. We’re hearing a deal has been done, and there is an expectation that Tubridy and the station will make an announcement while he is in London.
The broadcaster has appeared on Virgin Radio recently, of course, turning up on Chris Evans’s breakfast show in early September, where he was introduced as an “absolute legend of Irish broadcasting” and the controversial payments scandal of last summer was not mentioned.
When Evans jokingly mentioned the possibility of him taking a radio presenting job in the UK, Tubridy said the reasons for his trip to London that month included “looking at property prices”.
Tubridy then continued to fuel the speculation about a move to the UK in a number of social media posts and later met television presenter Piers Morgan, with whom he was photographed. Morgan posted on X that it was “great” to see Ireland’s biggest TV star and that he was “excited” to see what Tubridy did next. “RTÉ’s loss will definitely be someone else’s gain,” he reckoned.
Bakhurst has left the door open for Tubridy to return to RTÉ at some point in the future, but such a move seems increasingly unlikely in the medium term. The presenter has not repaid the €150,000 he got from RTÉ in return for personal appearances made for Renault, as part of the controversial deal that ignited the months-long controversy at Montrose. The director general made it a condition of his return to RTÉ that the money be repaid, but after the talks broke down and the deal fell through Bakhurst said cash-strapped RTÉ had no “legal mechanism” to get the €150,000 back, “but I think there’s a moral case there”.
Apart from Evans, Virgin Radio UK’s line-up of presenters includes Graham Norton, Eddy Temple-Morris, and Ricky Wilson.
Evans was the BBC’s best-paid presenter in 2017, with a salary of over £2.2 million (€2.5 million), but this dropped to £1.6 million the following year, at the end of which he left for Virgin Radio. The station does not have to reveal what it pays presenters, but according to UK media reports Evans is earning about £2 million. The digital-based station, which is not available on FM, has a much smaller audience than the BBC. Evans’s breakfast show attracts about 800,000 listeners.
