PROFILE NEIL PRENDEVILLE
LAST WEDNESDAY morning about 100,000 people tuned into the Neil Prendeville Show expecting to hear the usual bullish, provocative and sometimes impatient words from Cork’s biggest local media star.
Instead the 49-year-old broadcaster made an emotional and wide-ranging apology in relation to reports that he had exposed himself aboard an Aer Lingus flight last month. Prendeville was apologising unreservedly – if the reports were true. He says has no recollection of what happened or why he may have behaved so inappropriately.
Reports of controversial behaviour on an Aer Lingus flight had been floating around Cork in recent weeks. Yet when the news finally broke, many listeners expressed shock on the show’s Facebook page.
The flight in question was on October 19th. Prendeville had been invited to London by Cork Convention Bureau along with other guests, including Cork’s lord mayor, Michael O’Connell. He spent two hours in Bentley’s, a restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Richard Corrigan, then took the 10.15pm flight home.
As the plane was taxiing for take-off he exposed himself under a copy of Cara magazine.
Once the aircraft was airborne a member of the cabin crew confronted him about his behaviour. The Garda was not notified of the incident, however, and Prendeville made his way home after the flight.
In his apology, he blamed a mix of painkillers and alcohol for his behaviour, while admitting he could recall little of the incident. “If the reports . . . are true, then I would like to take this opportunity to offer my deepest apologies to the passengers on the plane, the flight personnel, my family, my employers and work colleagues and the people of Cork . . . I am hoping that others will learn from this terrible, personal experience by not mixing painkillers or any tablets with alcohol,” he said.
A female Irish Examinerjournalist, who had been sitting beside him, some members of the Aer Lingus cabin crew and several fellow passengers have a memory of the events, however, and the matter is under investigation by the Garda now.
Before this week, Prendeville was relatively unknown outside Cork but there are few Leesider over a certain age who don’t have an opinion on ‘Mr Big Mouth’. Perhaps the most ironic thing about the events of the past few days is that he is now finally famous across Ireland.
The eldest of five children, he grew up in Coronation Street-style red-brick houses in Madden’s Buildings in the Blackpool area of Cork city. Later the family moved to a council house on the south side, and Prendeville was sent to North Monastery CBS, which counts the actor Niall Toibin, the poet and broadcaster Theo Dorgan and the politician Jack Lynch among its past pupils. He has said elsewhere that he envies “people who look on their secondary education as happy days”.
At 17 he began to dabble in pirate radio and he has been a regular on Cork’s airwaves ever since, aside from brief stints in Canada and Dublin. A former colleague who worked with him in the early days says he was “a young man in a hurry, and he was dogged and worked hard”. “He would be around the country doing discos at night and [then] coming in to work in the early hours of the morning to do the radio show. He started as a DJ and then progressed to having his own programme. He could be grumpy too. Socially, he’d often try to be provocative just for the sake of it.”
In the mid-1980s Prendeville tried to find work as a radio presenter in Canada. Initially, he had to take a job in a bar until he was made the news anchor on a station in Kirkland Lake, a small Ontario gold-mining town of about 18,000 people. There he learned his trade.
Three years later Prendeville returned to Ireland to work for Capital Radio in Dublin for three months.
He then moved to Cork’s 96FM, as a presenter and programme controller. His current show runs from 9am to noon; the station website says it “sets the agenda in Cork”.
With an enviable market share and lucrative sponsorship deal, it revolves around Prendeville, who relays his personal opinions regularly and sometimes brashly.
“I’m not reading the weather or introducing the new single by Boyzone or any shite like that. What I do matters,” he said in a Hot Press interview in 2005.
Recently, he described the programme format during an interview with George Hook on Newstalk, saying: “I can be impatient. I don’t suffer fools. Cork people love a good row – and I like sitting back and letting a good row develop.”
He can be seen as a divisive figure locally, and listeners seem to love or to loathe him.
One former colleague at the radio station said: “In the early years of 96FM he could be very ambitious and arrogant, and sometimes difficult to deal with.”
A long association with the Cork Independent, for which he was a columnist, ended last year, with some colleagues saying he felt unfairly criticised on the newspaper’s letters pages.
Prendeville left the paper and quickly started to produce a column for a rival free sheet, the Cork News. One insider said: “Generally, he is a professional who knows what he is doing. He is very well respected in Cork in terms of an ability to bring in the listener. But he is a very divisive character.”
The insider adds that Prendeville is also a mainstay of the 96FM schedule and therefore an advertising cash cow for the station.
Greg Canty, a local businessman who has developed a personal relationship with Prendeville over the past few years, says he would be a huge loss to the local airwaves were he to stop broadcasting.
“He is not afraid to take on issues,” Canty says. “These days there are a few people who are prepared to get topics and grab them, and are not afraid to give their own opinions. At least he will put himself on the line. He gets a lot of stick from people when he is out. I know at times it does bother him and his family.”
Prendeville is married to Paula Linehan, the editor of celebrity magazine RSVP. They live in a gated estate in the suburb of Douglas with their two teenage children.
The solicitor Gerald Kean has been in Cork this week defending Prendeville. He was on Today FM's The Last Word, and also spoke to Pat Kenny on RTÉ Radio 1. On Kenny's programme Kean said: "He remembers absolutely nothing about the incident . . . I have known him for many years. I have been aware for some time that he has a bad neck and has suffered . . . He took in effect some painkillers and he took alcohol."
Whether Prendeville can save his career hangs in the balance. Much rests on his shoulders. He recently opened a successful bar and restaurant, the Boardwalk, in Cork’s business district, and he remains one of the best-paid and biggest revenue-pullers in broadcasting in Munster.
Standing in for Prendeville on Wednesday morning, producer Colm Moore said he hoped Prendeville would be back on air “sooner rather than later” and pledged the support of his colleagues at the station. “The show must go on,” Moore said before breaking the tension with some music: Take That’s Patience.
Curriculum vitae
Who is he?Cork broadcaster who presents a hugely popular phone-in morning show on Cork's 96FM
Why is he in the news? He is under investigation for allegedly exposing himself on a flight between London and Cork.
Most appealing characteristicHis provocative and unapologetic broadcasting style.
Least appealing characteristicSee above
Most likely to sayI have a stiff neck
Least likely to sayI have some neck
