David McCullagh says it’s definitely time for him to move to radio.
“In the space of a week before the summer, women approached me at random on two separate occasions and told me I looked much better on telly.”
One of these unsolicited verdicts on his real-life appearance was delivered just outside the RTÉ campus in Montrose, Dublin.
“I went in and told the make-up department. They were delighted,” he says.
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As I meet the journalist, presenter and historian (57) in a hotel lounge not far from Montrose, he’s limbering up to swap the Six One television news for Radio 1’s Today with David McCullagh – and poised to publish his latest book, From Crown to Harp.
Completed with the aid of a “really, really handy bout of insomnia”, the book covers the 28-year period in which the Anglo-Irish Treaty was undone, with McCullagh exploring three decades of fractious negotiations and much-contested shifts in symbolism.
He cites an October 1921 cartoon in British satirical magazine Punch in which an Irish nationalist, asking if the inn he finds himself in is the Harp, is told it’s the Crown and Harp. “But I don’t think you’ll find it any less comfortable for that,” the innkeeper replies.
“It sort of encapsulates the British attitude of ‘all we’re asking you, all we’re asking you, is to give us our symbol, and it will have no practical difference. And to an extent that was true, to an extent they were lying through their teeth.”
Evolving expressions of identity from stamps, coins and passports to flags and anthems are covered, though especially fun to consider now are the diplomatic exchanges over recognition of the Irish president in official toasts.
“It seems kind of arcane and not worth bothering about, but if you feel you’re in a position of inferiority and you want to assert your independence, sovereignty and identity, it really is important, and you’re prepared to fight for it,” he says.
One key theme is that few in Dublin were interested in using the Free State’s association with the Commonwealth to try to achieve unity – the removal of partition just wasn’t a priority.
“Every time there was a choice between extending sovereignty or limiting it to make a connection with unionists, politicians of all parties down here went for sovereignty.”
His catalyst was a “lovely, thoughtful present” Miriam O’Callaghan gave him when he left Prime Time in 2020: the Saorstát Éireann Official Handbook. He was fascinated by how various essayists in the 1932-published book downplayed constitutional links with Britain and “put the best possible gloss” on the State’s international standing.
Two years later, while in London covering Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, he was struck by how “deeply odd” certain elements seemed.
“The Lord Chamberlain was going to break his wand of office and place it on her coffin, and I thought, ‘That’s a bit Harry Potter, isn’t it?’ It just got me thinking. The whole thing about the Crown was the cause of the Civil War, in effect, and yet it’s the kind of thing that we, at this stage, don’t really regard as being of any importance.”
I was in Leinster House for 12 years ... you do become institutionalised
— David McCullagh
The book only took three years – “pretty fast by my standards” – as he was able to draw on research he had done for his biographies of Éamon de Valera and another former taoiseach, John A Costello.
Still, he found he had “quite a bit to do”, from trawling through the UK’s National Archives in Kew to “joining the dots in a slightly different way”, and he’d sold the project to his wife, Anne-Marie Smyth, on the basis that it would be straightforward.
“She was very enthusiastic about it, possibly because I lied to her about how long it would take.”
Free State to Republic was his planned title, but Smyth – who edits RTÉ’s children’s news programme, news2day – proposed From Crown to Harp. “Yeah, she’s good at these things,” he says.
He also obtained the required permission from RTÉ management. Would this be a different book if he wasn’t an employee of RTÉ?
“No, I don’t think so. Certainly, consciously, there was nothing where I thought ‘I better not say that’. Like, it’s sufficiently far in the past, I think, that it probably won’t come back to bite me. But then lots of people have thought that about lots of things. Ha!”
Everything seems to be happening at once for McCullagh, with September seeing the broadcast of his two-part series on de Valera, Dev: Rise and Rule. In it he detailed how no trace has ever been found of Vivion de Valera, the man said to be his father. He worried that the coverage this sparked “gave the impression that we were maybe being a bit tabloid about it”, but he was pleased overall by the reception, and the ratings were “not quite The Traitors, but not bad”.
When I mention that my first introduction to Dev as a child in 1980s Dublin was the skipping rhyme that began “vote, vote, vote for de Valera”, he says a friend told him similar, but only after he’d spent eight years writing his two-volume biography. “So, useless!” he declares cheerily. “You’re useless as well!”
The new book is dedicated to his parents, Robin and June, who are “still hale and hearty, thankfully” and did a lot for him and his older brother when they were growing up in Dublin, on Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock.
After studying history and politics at UCD, his career began when he was hired by the Evening Press in 1989. A subsequent Master’s degree “became a PhD, which became a book” – A Makeshift Majority, about the 1948-1951 government – and he discovered he enjoyed longer forms of writing than the “12-14 paragraphs, tops” he had at the newspaper or, later, the 300 words he could squeeze into a typical TV report.
He joined RTÉ in September 1993 and after various gigs became political correspondent in 2001. “I was in Leinster House for 12 years. [It] sounds like a prison sentence, and you do become institutionalised.”
Lots of late nights?
“It was mad, particularly because I was there during the whole bailout and everything. It was just the maddest time ever.”
He recalls the chaotic January 2011 day when Fianna Fáil TDs openly conspired outside the Dáil chamber to oust then taoiseach Brian Cowen. “Normally they do their plotting and back-stabbing in private, but they were doing it completely in the open. Wild. Absolutely wild.”
Plunging into history – which he self-deprecatingly calls his “schtick” – helps him unwind from the intensity of unfolding political drama, and it has underlined for him, too, how so much of politics is about personal relationships.
I ask what he thought about Leo Varadkar’s memoir, but he hasn’t read it yet – it’s on his list. “I’m banned from purchasing books for myself from September to Christmas, because my birthday is in December, and apparently I’m very difficult to buy for,” he says, with a gentle strain of mock indignation.
Varadkar has said it was McCullagh’s advice that inspired him to release it.
Mcullagh confirms: “I told him that if you don’t write your version of history, people in the future will rely on some other fella’s version of history, and it might not be to your benefit.”
Perhaps his own book might be a good Christmas gift option for the tough-to-buy-for demographic?
“Oh, absolutely,” he says quickly. “Every home should have at least one copy, if not two.”
He was ready to move on from Leinster House when Pat Kenny’s surprise departure for Newstalk triggered that station’s “move the dial” campaign and left a vacancy on Prime Time. His seven years on the current affairs flagship were “good times, happy times”. Presenting the Six One “wasn’t something that I particularly envisaged for myself”, but he has enjoyed that too.
The big switch to Today has been instigated by another defection to Newstalk, this time Claire Byrne’s. McCullagh is one of those broadcasting heavyweights who wears his intellect lightly, and his reporting experience, depth of insight and tonal flexibility should combine to make him a strong and entertaining successor.
But the job, which pays a salary of €209,000, also comes with pressure to maintain the show’s listenership amid direct competition from “class act” Byrne.
Will his Today be different from Byrne’s Today?
“I guess if you change presenter, it’s inevitably going to have some differences, but I mean it’s a very successful programme and people like it.”
True, Today’s buoyant listener figures throughout the Kenny, Sean O’Rourke and Byrne eras imply that the midmorning show’s format and slot – rescheduled after we meet to start one hour earlier – are more important than the presenter.
“So they can put any eejit in and it won’t matter. I see what you’re saying there, Laura!”
Well, he doesn’t want to be the one to break that streak, does he?
“No, no, indeed,” he says. “But, you know, the dial moves both ways.”
Unfortunately, my face betrays me sometimes
— David McCullagh
He will finish on the Six One on Halloween night, then start on Today soon after. He will also stop co-hosting RTÉ’s Behind the Story podcast – “I think 10 hours of me on air a week is probably enough” – but he credits it with getting him out of his comfort zone and showing people he isn’t always completely serious.
His eyebrows go into immediate overdrive after I note that viewers often respond to his facial expressions. There can be some side-eye, too, I suggest, referencing one screengrab, captured during an election debate in 2020, that became a meme.
“That was weird, it’s become a bit of a thing, but I wasn’t aware the camera was on me. I was actually trying to communicate with the editor in the gallery.”
The eyebrow gymnastics, and everything else, are all “completely unconscious”, he says. “Unfortunately, my face betrays me sometimes.”
Surely, in these days of visual radio, he will still be on screen?
“It’ll all be on webcam, and apparently you’ll be able to see me on the RTÉ News channel, unless something better is on.”
He reminisces about how the addition of cameras meant he had to be “careful with the hand signals” when he returned to Radio 1’s This Week in 2018. “It nearly got me in trouble a couple of times,” he says.
What kind of hand signals?
“Let’s not go there!”
When he’s not working or writing, he swims, reads “quite a lot” and watches TV with his wife – the couple live in Stillorgan, while their daughter, Rosie (24), is studying in London. He goes to Leinster rugby matches and gigs when he can, one artist being especially close to his heart – in 2022, he said he’d been to see Bruce Springsteen 33 times.
“Ah, that was then,” he says. The updated tally is 41. The last two times he brought Rosie, and she loved it. “That was just fantastic, because I think I probably overdid playing the Springsteen songs for her when she was growing up, and she wasn’t really into it then.”
Sending From Crown to Harp to the printers was “a great relief”, he says, and he’s excited now about his Today adventure.
“But it’s a challenge, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there in the long grass hoping I’ll fall flat on my face.”
I don’t know who they would be, I say. Has he got a bitter rival at RTÉ?
“Oh god, no. It’s all sweetness and light in RTÉ.”
From Crown to Harp by David McCullagh is published by Gill. Next week: Taoiseach Micheál Martin reviews From Crown to Harp
