Broadcaster Ryan Tubridy has revealed that his off-the-cuff decision to speak out about his own experience of being verbally abused has led to possibly the biggest reaction to anything he has ever done on radio.
He said he had no intention of speaking about the two separate incidents – until moments before going on air earlier this week.
"I’d no intention of speaking about it until I heard the signature tune of the show, and I thought: ‘You know what? I think it’s time to tell people what happened,’” he said.
On Tuesday, Mr Tubridy spoke on his radio show about how he was verbally attacked with homophobic and abusive slurs, while out walking with his family on Monday.
He was on the street in Dún Laoghaire when two men in their 20s shouted at him on two separate occasions, with one calling him a “f****t”.
Speaking yesterday at the launch of RTÉ’s new season schedule, the broadcaster said: “On the programme I always ask people to share their stories – and I thought it’s almost a quid pro quo. It was now my turn to show my experience, tell my story.
“I hadn’t written anything, hadn’t prepared anything. So I spoke off the cuff. That’s why it was so passionate, because it came from a very sincere part of my heart. I’d never experienced anything quite like it before.”
He wants to highlight what’s happening in Irish society among a tiny minority of people “who seem to be deeply unhappy – so much so, that they would stop somebody in the street, who’s there with his family, and roar homophobic slurs in their face and square up to them nose-to-nose.
“I know we are better than that. For the last two years on The Late Late Show – week-in, week-out – we’ve seen the best of the Irish. Unfortunately, within seven minutes two different young men showed me not the worst side of being Irish, but a troubling side of where we are as a country.”
He added that the public response was possibly “the biggest reaction to anything I’ve done on the radio” and the show included contributions from people who told how they too had been harassed and shouted at in the street.
"We will investigate some of the stories were sent into us. Some really tough things happen to people,” he said.