When Dave Fanning rocks up to chat to Culture, he’s refreshingly frank with his opinions and great company. Things move around a lot in radio, but Fanning, who is 66, has been there since 2fm debuted as RTE Radio 2 in 1979. Why does he think he survived?
“I really don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “2fm is current pop music all the way now, and right in the middle of Saturday I’m doing this thing of items and interviews and maybe something serious now and again. Ask if I’ll still be there in another year and I have no idea.”
Fanning has been on a rolling contract with RTE since the beginning, which means that he can do other work. His current TV programme, Fanning at Whelan’s, airs on Virgin Media Television.
“I’ve plenty to do and I’m doing loads,” he says. “The remuneration could be a lot better, but apart from that everything is fine. I’m not staff at RTE, which is handy as you don’t have to leave at 65. I can do a ‘Larry Gogan’ and stay for ever. I want to continue doing radio because I really love it. Would I like to do it on 2fm for ever? Yeah. Would I rather do it on Radio 1? Yeah. Do I want to go anywhere else? No.”
Fanning has been with his wife, Ursula Courtney, since 1990 and they have three children, Jack (28), Robert (26) and Hayley (19). He previously admitted that it was just as well that she informed him they were getting married, because he has no idea if he would ever have gotten around to proposing. What has been the secret to their long relationship?
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“The secret to everything is love,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than a smug married person, but the answer is that it has genuinely been fantastic and I’ve loved every minute of it. I got lucky in particular with the woman I ended up with.”
Courtney has a lot of TV work with RTE under her belt and is series producer of the TV show. It features well-known acts, up-and-coming acts and interviews with celebrities. Fanning was keen to put out Fanning at Whelan’s as he wanted to give a platform to the young artists and bands who couldn’t perform on the live circuit and spent the pandemic putting on gigs from home.
“I’ve never seen anything worse in my life,” he groans. “I’ve never been to one good ‘bedroom’ gig — they were all shite — terrible stuff. I know it was any port in a storm, but I’d rather put these acts on telly or else watch them live while having a pint.”
The Dubliner also feels sorry for bands in the age of digital streaming and self-publishing because he feels it makes it much harder to make a living. “You get a million hits and don’t have enough to build a garden shed, so it’s really tough,” he says.
The series is on its third season and has so far given a platform to more than 50 acts. Fanning is just as passionate as he ever was about the latest sounds. “New music really excites me, but if you ask if it is better than it used to be? It’s not — it’s only as good. If we do the show again next year it’s going to be a struggle to find 30 acts that are amazing. Then again, I have my own taste and certain bands and people that are really big out there might not be my thing. I’ve said, ‘I don’t particularly like that but let’s put it on,’ because it’s not all about me.”
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Fanning’s kids love music and go to gigs regularly. Jack is an accountant and Robert is entrepreneurial and big into sports. Hayley is studying geography and sociology at Trinity and is particularly obsessed with music. “It just comes out of her pores,” says her proud dad.
Fanning shoots from the hip and is known for saying what’s on his mind. While this is refreshing and makes him very interesting, does he worry about cancel culture?
“I probably should but I don’t and I won’t,” he says, emphatically. “Cancel can f*** off. I wouldn’t be up for the old ‘woke’ myself. I will put my foot in it some day and I don’t care.”
It annoys Fanning that colleges defer to what he calls “small groups of people who are annoyed about something.”“The head of the students’ union was telling me that if they have a stand-up comedian coming in, they have to see exactly what they are going to say beforehand,” he says, incredulous. “Like, what the hell? ‘People are offended . . .’ Yeah, and what’s wrong with that? I hope you are offended. You can make jokes about trans people if you want because you can make jokes about accountants, or whatever. The new rules are just frightening and I’m sick of it. I think it’s awful.”
There were a lot of big characters knocking about on the radio when Fanning started in 2fm, including the late Gerry Ryan. Fanning reckons that this cohort of presenters seemed colourful because there wasn’t much choice back then.
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“It was the era of the ‘superstar DJ’, so all you had to do is not be shite and you’d get away with it,” he laughs. “It was bollocks really. There are probably much more colourful characters around now, but you don’t really hear them because there are too many stations and too many distractions.”
Ryan passed away in 2010 and was known for being funny and outspoken. What does Fanning think he’d be like if he was around today?
“I think Gerry might have been in trouble with the old #MeToo over things he said, and I think everybody knows that,” he says.
“He’d know that himself. Would he be cancelled? Gerry would be cancelled so often it wouldn’t matter. If Pat Kenny said one of the things that Gerry said there’d be headlines. It’d be like Trump — if Biden said any of the things Trump says, it would be like, ‘What?’ But Trump is now the ‘Teflon Don’. He’s gone so far that he can’t be hit because he’s mad every day. Gerry was mad every day. The things he said on the radio were outrageous, but it was like, ‘It’s Gerry — move on.’”
Fanning still sees Ryan’s former wife, Morah, and five kids on a regular basis. “Actually Ursula and I went to see her the day she left the house [the former Ryan family home in Clontarf]. It was a sad day, in one way, but now that she’s gone from it she doesn’t give a damn about it and it’s brilliant. We went to see her in the new apartment recently and she has moved on very well. She’s going out with [the musician] Don Mescall and he has this converted church in Cavan, which he uses as a recording studio, and it’s great.”
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Fanning enjoys good health and exudes a real joie de vivre. He fizzes with enthusiasm and seems really happy with his lot in life. Does he have any regrets?
“Sometimes I think I could have earned more money,” he muses. “I could have done some things better and charged more money for them, But to be honest, and again not trying to sound smug, somebody has to be the opposite to somebody who has f***ed up completely and I think I am. I have no regrets at all — not one, but then again I’ve been very lucky.”
Fanning at Whelan’s is on Saturdays at 10pm on Virgin Media Two and repeats on Thursdays at 11pm on Virgin Media One
