Last month, following a pilgrimage to the Galway Races, Ivan Yates and his wife Deirdre spent a week holidaying in the west. They visited Lissadell House, the celebrated stately home overlooking Sligo bay. In the tearoom, they encountered Mary Harney, former tanaiste and Progressive Democrats leader.
“I hadn’t seen her for years,” says Yates. “I’d slagged her a fair bit on radio and in print about her time in [the Department of] Health and the latter days of the PDs. I was pretty visceral about it. She comes over, has a kiss, and introduces me to her husband Brian [Geoghegan], who I would’ve known better. She said, ‘The Australian ambassador is here. We’re going on a guided tour — will you come with us?’”
Introducing him to the diplomat, Harney described Yates as a former parliamentarian “who could have been prime minister if he’d stayed in politics”. Yates says he guffawed at the description, dismissing it as inaccurate. He appreciates the implied compliment, but insists he no longer shares the status anxiety of the political classes, the constant need to talk themselves up.
“I’m old, bald, fat and f*****,” he says. “I’m used to being introduced as former bookie, former politician, former bankrupt, blah, blah, blah. Because of all that, I’m much more at ease with myself.
In my twenties and thirties, striving to get up the greasy pole in politics, I was focused and driven. Having gone through the bankruptcy process, I don’t fake the world-weariness thing — it’s authentic.”
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Yates, who turns 56 in October, is now one of the highest earners in Irish broadcasting. Newstalk Breakfast, which he co-hosts with Chris Donoghue, is among the talk station’s few success stories, recording a year-on-year increase of 35,000 listeners in the latest JNLR survey. Yates is also a busy live performer, making big bucks from after-dinner speeches, motivational seminars and product promotions. “The only thing I don’t do is Latin,” he says. “I don’t do pro bono.”
The former Fine Gael TD has plenty of regrets — not least about signing a personal guarantee for the borrowings that led to his insolvency — but has never regretted quitting politics. After 20 years in the Dail, three as a minister, he believes further advancement was unlikely. He’d tired of what he calls “the game” when he decided to concentrate on Celtic Bookmakers, the firm he set up in 1987. Even if the business hadn’t collapsed, he would have sought to reinvent himself every few years.
“There are a lot of people in politics who feel that I was dilettantey, that I didn’t fulfil my potential. A lot of people feel the same about my business career. If I was to leave broadcasting, a lot of people would feel the same about that. I’m a jack of all trades. The summits of my achievements have been modest in any one sphere. It’s the variety that’s a novelty. When you take on a completely different challenge, it gives you an energy, and I need that. If you made widgets all your life, you’d eventually lose your motivation for the widget-making business.”
Next weekend, Yates begins another phase of his reinvention when he becomes a breakfast-television presenter. TV3’s Ireland AM is about to go seven days a week, with the launch of Saturday AM and Sunday AM. Focusing on showbiz and lifestyle items, the Saturday show will be co-presented by Anna Daly and Simon Delaney. The more news-oriented Sunday AM will be jointly fronted by Daly and Yates, and will include one-on-one interviews and a punchy analysis of the Sunday papers. The programme remains a work in progress, and its format will develop in response to audience reaction. Yates believes Sunday AM will take up to a year to find its feet. He has worked with TV3 before and talks about it in his trademark mix of business jargon and sport analogies.
“I’m a long-term fan of TV3,” he says. “I very much empathise with their challenger brand. I never [go] to the No 1 brand. I was Fine Gael when Fianna Fail was the No 1 brand. Celtic Bookmakers was a challenger brand. I’m a fan of TV3, the same as I’m a fan of Manchester City.”
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The scope for Sunday AM is actually considerable, as Sunday-morning news reviews, both on TV and radio, have never been duller. Yates prefers to catch Goals on Sunday on Sky Sports, rarely tuning into the Sabbathian sanctimony of the media’s high priests. “I might flick in and out of Marian Finucane’s programme [on RTE Radio 1],” he says. “I’m a fan of Marian but not of her choice of panellists. It’s a bit Official Ireland and I can nearly tell you their views on everything beforehand, so why listen?”
Our interview takes place at Blackstoops, the Yates family homestead just outside Enniscorthy. Yates greets me at the door, ebullience personified. As on radio, his conversation fizzes with bravado and one-liners. Beneath the façade, however, there’s a discernible wariness and edge. Chatting later with Deirdre, I suggest Yates seems like an unusually tough individual.
“Some days,” she replies.
His battles with AIB over a €3.6m debt have been extensively chronicled. He spent 16 months living alone in Swansea to avail of UK bankruptcy. But it was the loss of Blackstoops that hit hardest. His mother, who is 83, can reside on the 80-acre farm for her lifetime — then the bank takes ownership. “The reason I’m working my butt off is to create enough revenue to try to do a deal to buy it back,” says Yates.
“When I returned from the UK, I found anything I said about the bankruptcy was misinterpreted as a pity party, ‘poor me’. I don’t feel that way, because I’m pretty robust in battling AIB. So I don’t talk about it. But the truth is that in my quiet, introspective, honest moments, I realise it left scars on me.”
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Yates’s on-air personality — blokey, inflammatory, derisive of PC piety — has proven a ratings winner. But is it an act? “I have a low boredom threshold,” he says. “When I get bored, I start slagging people or I try to entertain myself by starting an argument where there is no argument. Some of it is a persona — not as contrived as Vincent Browne or George Hook — but it is contrived.”
Browne contrived — surely not? “He definitely has a purpose to his journalism but the histrionics are contrived,” reckons Yates.
Yates credits Hook as a big influence. Nevertheless, it’s been reported that Yates has set his sights on replacing Hook in Newstalk’s drivetime slot, and sooner rather than later. “In 2016, or 2017 at the latest, I’ll be making another career change,” he says. “I actually don’t know what it will be yet. But I don’t intend to be getting up at 5am indefinitely. If the TV3 programme goes well, I might move in that direction.
“I also have a hankering to go back into business at some point. Because of the bankruptcy and the voyeurism about it, people overlook that I had 17 consecutive years of growth and profitability. If things go right in business, you can make a lot more money than you can in media.”
So wouldn’t a gig as Browne’s successor on the Tonight programme on TV3 suit him perfectly? “Yes — but you could say the same about the George Hook show.”
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Yates recoils at the suggestion his on-air teasing of Donoghue hints at a classic bromance, back-slapping disguised as head-butting. He vows not to adopt a more congenial approach with Daly. “It’s not an issue of bromance. Chris is like the puppy you keep slapping but won’t go away. Will it be like that with Anna? I will be looking for mischief. Everyone has an acceptable level of mischief. It’ll take me a while to find hers.”
Yates is a doughty defender of Denis O’Brien, the billionaire owner of Newstalk, dismissing criticism as the envious sniping of rival media interests. Does he really believe there’s nothing more to it?
“I don’t carry any candle for Denis O’Brien,” says Yates. “It’s not my job to defend him. I believe it would be damaging to Newstalk and the Independent if people within those organisations viewed it as their job to defend him. It’s a quick route to losing credibility. But I wouldn’t seek to publicly diss him. I don’t bite the hand that feeds me. I make no apology about that.
“I’m actually very pro-entrepreneurs. I’m a big fan of Michael O’Leary, JP McManus, Dermot Desmond — because what they’ve achieved is actually not easily done. Denis O’Brien has achieved a lot. Do I agree with his attitude in terms of [challenging] Dail privilege? No. If he asked my advice in terms of how he should handle these issues, I would certainly give it, but he hasn’t.”
Despite his formidable earning power and relative youth, Yates continues to accept a hefty ministerial pension (€28,000 in 2014). Doesn’t this undermine his pose as an opponent of profligate public spending? “I have no difficulty accepting the pension,” he says. “It’s not like I doctored an expenses form. I wouldn’t have got through the bankruptcy process without my pension. It was my only source of income.”
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Asked if he would agree that the gift of the gab is his chief talent, Yates goes uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. “You don’t have to have any talent to be successful,” he says. “I’ve worked closely with captains of industry, people at the top in politics, media, arts, sport — and they all have the same characteristics. I call them the three Ps: capacity for perspiration, perseverance and plagiarism. Every good idea I ever got, I fecked it off someone else. Anyone can learn personal skills. All you really need is drive, energy.” And neck?
“Oh absolutely,” says Yates. “If you chance your arm a little bit and it works, it’s amazing what you can blag after that. Blagging would be my primary skill. That’s what I do best.”
Sunday AM starts 9am, August 30, TV3