Ryan Tubridy discusses dealing with the loss of his father with David Walliams on new podcast
David Walliams and Ryan Tubridy on The Bookshelf with Ryan Tubridy.
Former Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy tells David Walliams about his grief after losing his father in the first episode of Tubridy’s new book podcast.
Writer and actor Walliams is the first guest on The Bookshelf with Ryan Tubridy and in the new episode, which is available from today, Walliams and Tubridy discuss fatherhood, death and some of their favourite reads.
Little Britain and Britain’s Got Talent star Walliams is a bestselling children’s author, with 40 books published including Gangsta Granny and The Boy in the Dress. He tells Tubridy that being a dad to his 10-year-old son Alfred “makes his life brilliant”.
He adds that his most honest critics are the children who read his books and jokes that reciting poems to his ex-wife might have been grounds for divorce.
On the topic of grief, Tubridy tells Walliams how strange day-to-day life feels after losing a parent but that dealing with a loss can make you more empathetic as a writer, a broadcaster, and a person.
“I’m thinking of looking out of the back of the funeral car of my own dad and thinking that very same thing, going ‘Don’t you know this great guy is gone? How can you be going in to buy bread? That’s so mundane.’ It’s most unusual, you forget your universe is just that,” he says. His father, psychiatrist Pat Tubridy, died in 2013.
“It’s like someone flicked the globe and everything’s changed and actually your landscape in your daily life is littered with landmines, with emotional tripwires and you suddenly find [you’re like] ‘hold it together, hold it together’ because no one else cares and certainly doesn’t understand why you’re suddenly having a moment because you saw a packet of Silk Cut Purple because it reminds you of your father.
“It’s bizarre. But that informs you as a person, a writer, a broadcaster, whatever it might be, people listening in, and should help you with empathy and nourish who you are as a human being.”
Last week Tubridy announced the new podcast series, which will see a new guest each week discussing three reads: the book from their childhood, the book that made them cry, and the book that changed their life.
“This has been a passion project of mine for a couple of years now but I could never quite find enough time to put it all together," Tubridy says, noting how the "exceptionally difficult time" he went through last summer when he left RTÉ led to both his current radio job in the UK and to his new podcast.
"It made me reassess and explore new opportunities to realise some dreams I've long held in my heart."
Tubridy currently presents the Ryan Tubridy Show on Virgin Radio in London, having left RTÉ last year following weeks of controversy related to revelations that the organisation had publicly under-reported payments to him, prompting a crisis at the public service broadcaster that put a focus on its governance and financial practices.
He was due to return to the organisation under a deal which would have seen him creating a podcast for RTÉ among other duties. However, director-general Kevin Bakhurst pulled the arrangement, saying he was “particularly disappointed” with a statement released by Tubridy in relation to the controversy around his earnings.
In 2022, Tubridy topped the broadcaster’s top earners list with earnings of €515,000.
The Bookshelf with Ryan Tubridy, sponsored by Eason, is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major audio platforms and to watch on YouTube.
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