“RTÉ is where creative people go to die” says McSavage

Comedian David McSavage is no stranger to speaking his mind, and the funnyman didn’t hold back in his summation of RTÉ and their current woes.

The financially stricken broadcaster has suffered an “annus horribilis”, and McSavage didn’t hesitate to twist the knife in an interview with the Irish Independent.

McSavage said the RTÉ payment scandal was “quite funny,” but noted that he didn’t think his cousin Ryan Tubridy “did anything terribly wrong” with regard to the scandal.

He admitted he did “enjoy very much the country politicians putting it up to these arrogant, entitled D4 types.”

Discussing his cousin, McSavage said, “Ryan is an interesting character in that he saw himself as an old fogey.”

“I think he saw a through line between him and The Tonight Show in the US and a lineage to the likes of Jack Paar, but that was just his dream – this is just Ireland, it’s not the United States.”

“When you try to be all things to all people, like, you know, Ant and Dec, it all becomes a bit bland. But that’s what that show The Late Late requires. I mean, I saw some clips of Gay Byrne talking to Sinéad O’Connor and, Jesus, it was embarrassing.”

The comedian called for a “revolution” in people not paying their licence fees, and the comedian appears to have found himself in tune with the mood of the nation, with RTÉ reporting somewhere around 20 million Euro in lost licence fee revenue since the scandal began.

“RTÉ is where creative people go to die,” he said, dubbing it an “elephant graveyard of ambition.”

Discussing his cult hit The Savage Eye, which ran for four seasons on RTÉ, he said the show only ever had a small audience.

He said the show’s comedy was “of its time,” and discussing the character Bull Mick, a homophobic barman, he said he didn’t think “it would fly today.”

“The point of that sketch was somebody being afraid of someone’s sexual orientation, I would have thought that was obvious.”

“If a young gay kid watching that felt shut down, it would make you think. I don’t want to minimise or dismiss or make people feel awkward, we adjust for the times,” he noted.