Ryan Tubridy sought therapy to cope with 'really dark' feelings after RTÉ payments scandal

Ottoline Spearman

Ryan Tubridy has said that he received therapy to cope with "really dark" feelings after the RTÉ payments scandal.

In an interview with the Irish Times, the former Late Late Show host said that the period following the controversy left him feeling "constantly attacked" and "hung out to dry".

“I wasn’t out, but I was down. I was on the ground. I saw myself as a character in this story that I wasn’t writing. I was being buffeted all over the place. It was traumatic. I won’t sugar-coat it and say: ‘Oh, it’s fine. That’s life.’ It’s not life. It wasn’t normal.”

The scandal erupted in June 2023, when it emerged that RTÉ had understated Mr Tubridy's pay by €345,000 between 2017 and 2022. As a result, RTÉ could say publicly that his pay each year was below €500,000, when in fact, his total pay was higher.

Some remuneration was secretly funnelled to him by RTÉ through Renault, the former sponsor of The Late Late Show, and paid via a so-called “barter account” in the UK. As the Irish Times reports, accountants Grant Thornton found that neither Mr Tubridy nor his agent, Noel Kelly, had orchestrated the scheme.

However, what followed was a substantial fall from grace.

While Tubridy accepted that he should have challenged RTÉ’s public figures at the time, he told the Irish Times that he could not take responsibility for the organisation as a whole.

“I think if I had my head screwed on better, and if I was a bit more attentive to that side of my life, I would have shouted louder. That’s on me. I accept that," he said.

But he also said that he could not "take the blame for the entire organisation”.

Comparing his mental state at the time of that of George Bailey - James Stewart's character in the old-time Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life - Mr Tubridy told the Irish Times that the criticism he received was so dire that he received therapy to deal with it.

It was through therapy and the support of those around him that he realised he wanted to   “embrace the world” again.

Mr Tubridy also married clinical psychologist Clare Kambamettu last month.

He also said that he is also grateful for the support he gets from ordinary Irish people, and that he took stuff “way too seriously” before.

“I used to be too sensitive,” he said. “I’m a different person now to who I was a couple of years ago. I’ve evolved.”