It might just be the most recognisable laugh in Irish broadcasting and as the waitress comes to take our order, it travels from Ian Dempsey’s tummy to his mouth and bounces off the walls of the half-filled restaurant.
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His order of ‘Thai green curry with chicken’ is slightly lost in translation.
“So that’s green chicken?” says the waitress. “No, no,” interjects the Today FM presenter, spotting the opportunity for some devilment – “green curry with white chicken!”
As he chuckles his entire body trembles, too – his laughter is infectious.
It’s that positive demeanour which has placed the Dubliner at the pinnacle of broadcasting here for over three decades.
“Soon after I started in radio someone wrote that I was able to ‘transmit my enthusiasm’, though that might annoy others,” he says modestly.
We’re sitting in a cosy snug in the corner of the chic Koh restaurant off Jervis Street. With its red-cushioned seats and soft lighting it’s a romantic setting – I make a mental note to take my wife here the next time we’re up in the big smoke.
Ian has just finished his morning show – which, according to the latest JNLR figures, has 175,000 listeners daily.
It’s been 35 years since his dulcet tones were first heard on a damp morning in the recession-gripped Dublin of 1978.
The place where his broadcasting story began is just around the corner on Bachelor’s Walk.
“I sent a tape to the pirate station Capital FM and immediately got the phone call saying yes. Sure, I thought I must be fantastic, but basically they were just desperate to get somebody to come in and fill a particular slot.”
His father, Des, had concerns about his choice of career.
“I had David Bowie written all over my school bag. He wasn’t too sure about that. At the time Bowie came across as a total weirdo! He was probably thinking ‘I hope my son is okay’.” And Ian’s future parents-in-law were also unsure if he was the right man for their beloved daughter, Ger.
“The only DJs you’d see then would be the BBC Radio 1 guys with their tracksuits and bling. When I started going out with Ger I recall her parents being concerned that I was a ‘DJ’ – persona non-grata.”
As the years rolled on, their fears were erased.
After a stint in ARD, an ‘alternative’ station, Ian, a born-again Chelsea football fan, was offered a position in Donnybrook. With the waft of green curry and my Singapore noodles filling our intimate booth, Ian recalls a gesture which helped settle his nerves on his first day in RTÉ in 1980.
“There was a letter waiting for me on the old RTÉ-headed notepaper with the St Brigid’s cross in the corner, all typed out.
“It said ‘Welcome to RTÉ Radio 2, we hope you have a very successful career here. Just one thing though . . . you can’t say ‘bollox’ on the radio’. It came from Gerry Ryan and was a lovely touch; I still have it at home.”
At Montrose Ian quickly rose through the ranks both on radio and TV and in 1986 became the host of Dempsey’s Den – the children’s programme which will forever be remembered for giving us Zig and Zag.
“It [the Den] was on the lowest budget possible. We had one camera, that was it. It helped in a way because all you had to do was aim at one point! It was like everyone at home was looking into a little window.
“After one season we decided to get puppets . . . sorry I mean aliens . . . so Zig and Zag arrived. Their voices were very different initially – much slower. But then they just took off and became so popular.
“The two lads [puppeteers] were completely different to the characters they were behind on air. They were so quiet, thinking about everything; they really took it seriously and I’m not surprised they’ve become so successful.”
In 1998, with his stock still rising, Ian shocked the Irish media world by walking away from the state broadcaster to host the breakfast show on the up-and-coming Today FM.
“I was just coming up to 40 so I said to myself, ‘if I don’t do it now I may never do it’,” he admits. “It was a gamble. The slot I was going to had very low listenership figures of around 30,000 or 40,000. The whole thing could have gone haywire.
“I believed in it though. Everybody was hungry to make it a success. It was a younger group of people who were willing to try things and fail but keep going until they got it right. I found that hunger very appealing.”
But had Ian outgrown the RTÉ nest or was it the lure of money that brought him back across the Liffey?
“Ger and I sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine and worked out the amount we would need for me to make the move. It was a good time. There was a lot of dosh around.
“It was a fair amount of money that I got, there were a few stories in the media which said I was on millions – that was complete rubbish.”
Key to Ian’s success was the inclusion of impressionist Mario Rosenstock on his show.
“When I came to the station, Mario had been doing some funny voices now and again. We were looking for things to get the show going. We sat down with him and asked if he’d be a daily fixture, that continuity was very important.”
Mario’s Gift Grub segment became a massive hit and in recent years Ian has co-written material for the comedian’s live tour and the Mario Rosenstock Show which recently pulled in the viewers on RTÉ Two.
“We had a huge viewership for the first episode, something like 370,000, but then it dropped the next week. It picked up again though and levelled off, which we were delighted with.
“It was fascinating. I thought radio was pressurised, TV is almost unbearable . . . waiting every night to get the viewing figures, God I don’t know if I could live with that the whole time.”
As he sips his coffee, Ian, who’s been up since 5am, admits that the early mornings mean afternoon siestas are becoming more frequent.
“I notice now that when I get home around half one or two o’clock I might drift off for an hour or so. I hit the sack around half nine every night which plays havoc with the social life but I’ve done most of my partying now anyway so I can live without that.”
Instantly likeable, Ian’s charming style has seen him schmooze with the world’s leading entertainers from Madonna to Bruce Springsteen, and he lets slip “I also did Beyoncé” before adding “oh I better rephrase that”. Cue more uncontrollable Dempsey laughter.
Ireland’s most famous David Bowie fan has also chewed the fat with his hero and even considered nabbing the singer’s cigarette butt when their meeting finished in the Clarence Hotel in 2003.
“He was smoking his Marlboro Light; it was when you were still able to smoke inside. He put it out and every now and again I kept looking at the cigarette butt in the ashtray. It was like that Michael Jackson song ‘your butt is mine’! But in the end I realised pocketing it would have been very sad.”
So what next for the silver-tongued 52-year-old gadget fanatic?
Continuing the poultry theme, he chuckles and says: “Ah look, I’m no spring chicken. I’d like to write a book, I don’t really care if nobody reads it; I’d just want to do it for myself – more of a memoir really. A group of stories rather than a ‘this is my life’.”
But what a life it’s been so far. As he heads back to Sutton for his siesta, I hear him laughing on his way out the door after exchanging a few words with the staff. Wherever ‘Iano’ goes – merriment follows.
My life with the biggest stars . . . Bowie, the Boss and Zig & Zag
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