It’s hard to shake the sense of familiarity that pervades when Dermot O’Leary joins Headliner over Zoom. As one of the best known and best loved faces of TV and radio from the past two decades, the feeling that you’re catching up with an old friend or acquaintance is almost palpable. The warm smile, enthusiastic cadence, and reassuring presence that have been his stock in trade for so long are immediately disarming...
Listen to this interview below and scroll down for the complete story.
“Sorry there isn’t anything interesting to look at,” he laughs, almost apologetically. “We’re renting a little house next to ours which we are doing up, and that’s quite stressful this close to Christmas. We don’t really have any rooms, but I’m just glad we have a roof over our heads!”
At times, the humble, chatty, and occasionally self-deprecating personality that emerges over the course of our conversation seems almost at odds with his standing as one of the most recognised and successful media figures in the UK this side of the millennium.
Indeed, few broadcasters can lay claim to the kind of 21st century pop culture ubiquity that O’Leary has achieved. Following a stint on Big Brother’s Little Brother during the reality show’s early ‘00s heyday, as well as a regular spot on the fledgling XFM (now Radio X), his time presenting The X Factor firmly cemented his place as one of the nation's most bankable presenters. Since 2004 he has also had his own Saturday show on BBC Radio 2 and, amongst many other high-profile gigs too numerous to mention, hosted The BRITs, Comic Relief, Children In Need, Sports Relief, the National TV Awards and This Morning.
Yet in spite of the vastly varied nature of his work over the past 20 years, music has always been the driving force in his career. In addition to his weekly radio show, he tells us he is consistently looking for new and exciting ways to tell stories from across the musical spectrum. His Reel Stories series on BBC2 has seen him conduct candid chats with the likes of Dave Grohl, Kylie, Noel Gallagher and Robbie Williams about the highs and lows of their careers, while his latest project, Radio 2 All Stars, which runs from December 26-29 on Radio 2 and the BBC Sounds app, finds O’Leary talking with some of the most iconic names in broadcast, as they share stories from their time in the business.
“I saw an ad for the Match Of The Day podcast,” he says, explaining how he came up with the idea for All Stars, “and I don’t listen to many sports podcasts, but it was this lovely warm fireside between Gary Lineker, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer just talking about their favourite strikers, and it hit me that we have all this amazing talent at Radio 2 and people who have had unbelievable careers and have all these amazing anecdotes about these musical legends, and we never hear them. You might hear about them in an autobiography or a story on the radio, but you never really sit down with these people and go ‘what was it like meeting John Lennon? What was the first gig you ever went to? What was the first Top Of The Pops like’? I thought we were missing a trick.
“The key, and I hope we’ve done it, is to make the show as informative and entertaining as possible, without it ever being too self-congratulatory. It’s about capturing some of these experiences. We forget – and the generation following us find it completely alien – that when we were growing up, these guys and girls on Radio 1 and Top Of The Pops were like rock stars.”
All of which begs the question, who are some of O’Leary’s personal All Stars?
“Well, on the broadcasting side for me there was Terry Wogan and Jonathan Ross, just because of how great they were. And then Chris Evans and Johnny Vaughan. You can’t forget how brilliant Johnny was on The Big Breakfast, he was such a master of his art.
“In terms of meeting artists, Springsteen and McCartney are hard to top. They are just incredibly magnanimous, giving, smart, wise… to spend time in their company was amazing. That’s as big as it gets for me. Then latterly, people like Dave Grohl. We did a Reel Stories with him, and Foo Fighters and Radio 2 go back so far, from when he was starting that band and coming out of the embers of Nirvana. There is a really meaningful relationship between Dave and Radio 2 that goes back a long way.
“One of the great things about working on The X Factor was that we’d put all the effort into the Saturday show because it was the big bells and whistles, entertainment spectacular, and then Sunday was almost like Top Of The Pops. You’d have a recap of what happened last night and then on the Sunday it’d be like, holy shit, Gaga is on tonight! Or Rihanna, Beyonce… it was extraordinary.”
Having settled into a comfortable role on Big Brother’s Little Brother, O’Leary says he was initially hesitant to make the leap across to The X Factor. However, it didn’t take too long to realise that snubbing the chance to front a bona fide TV phenomenon was never seriously an option.
“I was a producer on Little Brother and it was such an exciting time to work on Big Brother,” he recalls. “Then they offered me the transfer to the Premier League and there was all the pressure and everything that comes with that, but I knew I had to take it. And actually, it was not at all what I thought it was going to be. There was a lightness of touch there. I said I have someone who I write with – Ivor Baddiel, David Baddiel’s brother – so we’ll do the script together, and they were really cool about that. In the 11 or 12 years I was doing it no one ever told me to change anything, they trusted me and that really took the pressure off, knowing they had that faith in me.
“The first show, I remember, was a complete sensory overload,” he continues with a laugh. “Mrs O – Sharon Osborne – had two of her artists in the bottom two and she just threw her shoes off and shouted, ‘I’m off’! And I was like, ‘what? You can’t just leave’! But she refused to choose between the two. And there was a great quote afterwards where she told the producer, ‘you want reality, this is f***ing reality’, and slammed the door! So then you have to think on your feet. It was far less constructed than people give it credit for, especially the live shows. It was a lot of fun to do. And also, I know people can be quite sneery about it, but think about the amount of really good artists it has launched over the years. I think it’s done a good job.”
Alongside the charming, breezy manner, there is a discernible passion and excitement for his work that reveals itself at various points, particularly when recalling his X Factor days. It’s also evident when discussing many of the more music-oriented jobs he has undertaken so far. As he explains, music has been his first love since childhood.
“I grew up in a house of music,” he says. “It wasn’t a musical house in that my family played instruments, although my dad weirdly plays quite good tin whistle whenever they’re FaceTiming from Ireland [laughs] but the radio was always on, and that was Radio 2. My parents had a lot of vinyl and cassettes in the car. For my mum it’d be Barbra Streisand, Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Elvis. My dad loved Irish music like The Dubliners, real folk stuff.
“I started going to youth clubs and the 7” was everything then - I just fell in love with music. And growing up in the ‘80s going into the ‘90s was a really exciting time for music. Even though going to gigs wasn’t particularly accessible, having the charts and Top Of The Pops and the Saturday pilgrimage into town to buy records set the torch alight. But I was a million miles away from even thinking about working alongside the music industry and being a broadcaster.”
After a spell working at WH Smith – “I thought I was going to be behind the record counter but ended up on pens!” – and a year spent travelling solo around the US after completing a degree in politics, O’Leary landed a job as a runner at a documentary production company Barraclough Carey. Still unclear as to what paths may be open to him, it at least afforded him a first-hand perspective on the inner workings of TV and film.
“I was super interested in broadcasting,” he states. “I studied politics, and I love politics, but it wasn’t something I saw myself pursuing a career in. I sort of wanted to work in tele but didn’t know if that was possible. I sent out about 200 letters, had a few replies and ended up having an interview and getting this job as a runner. That’s the first rung on the mountain, and I just grafted, made myself indispensable and loved every minute of it.
“After about six months they asked me what I fancied doing. So, I told this guy I’d quite like to do something in front of camera. He took pity on me and gave me a gig for a pilot being done for Channel 4. Nothing came of it but at the end I had a showreel and an agent, and then you have your tools to go into battle and try to get some work.
“Then I was a researcher on a show that Mel and Sue used to do called Light Lunch, and I was given the job of warm up guy, because I was quite good with the audience. Then Andi Peters came down and saw me, and he said he was starting a thing called T4 and that he’d keep me in mind for some auditions. And five months later I had a job on T4.”
While his CV is overflowing with all manner of high-profile presenting roles, the one constant in his career has been his Saturday show on Radio 2. Having cut his teeth in radio in the very early ‘00s with XFM, which at the time was home to a wealth of up-and-coming talent that would go on to become household names, including a certain Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, he was keen to return to the medium after a two-year spell working solely in TV. His decision to join the BBC is, he tells us, one of the best of his career.
“T4 had a loose affiliation with Global, and when they worked out I loved indie they invited me to do some tests for XFM, which I was over the moon about because it was such an exciting place to be,” he says, elaborating on his route into radio. “They gave me a three and a half hour show on Saturday morning… and my producer was Karl Pilkington! It was an unbelievable time to be at XFM. The line-up was Zane Lowe, Ricky Gervais, Christian O’Connell. It was a special time to be there. I really enjoyed it, but after a couple of years the workload got a bit too much with the TV stuff, so I had to knock it on the head. But after a couple of years I was really missing radio and my agent got me a meeting with Radio 1 and 2, and it quickly became apparent that Radio 2 was going to give me what I wanted in terms of the show I wanted to make. And I’ve never looked back. It’s such a marvellous home for me, I hope I’m there for the rest of my career.”
The advent of streaming and the changes in content consumption since the show began in 2004 have reshaped the music industry in ways that were unimaginable at the time. But for O’Leary, the role of radio has remained largely the same.
“In the same way that books haven’t gone away because the Kindle came along, radio hasn’t gone away because streaming has come along,” he asserts. “Yes, it’s a slightly older medium, but it’s still there for people, even if they listen to it in a different way. “The real test for me was during the pandemic. You realise that radio is still a huge part of people’s lives and the fabric of the nation. During lockdown the feedback we were getting was ‘thank God you’re here'. And it was more than reciprocated the other way round. You speak to people who worked on air during the pandemic, and being able to go to work, even if it was a shed at the end of the garden, gave you direction and purpose. To be able to play some music and provide those who couldn’t go out with some company and normality was such a privilege.”
Given the sparkling array of guests to have graced his shows over the years, the focus of our conversation veers into dream guests and favourite interviews.
“If I could get the four Spice Girls together – I don’t think I could ever get the five – on Reel Stories that would be amazing,” he says, as if already pondering how he can make this happen. “I would love to do that. I’ve loved them all [Reel Stories]. Kylie was special because she’s Kylie, and it was our first one. Dave Grohl was really special, but the interview I got the most from was Robbie Williams. I’ve known Robbie for a while, but I didn’t expect the level of honesty that I got from him.
“He was obviously in the mood to talk and it’s a fascinating story about the parable of fame and addiction and the triumph of positivity over adversity, but the demons are still there. We finished and after he left me and the director looked at each other and were like, ‘that really happened’! It was one of the most important interviews I’ve ever done, in terms of the story it told and how it resonated. Whether or not you like his music or not doesn’t matter – he’s lived this incredible life and found his path through all these challenges and insecurities.”
For now, the focus is very much on All Stars and the prospect of expanding the format in the new year. He’s also writing his fifth children’s book, which is set for release in 2023. Precisely what else the new year holds for O’Leary, we’ll have to wait and see. But given how much he typically has on the go at any one point, it’s unlikely we’ll be waiting long to find out.
Dermot O’Leary presents Radio 2 All Stars from Monday 26th to Thursday 29th December, 9-10pm, and hear him every Saturday morning from 8-10am on BBC Radio 2. All the shows are available for 30 days on BBC Sounds.