Mark Cagney has insisted he never took cocaine in 2FM while on the air.
The Ireland AM star – who worked there between 1977 and 1989 – said it never affected him to the point where “anybody knew”.
And the 58-year-old claimed there weren’t “industrial quantities” of the drug around because RTE didn’t pay them enough.
Asked if he took cocaine while broadcasting, he said: “No, no, no. Look, what I’ll say about it is this: whatever I did, and however much of it I did, it never affected my work, ever.
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“It never affected it to the point where anybody knew. It never affected it to the point where anybody who employed me said, ‘There’s a problem there. What’s the problem?’
“And, also, let’s be honest. It wasn’t like there was industrial quantities of anything being done, because no one was earning that kind of money.”
But the TV3 presenter admits he did go down hill at one point taking the drug that killed Gerry Ryan and had to be snapped back to reality.
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“There was one period alright when I got stupid because I was on the road and I was earning a lot of money and… you know… you fuel it,” he told the Sunday Independent’s Life Magazine.
“Or so you think. And you think, ‘Oh God, I’m not going to be able to manage unless I do it.’
“Then, after a while, someone gives you a slap around the head and says, ‘Come here you! You were good enough to get here in the first place.
“You didn’t need that then. So why are you doing it now?’ I am pretty quick on the uptake when I want to be.”
