Ryan Tubridy has revealed he was verbally attacked while out with his daughter.
The Irish presenter opened up about the incident on his RTÉ Radio 1 show on Tuesday morning, revealing he was called a “paedophile” and a “f****t” by two young men.
He said: “This is an observation that I’ve been seeing around the place more and more. It came to a little bit of a head yesterday as I was walking through a street in Dun Laoghaire.”
Ryan told listeners that a young man in his mid-20s, who “spends a fair bit of time in the gym”, approached him and his eldest daughter.
“He passed by and just as he passed by he says, ‘Tubridy you f****t'”, the 48-year-old recalled.
“I had two things I could do with that, I could stop and ask him why he would do that, or I could keep going and not cause a fuss, but to be honest with you I think I would have let myself down if I didn’t challenge him.”
“It was a physical risk, because he was a big guy. And if you know me, you know that I’m not one of those, but I was fed up with it because unfortunately on my own doorstep it’s becoming more of a problem with young men in their 20s.”
Ryan continued: “I want to talk about this briefly because I want to know what’s wrong, what’s the problem with these guys.”
“I went back to the guy and I said, ‘excuse me, can I ask what you said there’, and he said, ‘I said “I said you’re a f****t”. And I said, ‘can I ask you why you’d say that?’, and he said, ‘because I don’t believe in your beliefs’.”
“I said, ‘which beliefs?’, and he started squaring up to me and getting a little menacing, and I knew I was deuced to be honest with you if he threw a punch.”
“He said ‘all your beliefs’, and I thought well this isn’t gonna go anywhere, I’ll leave you to it and I walked away.”
The RTÉ star said the main reason he decided to share his story on air was because he was subjected to a second attack five minutes later.
He said: “Within five minutes as I rounded the corner another guy emerged from a particular building, and again I think there was weightlifting involved, I’m sad to say, but this guy needs a bit more time in the gym he was a bit closer to be own build.
“Very young I’d say early 20s, and he came out and started roaring in my face, he said ‘you’re the virus! You’re a paedophile virus, that’s what you are!’”
“People started to look around and I didn’t know whether to walk on or say, ‘can we have this out?’. So I tried it, I said ‘do you mind can I ask you why are you doing this?’ but there was no talking to him.”
Ryan then decided to take his phone out to record the man “roaring abuse” at him “because he was very, very menacing”.
The father-of-two said the increase in verbal abuse from the public over the last six months is “very disheartening”.
“I’m tougher than you know, so don’t worry I’m not saying ‘poor me’. I really am not and I hope you don’t think that. I feel I ask people to share their stories all the time and I’m sharing mine.”
“I’d just be curious to know what is the matter with these guys?” he asked.
