The 2 Johnnies have once again addressed the backlash they’ve received over an “offensive” clip from their podcast.
The comedy duo, made up of John O’Brien and John McMahon, came under fire earlier this week for uploading a “sexist” and “derogatory” clip from their podcast online.
In a since-deleted video, which was shared ahead of their RTÉ 2FM radio show on Monday, the Tipperary natives read and discussed crude slogans on car stickers sent by listeners of their podcast.
Among the slogans discussed were: “Tyres are like women, no good unless they are squealing” and “She’s not a princess, she’s a s**t.”
The clip sparked serious backlash online, with Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns branding the post “blatantly sexist”.
On Thursday, the podcast hosts released an apology through their agent, in which they promised to “do better” in the future.
RTÉ has since confirmed that the duo will remain off air while the matter is reviewed.
A spokesperson said: “RTÉ believes in dignity and respect and does not tolerate material or attitudes of this nature.”
Amid RTÉ’s review of the matter, the comedy duo apologised once again in a video posted on social media on Friday night.
Johnny B started the video by saying: “We wanted to come on and talk to you about the last few days, about our podcast, and the reaction to it.”
“We had a thread on our podcast about car stickers in Ireland, listeners sent us in car stickers and we read them out. Some of them were rude, some of them were too far.”
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“We condemned them in our own language [by] saying ‘these are scandalous’, ‘these are too far’, ‘who thinks these are a good idea?’, but we did not go far enough and we were not clear enough in our condemnation, and for that, we are sorry.”
“If you have these on your car, talk to the women in your life about your car stickers, are they too far, if your mate has them, pull him for a chat.”
Johnny Smacks continued: “Yeah on the social media video that went up, which just showed the stickers, it didn’t show the discussion around it, we want to say sorry for causing offence.”
“It was made by a member of our team but its our channel and our responsibility and we stand over that and we just want to say we’re sorry for causing offence.”
Johnny B explained: “As soon as we saw the video we took it down, and 2fm had no involvement in the video.”
“They did not approve of it and were not aware of its existence until it was taken down. In the caption it said something like ‘check out The 2 Johnnies new radio show 3-6pm’, that was our mistake.”
Johnny Smacks pointed out that they’ve covered important topics on their podcast in the past, like “consent, safe sex, women in sport, and male body image issues”.
“We try and cover as much as we can, we’re not perfect, and look we get it wrong sometimes and for that we’re sorry,” he said.
“Thanks to everyone who’s messaged us and come out in support of us, that won’t be forgotten and we really appreciate it.”
Johnny B added: “Look we’re comedians and we try and be funny, sometimes we get it wrong, we made mistakes here and we say stupid s**t all the time.”
“We’re gonna keep doing our podcast forever and to the people who listen to us, we want to represent ye and represent ye better.”
“We’ll see you on Monday for podcast 211, and please go easy on each other online and in the comment section.”
