Free State with Dion Fanning and Joe Brolly

Hyperbollix

Anyone listening to this?

I got into this pod around the time of the RTE payments scandal breaking and thought it did a great job of explaining the ins and out of the saga over a couple of episodes. I've stuck with it since but find it becoming a chore now and am about to unsub. Apart from the fact it's too NI / Troubles focused for my taste, Brolly has become unlistenable. He has a wonderful knack of getting to the cold hard truth of a topic but his enormous ego makes it impossible to stick with it. He is a co-host, yet he's constantly talking over Fanning. Fanning is forever saying "but Joe, hold on" "Joe, let me just say........." "Hang on Joe, its its its..........." The whole thing is becoming a monologue for Brolly to rant and rave.

What's worse are his strange Dunphyesque crying episodes. I was sick last week and on a dose of antibiotics. I stuck on the latest episode of this pod featuring Gaza and fell asleep. I then drifted into a sort of nether realm of half waking half asleep fever dreaming where Brolly was ranting about little kids in Gaza and crying manically into the microphone. I awoke in a cold sweat. I geuinely at this point don't know if the man is for real or mentally ill.

Damien360

Like every podcast, some of them are brilliant and some, particularly when he gets emotional, are dreadful. The recent two part just before the Gaza ones are very good. He talks to a GAA ref about everything except GAA. I listen regularly and enjoy them.

Leslie Purkiss

Overall it’s very good. Fanning’s dithering and timidness are frustrating at times.

JB is coming from the right place, but his personality is grating. A strange man.

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121384864#Comment_121384864

He gets right up your nose so he's doing something right.

Steviemak7

I enjoyed it when it was released but have stopped listening to it now. Like the OP, too much NI, I find Gaza too depressing to engage with and Joe Brolly never lets Dion have an opinion not in line with his own

Hyperbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121400346#Comment_121400346

Disagreeing would be fine but he doesn't let Fanning speak half the time. It's beyond tiresome to hear one person continually trying to get a word in edgeways while the other openly and rudely talks loudly over them until they shut up.

Hyperbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121401462#Comment_121401462

Well, I find him to be a bit like one of those prolific but troubled Gah players he's always waffling about......! The kind that could score you a good few points but could then get a red "kyard" for clotheslining a fella out of the blue!

Brolly has a great ability to break down a topic into a straight forward explanation. He was first class on the RTE scandal and I recommended those episodes to many at the time, for anyone wanting to hear a clear breakdown of events and a barrister's interpretation on the motives of the various parties involved. He has sort of struck a similar note on the Israel/Gaza conflict. He is certainly full of background info, sourced information and quotes etc

But he just can't reign himself in. He strikes me as a man who has led a charmed life who has been smelling his own farts for decades. Academically gifted in school and university. A high profile sportsman throughout his life. Of course, in a profession and operating at a level in that profession that isn't noted for shy, retiring or humble individuals. Of course, he's newly married to a woman 15 odd years (?) his junior, which really has sent his ego into orbit altogether! Then there's this mad crying and wailing he goes on with. He could be literally talking about seeing a child in a wheelchair outside the four courts and he will break into tears for a minute before manically laughing about a different topic two minutes later. A very strange man indeed.

Somebody needs to have a word with Joe to stop taking up all the air time and involve Dion. It's extreme at times and very much to the detriment to the overall atmosphere of the podcast. I presume it has been said to him many time but it goes in one and out the other

pappyodaniel

Agreed. It's completely turned into a grief and tragedy wankpod. I like a podcast to give a brief distraction to to what's going on in the real world as I'm only too aware of what's happening in Gaza and what happened during the troubles. I also find it a bit too parochial when he's speaking of the North "sure I was talking to Patsy McGee and his lovely wife Mary Divine, who's father was a great GAA man might I add, and wasn't he a selector on the BallyTaigue intermediate football team who famously reached the semifinals of the Tyrone county championship....(bla dee bla dee bla)"

He can be incredibly charismatic at times but he's chosen to ignore that side of his personality of late.

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058323164/free-state-with-dion-fanning-and-joe-brolly

I could have wrote this exact post.

Brolly has proven himself to be a bully and a coward before,also a massive hypocrite so I just avoided him for the last few years.

A lot of people were recommending the pod on the RTE episodes so I listened to it and it was very absorbing,interesting and funny.

I listened over the rest of the summer but Joe's ego was getting harder and harder to listen to.I had to stop and have unsubsribed.

Hes right and everybody else is wrong.....until he has the exact opposite view on a similar subject, in that case he's right and everybody else is wrong also.

JKerova1

I like the interview with Peter Taylor. Taylor is such an interesting person and not someone I have heard interviewed on Irish television or radio before.

Damien360

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121426983#Comment_121426983

Definitely one of the better ones. Joe Brolly was in awe of the man so he let him talk.

Utopia Parkway

Such a strange podcast in a lot of ways. I'm not sure why Dion Fanning is even there. He can barely get a word in edgewise such is Brolly's motor mouth and enormous ego.

Hyperbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121482781#Comment_121482781

I feel sorry for Dion. I used to enjoy his football writing back in the day. He's a decent journalist and his old podcast, Unfiltered, was good. He's wasted here because he's increasingly becoming a host to simply introduce the topic before Brolly winds up into a long, meandering ramble down the byroads and boreens of the northern matters. I used to have an uncle in law who was an athletics and Olympics games bore. I never remember a conversation in any setting that he didn't try to steer into athletics chat. The man had practically no small talk beyond that.

Brolly is the very same when it comes to GAA and the Troubles / Nordie issues. He's like a broken record. I know the pod is called Free State and that is it's USP, but why stick to that when your audience are probably bone sick of it, and you have proven to be quite good on other topics (RTE scandal, the Dublin riots etc)

The answer is the show must cater to Brolly's "strengths" and they seem to be sleep inducing blather about club football championships in Derry and whinging about the DUP, loyalism and the Brits in general.

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121488164#Comment_121488164

No ones forcing you to listen to it Doc.

Blanco100

I love it, I think Brolly is fascinating, a hugely intelligent man who has personality flaws galore. He absolutely adores attention and works extremely hard to be centre of attention.

His inability to rein it in is quite funny to be honest, it's impossible for him to control, there is huge ego involved. But it's all coming from a good place with him. He will disagree with everyone, and those he agrees with Brolly will say he can explain it better.

His episodes with Roddy Collins are very funny. Roddy says whenever he meets Brolly they talk for about 20 mins and then go their separate ways. He said they didn't talk "to" Each other, both just talked for 20 mins and neither would have a clue what the other said, but they went away feeling better.

When Joe is in his whispering or soft spoken ways he's a great man to put you to sleep.

jaykay74

He laughs a lot in advance at things he is about to say.

Hyperbollix

The lastest episode popped up in my feed, about the Supervalu Park renaming story..... Had a listen. A long whinge from Brolly about the excesses of corporate medaling in sport and how on a recent trip to the US, he couldn't get over how insanely commercial everything is over there, with constant advert bombardment the norm. He complained that we are being conditioned to no longer think about anything beyond being good consumers.....

His rant was off course prefixed by a 4 minute intro where he and Dion talk about how the content on the streaming service which happens to sponsor the podcast is absolutely unmissable. He was also cut off mid sentence half way through the podcast for a loud Sky Sports advert or possibly some other premier league purveyor!

You'd have to laugh!

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681915#Comment_121681915

I largely agree with you on this.

However,about 50% of your " I'd rather" shtick relates to your parents sex life,that's a bit strange.

You're also repeating the jokes,you seems to have a stock of only 4 or 5.Thats spreading it thin for a hyper poster like yourself.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121682054#Comment_121682054

Yep. The sponsorship ads before the podcast are always the two boys having a chat about how great the product is. Very casual, almost not like an ad at all, its almost like they are trying to trick people into thinking its not an ad or scripted.

Damien360

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121682094#Comment_121682094

That's every podcast. Been a while since I listened to the Athletic podcast (football). It's main sponsor complete with explanation was a brand of razor for the hair around your bollocks.

Damien360

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681915#Comment_121681915

I actually enjoyed the Roddy Collins podcasts. There were 2 with him in it, both close in time to each other.

pappyodaniel

It looks like Dion is getting really fed up with Joe Brolly ranting and raving and completely hogging the microphone.

evolvingtipperary101

I find it a bit frightening the ease with which Brolly goes into lawyer mode- the lone tone, the bombastic anger, and the crying. It’s so heavily performed… you’d wonder if the man is genuine or performing a character or has just let his work persona take over his personality. That need to needle and jibe and pressurise people - from Fanning to guests is all courtroom stuff too. The most ego maniac thing I found was his attempt to put himself at the centre of the stabbing outside the school as a witness - it was so clearly for promotion/pr/views…

I don’t mind his north focus because that is something he does have a deep knowledge about and it is important

evolvingtipperary101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121682156#Comment_121682156

It was great - only that Brillo kept bringing up Roddy’s more famous brother which was unfair.

Beechwoodspark

Absolutely no interest in voluntarily listening to the pound shop Dunphy wannabe Joe Brolly.

It was a great day to see him gone from RTÉ.

Hyperbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121723917#Comment_121723917

Yep, I listened to the latest one and found it very interesting. Not for the subject matter really, more NI/Sinn Fein coverage, but for the fact that Fanning finally lost the will to live and walked out of the studio mid podcast, it sounds like. There was a couple of minutes of dead air where I thought the recording had finished.

They were discussing Gaza and Fanning was trying to make the point that while he wasn't condoning what Israel are doing now, we should try to see it from the perspective of the Jewish people there who witnessed a horror show on October 7th. Brolly, instead of engaging with this line of thinking in a sober, relaxed manner, threw his toys out of the pram and effectively told Fanning he was talking shíte and he wouldn't allow any balancing of blame on this topic. "I will not listen to it..... I will not hear it!!" Who the fúck does he think he is? lol

Poor old Dion isn't really the quickest to articulate a point, he does a lot of stuttering and certainly not one for shouting down someone so he just let himself be steamrolled by Brolly, then just said "Ive had enough" and walked off.

I don't recall anything in the way of a climbdown from Brolly on resumption, it was more a vibe of "God almighty, you're an awful soft wee south Dublin chappy aren't ye, God love ye...........can we continue now or do you need another few minutes"

It's actually something how little respect he has for his co-host and I would imagine in his own head he thinks this is what people are listening for, real talk, arguments and bantz. When in reality he comes across as a real cnut who just turns people off listening. It's pretty incredible to think a 50 year old man needs someone to tell him to focus his vitriol and no fúck's given approach onto the the people and topics they are covering, not onto his co-host.

It must be paying for a few Rugby outings for Dion. If I was him, I'd walk and get a new show with a new co-host.

Fanning should stick to the writing.

Nowhere near interesting enough to listen to and takes forever to get a thought across. That's grand when you're trying to up your wordcount for an article but insufferable when listening to it.

Did you smash it

I listened to a kneecap part 1 there. Brolly actually said they were up for 1.3 million worth of grant money from the British government. He comes out with the most remarkable bombastic exaggerations

Hyperbollix

The ads on this pod really take the piss. I listen to lots of podcasts with ads strewn throughout the episode and all of them are edited properly whereby the topic reaches a conclusion, a short jingle preceeds and follows the ads, then the podcast resumes on a new topic of discussion....

On Free State, they literally cut off Dion or Brolly in mid sent........................FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL, GET ALL THE FOOTBALL LIVE ON YOUR TV WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE TO FOOTBALLNOW, DONT MISS A SECOND OF ALL THE BRILLIANT EARTH SHATTERINGLY IMPORTANT FOOTBALL. SEE FOOTBALLNOW.CO.UK FOR DETAILS.........ence and launch straight into a loud obnoxious ad. It's like a middle finger to the listener.

Did you smash it

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121812109#Comment_121812109

If you have a vpn just listen to it with the vpn set to Poland and it might be ad free listening

Hyperbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121812156#Comment_121812156

Thanks.... to be honest I only listen to certain episodes of it I have some interest in and even then i end up skipping through much of those episodes.

pappyodaniel

The more I listen to this podcast, the more I side with RTE for getting rid of Joe Brolly.

Hyperbollix

Same. The nuggets of insight or good analysis are completely dwarfed by the sheer amount of ego and narcissism here.

Piskin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922941#Comment_121922941

Also had a nasty chip on his shoulder towards "free-staters"

Piskin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922924#Comment_121922924

And a huge chip on his shoulder

padd b1975

If the Trots had any cop on, they'd approach Brolly to run in the next election.

He certainly spouts their hoary old soundbites ad nauseum.

Hyperbollix

This pod!

They had on Gary Stevenson, the young Londoner who went from poverty to the top of the traders in the City and earned millions. Gary is a strong personality himself and, rightly, believed the idea of him coming on was to explain his book and speak for the majority of the time.

He wasn't expecting good old Joe who kept trying to talk over him, kept slowing down the flow of the chat with his loooong laborious ramblings about his hot take on high finance and casino capitalism. The pod was 40 minutes ish, with little structure, chronologically all over the shop and covered very little ground in the story of his life. It was part 1 of a 2 part episode that, judging from lots of other podcasts who have done Gary justice in 1 hour flat, didn't need to be strung out into two aimless episodes.

Just another example of this podcast taking the piss with listeners. The ad revenue must be fantastic for podcasts that these two can get away with this amateurish approach and still be a viable and lucrative use of their time.

jaykay74

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122165581#Comment_122165581

I gave up ages ago!

Westernview

Just after listening to the latest pods they did on Mickey Harte. 2 full episodes of Brolly indulgently moaning about what Harte has done to Derry. Fanning again very weak and getting bullied by Brolly any time he offers a different point of view. I couldn't listen to the end.

This topic didn't merit one full episode nevermind 2. The whole thing has gone really downhill after some promising episodes. Fanning should pull the plug on this nonsense.

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122253089#Comment_122253089

I gave up on this about a year ago.

2 good episodes on the Rte scandal only buys you so much goodwill. Impossible to listen to Brolly,such as spiteful,hateful,petty man.

Dion Fanning is been bullied and humiliated regularly. I think he'll look back on this project in years to come and be embarrassed.

Westernview

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122253340#Comment_122253340

I think it goes to show that it's almost impossible to work with Brolly in media. A polite non-confrontational co-host like Dion should allow Joe the space he needs and he just needs to be reasonable in return. But no he can't even do that. Alternatively put a strong opinionated character with him and you get complete fallout. I don't think there is a happy medium either.

It really appears that Joe has insecurity issues and can't deal with sharing the limelight or pushback in any way. As someone mentioned already in this thread the only time he quietens down is when they have a charismatic guest like Christy Moore on and then it's about the guest more than Joe (2 excellent episodes I thought).

YabaDabaDooley

Brolly is not a fan of Dick Clerkin anyway. 'Dick by name, dick by....' he sarcastically said. And all because Fanning annoyed Joe so much for having the temerity to read a piece Clerkin did about how much he liked playing Derry during his career because basically their hearts were not in a lot of the time and he never really rated them

Obviously pissed Brolly right off and didn't suit his own narrative where you'd swear Derry were after winning five All Ireland in recent years the way he was going on. Clerkin did a bit of a hatchet job on Derry and Brolly had no other option but to likewise to Clerkin. And Fanning quite happy it seems to play underling and take Brollys criticism of him on the chin without any comeback.

I never heard of this podcast until i saw it on here and have listened to a few episodes but i find Brolly insufferable and Fanning too in his own rambling boring way. A match made in hell.

Hyperbollix

I had a go with the Mickey Harte stuff but just had to give up. I find the premise that this podcast is shackled to, Nordie issues, GAA and Nordie GAA, to be tiresome in the extreme at this stage. I think there is something here if Brolly could be reigned in and the topics were a bit more varied but as it stands it's just tedious.

padd b1975

I'll say one thing about the Mickey Harte episodes, they're easier to listen to than the Palestine ones.

Leslie Purkiss

Brolly is morphing into Alan Partridge. You’d worry for the man, and Dion having to suffer through it. Insane stuff.

Westernview

I've looked at the podcast titles the last few weeks and decided to give it a miss. How can every episode suddenly be about Joe's personal views on gaelic football? I like GAA but I can't understand how Dion allows this indulgence. Brolly is really making a fool of him at this stage.

Westernview

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122337001#Comment_122337001

He deserves the title of saint. The last person left in Irish media willing to put up with this nonsense it seems.

StevenToast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122337950#Comment_122337950

Some might say that Joe Brolly is living ' rent free' in your head Dr. Bobson...

touts

I gave up listening to it. Brolly started as a headwrecking crank but entertaining. The entertaining part died months ago. There is a real whiff of the Neil Oliver podcast about him. In that Neil, the scottish historian from the BBC, started out covering historical topics and was pretty interesting just as in his BBC TV shows. Then he started to throw in an odd comment or two. Now he gave up on history and is full on conspiracy theory, time for revolution, insanity. Brolly is about 2 years behind him on the spiral downwards.

Westernview

Some of the earlier episodes were quite enjoyable. I previously mentioned the 2 excellent Christy Moore pods where Joe kept quiet and let him speak. It worked well with Dion having a presenter role and Joe chipping in with some interesting anecdotes involving Christy and provoking an interesting discussion on the Stardust stuff. I hadn't known how deeply Christy got involved in all that.

But that's the whole problem - unless they have a big personality or some one very well known Joe will just go and make the whole thing about himself. I wonder why they have gone away from the guest slots - is it a money issue?