In a recent episode of Ryan Tubridy’s RTÉ Radio 1 show, the presenter opened up about being verbally abused while recently out with his daughter.
Sharing the story, Ryan revealed, “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.”
He said that a man in his twenties, who “spends a fair bit of time in the gym”, approached him and his eldest daughter while in Dun Laoghaire.
“He passed by and just as he passed by he says, ‘Tubridy you f****t'”.
“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.
“I want to talk about this briefly because I want to know what’s wrong, what’s the problem with these guys.”
Continuing, he said, “I went back to the guy and I said, ‘excuse me, can I ask what you said there’, and he 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.”
Ryan decided to share the story as not five minutes later, he was approached again. “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.”
Continuing, Ryan added the increase of verbal abuse over the past few years has been “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?”