Late Late Show presenter Ryan Tubridy has announced that he was on a street in Dún Laoghaire over the weekend when two young men aged in their twenties shouted at him on two separate occasions, firstly calling him a “f****t”, then calling him a “paedophile”.
“A young guy of about 25 or 26, I’d say he spends a fair amount of time in the gym and as he passed by, he said, ‘Tubridy you f****t’,” Tubridy said on his radio show.
“I had two things I could do with that, I could stop and ask him why would he do that or I could keep going and not cause a fuss.”
“To be honest, I think I would have let myself down if I didn’t challenge him.”
Tubridy said he was “fed up” with the abuse that he’s gotten recently, and “unfortunately, it’s becoming more of a problem with young men”.
Recently, footage emerged on social media of teenagers verbally abusing Tubridy as he was walking while listening to music.
The RTE presenter said he approached the young man and asked him to explain why he said that, to which the young man replied, “I don’t believe in your beliefs”.
Tubridy said that the man was “squaring up” to him in a “menacing” way, and said “I knew I was goosed if he threw a punch but I just had to accept it as part and parcel with the job”.
Tubridy said that he walked away to avoid conflict but added, “I was unhappy about it and I was sad about it,” he said.
Just a couple of minutes later, another young man, aged in his twenties, also shouted abusive slurs towards the presenter.
“He started roaring in my face, ‘you’re the virus, you’re a paedophile virus’.”
Tubridy again asked the man why he was making the comment but he continued shouting and walked away.
“When people come up to you and do this, you’ve go to take it on a bit or you can ignore, but I didn’t want to,” he said.
“It’s very disheartening,” he said.
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