RTE staff must stand up now - Prof Dobbo

"I've told everyone in RTE that I expect them to stand up when I come into the room, which of course has been entirely ignored but there you go it serves me right," joked the Six One news anchor.

Last week, it was announced that Mr Dobson had been appointed a professor at the University of Limerick, where he will lecture in journalism.

"They call me a professor, which makes it sound rather grand but basically I go down and do some workshops - talk to some of the students," said the broadcaster.

Dobson was talking at the launch of the Samaritans campaign, Talk to Us, and he said that talking on TV is not just something he does for a living.

"I'm in a family where we all try and talk and I talk a lot to my wife and she talks a lot to me. We talk to our children and they talk to us and they talk to other people.

campaign

"I think the first thing you need to do is if you have issues in your life is to share them with people, because if you keep them bottled up they get bigger, don't they?" said Dobson.

He described the campaign as excellent because it is targeted at getting men talking.

"I know they are going to make a particular point about men.

"It would be men of my age, it's traditionally men who find it more difficult to talk about emotional issues or mental health issues," said Dobson.

He also said, when asked had he ever experienced any ageism in his industry, that it was not something he had come across.

"I'm 53 so I don't know, does ageism affect 53-year-olds? No I haven't encountered ageism at all, actually," he answered.

Samaritans' national awareness campaign will run across the months of July and August with their volunteers on the streets around the country highlighting their services.

jfegan@herald.ie