She's only nine, but Rebecca Barry is already a radio star, writes Roísín Ingle
Little Becky is in demand. Last Monday a Toronto radio station wanted an interview. The week before, an Australian station came calling. For those who haven't yet heard her, Little Becky is a gifted youngster called Rebecca Barry who has a popular slot on Dublin's 98FM where she makes prank calls scripted by the show's presenters Dermot Whelan and Dave Moore.
Becky has made about 200 calls on the station's breakfast show. There was the time she rang a Paris hotel pretending to be Mariah Carey. "Our penthouse is booked," said the reservations office. "Do you not know who I am?" said Little Becky in full Mariah Carey mode. Then there was the time she rang a tyre company to ask if it took spare tyres, "because my mam has one and my dad says she's looking to get rid of it". Or the time she rang Everton football club to ask if she could be a footballer's wife.
One of the most popular Little Becky calls was when she rang a local demolition company to ask it to demolish her school. It has already been posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com), where it has a five-star rating from listeners all over the world. The slot works because Becky has the confidence to pull it off and the comic sensibility to take the conversations to ever funnier heights.
Having heard she's also a veteran of Twink's showbiz classes, I am expecting a precocious kid, oozing repulsive amounts of stage-school smarm. Little Becky is a huge disappointment on that score. Taking a break from rehearsals in Cinders, the all-children panto with June Rodgers, in which she will star as Prince Charming's inventive party organiser, she is like any other nine-year-old; polite and down to earth. The serial prankster doesn't mind answering questions about herself, but you get the sense she'd much rather be in the hall down the corridor, singing, dancing and acting her heart out.
She was five when she was discovered by 98FM, singing at a Christmas party in her dad's office, which was next door to the radio station. "So then Dermot and Dave got me in to sing on their show every Christmas, and then a year ago they called and said they had a job for me," she says.
The job involves going to the 98FM studios once a week to record Little Becky slots, which are then played through the week. "I really like it," she says. "I sit in a room with my mam and talk to people on the phone. I have earphones on, and Dermot and Dave tell me what to say in my ear if I get stuck.
"I liked when I had to ring Ben Dunne and ask him why the radio ads for his gyms were so irritating. There was one man I rang who made wedding videos, and I asked whether he could help me organise the wedding of my dog and my cat. He was fine on the phone, but then when Dermot and Dave rang him afterwards, to get his permission to use the piece, he got annoyed and wouldn't let them use it."
This doesn't happen often, according to Whelan, who says: "Most people are good sports when we phone them back and tell them." They have lost some material, though, because people refused to co-operate. "Becky did a great one where she gave the FAI hell for all the matches we were losing, but they wouldn't let us use it.
"Lately, we've been setting her challenges such as trying to get accountants or architects to do funny things. We had a whole office singing The Sound of Music down the phone to her the other day," he says.
The presenters came up with the idea for Little Becky after hearing a similar slot on a Los Angeles station. "The child there wasn't very good. We knew we could do it better if we found the right person, and then we found Becky."
Little Becky was nominated in the best comedy section of the Phonographic Performance Ireland Radio Awards. She didn't win the gong, but her efforts were likely to have been one of the reasons 98FM's Morning Crew took the best-breakfast-show award. The fact that the producer of Cinders created a character based on Little Becky - her mischievous face can be seen in panto ads on the back of buses around Dublin - is another indicator of her appeal.
She'd be forgiven for letting it all go to her head. "Amazingly, that hasn't happened," says Whelan. "She's always professional and polite. She just comes in here and zips up and down the corridors on her Heelys. I don't think we could continue to work with her if she became obnoxious, but there's no fear of that happening. Give her a can of Coke and she's happy."
Of course, she gets paid in more than cans of Coke, and she even has her own agent, Pat Egan. Her mother, Olive, says she gave her 15-year-old sister and 21-year-old brother €100 for Christmas last year. "I was laughing with my son about getting money from his eight-year-old sister," she says. "It's usually the other way around."
Little Becky is on 98FM at 8.40am from Monday to Friday. Cinders is at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, from St Stephen's Day