To whom it concerns... Gay was a giant amongst broadcasters

Little did young Gabriel Mary Byrne know as he sauntered along Dublin’s Rialto Street in the 1940s to his nearby school that one day he would grow up to be, arguably, the most famous man in Ireland Nor, indeed, as he moved onto secondary school to the Christian Brothers in Synge Street — school to such luminaries as Eamonn Andrews, Jack McGowran and Eddie Jordan — that he might one day consider running for the highest office in the land.
But but back in the summer of 2011 the celebrated TV host was considering, in consultation with wife Kathleen and daughters Crona and Suzy — both adopted as week-old babies — whether to throw his hat into that year’s presidential race.

Polls then 58% of the public backing him and the majority of opposition Fianna Fail TDs behind him and, if that were not enough — and he had the vanity to boot — the former RTE Late, Late Show host had also got the endorsement of novelist the late Maeve Binchy, citing him as the “most popular man in Ireland,’’ and the support of... wait for it, Jedward.
In the end he thought better of running for the Park.
Gay (Gaybo) Byrne, born August 5, 1934, was the youngest of six children. Father Edward fought in the First World War and in the War of Independence. He married Wicklow woman Annie Carroll in Belfast in 1917 when on leave from the 19th Hussars. After the wars Edward Byrne worked for Guinness.

Young Gay left Synge Street school when he was 14 and got a job as a cinema usher, saving from his weekly wage to buy his first jazz record — Irish radio then refused to play jazz because of its ‘licentious’ nature — and thus began a life-long love affair with the genre. He then tried to get a job with Guinness but, despite the firm’s tradition of nepotism, he was unsuccessful so he went to work as an insurance clerk.
But fate had other things in mind for the young Dubliner Byrne managed to get a part-time job as a ‘continuity announcer’ in Radio Eireann while still clerking. But he was talent-spotted and landed a job with Granada TV, on a show called Scene At 6.30, where he interview the Beatles, and then with the BBC which meant commuting from Dublin. Needless to say the insurance job went out the window.
The launch of Teilifis Eireann in 1961 opened a unique opportunity which was grasped by the ambitious Byrne who hosted game show Jackpot before a young Terry Wogan took over when Byrne was co-opted to the Late Late Show, first broadcast only as a filler in the 1962 summer schedule.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN...When Gay Byrne took his one man show on the road to the Royal County in 2014 and 2015 our photographer ENDA CASEY was there to record it. Of his appearances as the Dunboyne Castle Hotel and Trim Castle Hotel Enda said: “While renowned for his broadcasting and interview skills, he had no problem in combining the arts of good storytelling and comedy to great effect in his stage show relaying brilliant anecdotes and stories from his lengthy broadcasting career. It was a pleasure to be there.”

 

But its fledgling producer, the late Adrian Cronin, saw huge potential in the Late Late’s format (mind you, it finished mostly before midnight so wasn’t very Late, Late). A format of two and a half hours of light entertainment and heated agenda-setting debate which always involved participation from a live audience. Very often its political remarks, from some panelist commentator or other, would make the front pages of the newspapers on the Sunday morning, such were the subjects it debated at a time when the Catholic Church still held sway over the ‘faithful’ and contraception and divorce and homosexuality and ‘living together’ and single mums were ‘sins’ and swept under the carpet of a — and it’s no exaggeration — ‘priest-ridden’ nation.

For 37 years it ran every Saturday night (until Byrne also took on the producer role and it moved to Fridays) from September to June and was in the top ratings week-in, week-out for to miss an episode was to be ‘uninformed’. Byrne’s show, with its opening quip ‘To whom it concerns, it’s the Late Late Show, with host Gay Byrne’, set the agendas for a lot of the other media, as indeed did his hugely popular radio show which ran five days a week for many years. And for years he hosted the annual Rose of Tralee festival from that dome in Co Kerry.

The Late Late, which Byrne fronted until 1999 — apart from one break when he went to America at the invitation of a Boston TV company to try-out Stateside — became the world’s longest running chat show. The programme, which at one-time included panelists Mary Kenny, Maeve Binchy, Nell McCafferty and Eamonn McCann, and Ulick O’Connor and a young Terry Prone, had much to do in shaping the ‘new’ Ireland. Byrne often steered a course which ruffled the feathers of bishops and politicians alike. During an interview with a couple (on the subject of the church’s ban on contraception), he asked the woman what she had worn to bed on her wedding night. Her coy reply that she “might not have worn anything at all’’ caused uproar. A leading bishop publicly criticised RTE for its corruption of public morals.

Eventually, RTE apologised but it was too late to halt the incident known as ‘The Bishop and the Nightie’ entering into broadcasting legend.
The ultra-conservative Fine Gael Minister Oliver J Flanagan even credited Byrne with bringing sex to Ireland. “There was no sex in Ireland,’’ he announced on the show, “until Gay invented it.’’
Interviewees down the years included Annie Murphy, the American divorcee who had a child fathered by disgraced Bishop Eamon Casey; and gossip columnist Terry Keane who talked about her long-running affair with Charles Haughey.
Politically Byrne courted controversy on more than one occasion. His invitation to Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke to sing on the same night the IRA killed seven Protestant workmen in an ambush, led to calls for Brooke’s resignation.
The programme with Gerry Adams as a guest was also condemned. While some felt the Sinn Fein president should never have been invited on the programme, others believed Adams was ambushed by a panel of critics.

His tribute shows to entertainers such as the Dubliners, the Chieftains and Sharon Shannon are video best-sellers while the Late Late Show special on the Omagh bombing was praised widely for its sensitive treatment.
Up to the time of his diagnosis with cancer he had a Sunday afternoon slot on Lyric FM, where to his heart’s content he played his beloved jazz, and numbers from the Broadway and West End musicals mainly, he admitted, for the money, having lost most of his life savings in the Nineties through alleged inappropriate action by his former accountant and a one-time friend, one Russell Murphy.

Apart from jazz, he loved walking through his beloved Howth, loved motorbikes, and the actress Meryl Streep — he told her once of his crush — and an occasional ball of malt.
I wonder will the Bishop and the Nightie be on God’s agenda when Uncle Gaybo arrives home to his Maker.