Chapter 1
What if there had been no Late Late Show?
On New Yearâs Eve 1961, the first broadcast of Irelandâs domestic television service featured addresses by the President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, and the primate of all Ireland, Cardinal DâAlton. The Cardinal blessed the station with the following words:
On this New Yearâs morning, I ask you all to join with me in praying that God may abundantly bless TelefĂs Ăireann, may the Holy Spirit guide the directors in their work, so that this new and important venture in our national life [may] become an asset and an ornament to our country.
Both men issued warnings about the potential negative effects of television, indicative of an apprehension felt by many. Modern media, they seemed to suggest, had the potential to disturb an isolated nation on the fringe of Europe. DâAlton mentioned the possibility of addiction to the new medium, while de Valera, then aged 79, had the following to say:
I must admit that sometimes when I think of television and radio and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid. Like atomic energy, it can be used for incalculable good, but it can also do irreparable harm. Never before was there in the hands of men an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the multitude. The persistent policy pursued over radio and television, apart from imparting knowledge, can build up the character of the whole people, inducing a sturdiness and vigour and confidence. On the other hand, it can lead to demoralisation and decadence and disillusion.1
Initially, the television service was largely confined to Leinster, but growth throughout all of Ireland followed rapidly, and by the end of 1965, it was estimated that there were 350,000 homes in the country with televisions, representing more than half the households nationwide. There were a few television programmes that seemed to encourage the ventilation of problems that had long gone unmentioned, in public at least. So animated did one politicianâthe redoubtable Fine Gael TD, Oliver J. Flanaganâbecome, that he famously complained, âthere was no sex in Ireland before televisionâ.2
The Late Late Show will forever be associated with encouraging more frank and open discussion in this regard. What began in 1962 as a summer-filler show, hosted by Gay Byrne, went on to become the longest-running chat show in the world. Prior to the Late Late, Byrne had worked at Granada Television and presented Open House on BBC; he was utterly professional, did not indulge in the drinking that was common in media circles, and preferred to stay, in the words of Michael Parkinson, âon the fringe of everythingâ, when it came to socialising.
Byrne himself recalled that the first four Late Late programmes were âutterly detested and hatedâ;3 after its initial run, Byrne was replaced by Frank Hall, who proved a disappointment, and Byrne agreed to return, on the condition that he could also produce the show.
Various, often extravagant, claims have been made about its impact. There is much truth in Byrneâs own simple contention, that âwe looked at new ways of entertaining and that was itâ,4 and he certainly did not see himself as remotely socially radical. One of the strengths of the show was its format, to which Irish audiences responded very well; they could watch discussions and debates in a free-flowing manner, much as they might observe at home or in the pub. Essentially what Byrne was doing was experimenting, by redeploying the American chat-show format, but with a native twist, or an element of seeming âadhoc-eryâ, in which all three elements were crucial: the presenter, the panel and the audience. But the seeming casualness belied the careful planning and co-ordination that went into the show. This was ultimately about show business, with the row or heated discussion coming at the end; it was also risky, in the sense that it was always a gamble to have an unedited live show, a risk few twenty-first-century hosts will take or, indeed, be allowed to take.
Was it really the great moderniser of Irish society? What if there had been no Late Late Show? Would we still be in the dark?
The two guests on this programme, which opened with a clip that enlivened many peopleâs weekend (âLadies and gentlemen, to whom it concerns . . . â) were novelist Colm TĂłibĂn, who had previously written about the show and Byrneâs impact in the 1980s, suggesting, âhe is like the priest who manages the affairs of the parish. Behind the mystery of the mass lies cold hard work. He is generally quiet spoken, but he is also ruthless; he wants things doneâ,5 and feminist June Levine, author of the acclaimed Sisters, the story of the personal voyage of an Irish feminist, who had worked as a researcher on the Late Late Show in the early years.
I was anxious that this show would not become a fawning Late Late love-in, and would address both the strengths and weaknesses of the show, and, indeed, of its host, though using the word âweaknessesâ in relation to Gay Byrne is still regarded as slightly blasphemous by many. It is a measure of his iconic status that few will utter a bad word about him, and, to his credit, his broadcasting skills have not been bettered. Even his critics would acknowledge that, despite what they may have thought of him, he always had the trump card of being able to present them with the biggest publicity coup they could getâto be featured as a guest. In 1984, for example, Tony Gregory, Mick Rafferty and Fergus McCabe of the North City Centre Community Action Project criticised Byrne for constantly emphasising on his radio programme the negative side of parts of the inner city, but Gregory acknowledged, âhe also presented us with the Late Late Show which was the biggest thing weâd had.â6
There was also a certain insecurity that pervaded Byrneâs relationship with RTĂ; for most of the time, he was on three-month contracts, was refused significant pay rises, lived a very regimented life, and, in his own words, until a very late stage in his career, when competition opened up in Irish television, he ânever felt secure in an industry that was run as a monopoly . . . if you took a break, someone could come in and be better than youâ.7
In the midst of debate about the impact of his show, Byrne had consistently maintained that he was facilitator rather than innovator; that he could not impose a discussion on a society that was not ready for it. On the face of it, this seems to suggest generous modesty on Byrneâs part; but it could also have been defensiveâByrne always had to protect his various, often vast, viewing constituencies, so the idea of him as âhostâ and not âinstigatorâ was important, and rarely did his mask or his professionalism slip. As early as 1972, he had suggested that his success was a result not of his own vision, but of observing the skills of others: âI think it could be said that Eamonn Andrews is responsible for most of itâ.8 Most people born in Ireland from the 1950s on will remember their first opportunity to watch the Late Late. TĂłibĂn remembered that, growing up in Wexford in the 1960s, the children of the house
were banned from watching it. I was born in 1955 and it was the one thing you were not allowed to see and it was the one thing you kept asking about. Despite all the cartoons, all the other things that were on, it was the thing you wanted most to see, because I think all the adults watched it in a very serious way. The door was closed and the children were sent to bed and as you got to a certain age, youâd say, âWhen Iâm what age will I be able to watch the Late Late Show?â which was a sort of rite of passage. The first time I was brought down from my bed to watch it was not when an enormous sort of cataclysm took place in Irish society, but when Lieutenant Gerard from The Fugitive, whoâd been searching for the one-armed man all the time, when he appeared on the Late Late Show, it was felt he would be suitable for me. But once it was over, you never knew, because they never announced in advance who was coming on next and it could be a nun who didnât believe in being a nun or it could be someone talking about sex and there had never been talk about sex in our house. I remember sometime, I must have been let watch it from the age of 11 or 12, but I remember one night when Conor Cruise OâBrien and MĂĄire Mhac an tSaoi came on together and MĂĄire said that there were couples who had been married for many years who had never seen one another naked and, I can tell you, the silence . . . now Iâm talking about an extended family, not the nuclear family, but aunts, uncles, maybe even a visitor, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, all of us watchedââMĂĄire Mhac an tSaoi said ânakedâ on the Late Late Show!â There werenât headlines the next day, but it was that sort of silence that caused people really to worry. You couldnât turn it offâno one had a zapperâyou could have run over to turn it off but that would have been considered square. So it began for me by being forbidden, and then became immensely interesting with great moments of pure embarrassment and, as I say, a great amount of Hollywood in itâany actor who was passing through town would be on it as well, so the show business and whatever things that were unsayable in Irish life were mixed together.
Any discussion of sex was, of course, as mesmerising to the audience as it was uncomfortable. There was a simple reason for this, maintained TĂłibĂn: there were so many people âwho had never heard about sexâ; indeed, he went so far as to suggest that there was a whole generation of people who would have lived and died in twentieth-century Ireland without ever having heard any discussion about sex if there had been no Late Late Show. To that extent, at least, Oliver J. Flanagan was absolutely right. But TĂłibĂn also remembered programmes on issues such as compulsory Irish, and the emergence of young intellectuals like Garret FitzGerald, who, perhaps, in contrast to the previous generation of public intellectuals and politicians, were only delighted to hot foot it down to RTĂ to get a slice of the action, particularly because there âwas nothing that wasnât up for grabsâ.
I asked June Levine about comments she had made in her autobiography concerning Gay Byrneâs attitude to women. She conceded that he was a chauvinist:
He was never a pig, but he was a bit chauvinistic in those days and he improved as time went on. He was the first person to give us feminists a serious platform and he gave us the whole show, and Senator Mary Robinson came in to chair it and it went very well. Every issue was aired, and I think the wonderful thing about the Late Late Show was that the people of Ireland could participateâit was their first platform, if you like, because no matter what show came after that, the magic of the show, for me, was always the unexpected. You had panellists, you had extended panels in the audience and you never knew what these ordinary people of Ireland, whoâd come in from wherever, were going to say about any subject. On the subject of the womenâs movement, it got to every woman in Ireland, so that later, a couple of weeks later, when we all met in the Mansion House for our very first public meeting, not everyone could get in, it was so jammed.
But was it the case that, with the research team, there was an element of hostility towards radicals?
If the item was going to be interesting, if it was going to get people talking, I donât think Gay would have given a hoot what we were going to talk about. For instance, I did a show on an unmarried motherâthe first unmarried mother on Irish television, and she told her whole story from start to finish and people were absolutely amazed at this, and Iâm sure Colm would have been sent to bed! It was an amazing thing in Ireland at that time, and weâre talking now about the 1970s, when, you know, so many Irish women had gone to England pregnant to return âvirginsâ once again. And, yet, the unmarried-mother programme raised a huge fuss.
Aside from sex, and womenâs liberation, what were the other issues that TĂłibĂn remembered?
Well, there were figures like Fergal OâConnor who were, I suppose, liberal priests, who were constantly on the show. And there was great debate at the timeâit seems like a crazy debate nowâabout compulsory Irish; figures like John B. Keane on the show and, oddly enough, somebody like Garret FitzGerald, really making his name on the Late Late Show, coming on constantly, talking about various issues [Levine intervened to remind that âhe ran in from his fireside when the women were onâ]. Yes, and of course, youâd always have members of your family who wouldnât like one of them. Fergal OâConnor would come onââOh, that fellaâs on againâ or âLook at him!ââyou know, the people of Ireland developed a relationship with the show and, of course, at the beginning, there was an amazing number run by Ulick OâConnor and Denis Franks. Franks had a more English accent, Ulick a more Dublin one, and they went at each other, and of course people had never heard that level of (a) eloquence and (b) of every issue being up for grabs. There were people, incidentally, who never came on. Charles Haughey sidled on once on a programme about the Dubliners, to shake hands with Ronnie Drew, but he never sat in the chair to be asked the questions. In other words, there were certain people who wouldnât do it because it was unpredictable. I remember when Des OâMalley went to do it, and thought he could launch the Progressive Democrats on it, and it didnât quite work for him. You could never judge it.
Did Levine believe politicians were scared of it?
They werenât as scared as they would be now. I think that was the wonderful thing about the Late Late. People were innocent. We didnât have multi-channel television. People hadnât travelled a lot, air travel wasnât cheap. So, people, including politicians, were quite innocent. It was amazing after you were on the Late Late to walk down Grafton Street the next day, and be stopped every ten minutes and people arguing with you or disagreeing with you. They didnât know that was going to happen to them. But nowadays they do, and I would think that people are much more careful now.
But in terms of arguments and combativeness, did Byrne have the instincts of a Rottweiler? Levine put it simply: âWhen he was cross, like most of us, he could be pretty crossâ
TĂłibĂn elaborated:
He did an amazing attack on John Feeney, for example, who came on as a sort of left-wing student who had been picketing churches. He had long hair, sitting on the panel, and Gay Byrne went for him. And he went for him in a way which was unusual for him. In other words, he started a tirade of his own.
Levine counteracted with the suggestion that:
I think he had this magical way of being able to pick up what the ordinary person at their fireside was thinking. You can be sure that if he attacked Feeney, then people in your family were ready to do the same and were cheering him on. Because that was the wonderful thing about the show. He did speak for the people of Ireland. And he gave them a voice. There were many, many issues and we had to know about them. I really firmly believe that the Late Late did Ireland a service. We hadnât talked about anything important to each other. We hadnât discussed any of the important things in life to each other or with each other. You couldnât talk about sex; you couldnât talk seriously about spirituality. You couldnât talk about changes in the church. I remember interviewing Hans KĂŒng, who was probably my favourite interviewee of all time, and he was like a breath of fresh air and he was on the Late Late, and the wonderful part about any show was that the audience could put a hand up and be heard and these were drawn from the plain people of Ireland. It wasnât rehearsed or scripted. I remember absolutely and clearly it wasnât rehearsed. What happened was that I went and interviewed somebody and talked to Gay about it and wrote down cogent points on a card and then he took that, and then the next thing I saw was when he had the guest on the show and he spoke to the guest and referred to the cards. Now, he very seldom departed from the cards. He had these bits of information there and we had what we called an extended panel. Some people called them plantsâthey werenât plants; they were people who were interested in the subject or educated about the subject and they were invited to come along and then the rest of the audience were just people who had tickets, and you never knew what was going to come out.
TĂłibĂn observed, âHis writ...