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How popular and influential a figure was Gay Byrne (the radio and television presenter) in your household?
I read the following on Wikipedia
'A 1998 poll found Byrne level with notorious former Taoiseach Charles Haughey as the most hated public figure in Ireland but Byrne was also named the most popular public figure in the same poll.[6] In 2010 The Irish Times said Byrne was "unquestionably the most influential radio and television man in the history of the Irish State".'
And I just wondered how much impact you think he had in his heyday?
As someone who was born in in the late sixties, and was a teenager in the 1980s in Ireland, I can tell you that Gay Byrne and the Late Late Show he hosted were INSTRUMENTAL in dragging Ireland kicking and screaming into the 20th century.
It's no exaggeration to say that it was an institution. He got people on there to tell their stories, warts and all, and he was kind but firm. I remember thinking that he was very kind to Sinéad O'Connor because he was aware that she'd had a horrible childhood, and then she was rather nasty to him on air in public when he asked her what was she thinking about her ordination as a priest. I think she's a wonderful singer, but she acted like a stroppy sixteen-year-old. I wasn't at all impressed with her.
Gay Byrne was so good at his job that his guests would relax and reveal more than they might otherwise have intended. Meatloaf was on one night, and he got rather carried away with describing some of the, ahem, ladies he had bedded over the years, and very nearly said the word 'motherf*cker' on RTE - a HUGE no-no during the 1980s in Ireland! I also remember him interviewing a well-known English singer whose name I can't remember, and she was very frank about some of the things she went through, including a backstreet abortion in the mid-seventies, which scandalised a lot of the audience that night.
He was so influential in Ireland that he attracted the attention of one of the major US networks, and there was talk of him leaving Ireland to work in the US. However, they couldn't get past his name - 'Gay' couldn't be used for obvious reasons, but nobody batted an eyelid in Ireland at this - and there was already a famous Irishman by the name of Gabriel Byrne. Of course, it could have been a ploy to get RTE to increase his salary, but either way, the man was such an household name by that time that the thought of him leaving the Late Late Show caused a public outcry.
Huge. Gay Byrne's impact was enormous. And unless you lived through the 1970s and 1980s, you can't appreciate just how much he influenced the country. Every household tuned into the Late Late Show while he was hosting it.
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