The Black Hole that is the Late Late Show

First published in the Western People on Monday.

If Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct, there exist, somewhere in the universe, things called black holes. A black hole is a region of space where matter has become so compact it has collapsed into itself. A black hole’s gravitational field is so strong that it draws everything around into it, allowing nothing – not light, not gravity, not anything – to escape.

In Ireland, we are familiar with black holes. One will start broadcasting against this Friday night at nine-thirty on RTÉ 1, holding all otherwise sentient, sensible people in its iron grasp for the next two and a half hours.

People once thought that the Late Late Show couldn’t survive Gay Byrne’s retirement. They’ve had to think again – although Uncle Gaybo has never really gone away, his last Late Late Show was fifteen years ago. And still the show goes on after him, Friday after Friday, year after year.

It is not entirely unreasonable to expect that, should the direst of warnings come true and Ireland is three feet underwater as a result of global warming, or the proliferation of windfarms and pylons and the Lord knows what has left the green isle of Erin habitable only by rats, badgers and the rougher sort of insect, there will still be a tower in Montrose that will fizzle fitfully into life every Friday in autumn, winter and spring to announce that tonight, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Late Late Show, and here is your host ...

Being the host of the Late Late Show is, supposedly, the premier job in Irish broadcasting. This is the reason RTÉ has historically paid its stars great pots of money for the apparently straightforward job of asking some British soap opera star how much she liked visiting Ireland and if, perhaps, she had any relations here. If someone like Pat Kenny wasn’t paid a big ball of money, the fear was that he would go somewhere else, and take all his listenership with him, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

The interesting thing is that the bluff has been called. Newstalk made Pat Kenny an offer he couldn’t refuse last year and so Kenny left RTÉ after forty years to do his old show for a new boss. Newstalk’s plan was that Pat’s pipes would sound from Marconi house, and Kenny’s loyal listenership would obey the massive advertising campaign to “move the dial” and follow their leader.

Except that’s not what happened at all. The latest figures are that Pat Kenny’s radio show on Newstalk gets 143,000 listeners, while Pat’s old show in RTÉ, now hosted by Seán O’Rourke, gets 307,000. That’s a hiding by double scores in anybody’s language.

The nation now has solid field data about what happens when a big star moves. Nothing is what happens when a big star moves. RTÉ get someone else, and someone else becomes a star instead. And what is the result of this? UTV come along and offer Pat even more money to do a Late Late-style show for them, once they get up and running. If this column were ever in a position to interview Pat Kenny, the first question would be “can you believe your luck?”

Pat Kenny’s successor as host of the Late Late Show, Ryan Tubridy, is equally blessed in having a career that seems impervious to the market’s opinion of him. In one way, Tubridy was given the media equivalent of a hospital pass when he was asked to replace Gerry Ryan in the 2FM schedule after Ryan’s sudden death. Ryan was not everyone’s cup of tea but those who liked him, loved him. And those who loved Gerry Ryan are not impressed by his replacement.

But in the bigger picture, the poor radio figures don’t really matter. What is amazing about Tubridy is that in the age of the world wide web, internet streaming, Netflix, Sky plus, digital TV and more, Irish adults will sit down on Friday and watch the Late Late Show, let it matter a damn who’s on it as a guest or who’s presenting the show. It could be Ryan Tubridy interviewing Miriam O’Callaghan or Miriam O’Callaghan interviewing Ryan Tubridy. There’s no real difference. It’s Friday night, and this is what we do.

Ryan Tubridy’s Late Late Show isn’t the worst show of its kind on television. That strange show RTÉ broadcast after the nine o’clock news on Saturday night is surely the racing favourite for that dustbin honour. In fact, that show is so far from good it’s hard to understand why it’s not on TV3.

The galling thing is that the Late Late Show isn’t meant to be a show that isn’t the worst show on television. It’s meant to be the best show on television, the show that holds a mirror up to Ireland as this great nation of talkers and wits discuss and debate the great issues of day, from Ireland’s role in Europe to whether the nation should simply put Brian Cody in charge of everything and be done with it.

That is very different from listening to comedian Des Bishop, economist David McWilliams, stylist Lisa Fitzpatrick and Dolores Kehoe. Who on earth is Dolores Kehoe? Who cares what the other three think about anything?

Writing in the Irish Times about Tubridy’s unhappy radio listenership figures, Laura Slattery suggested that the problem wasn’t Tubridy but RTÉ management, for asking Tubridy to do a job for which he clearly isn’t suited. But it’s easy to see how RTÉ management could be puzzled by Tubridy, as he’s not suited to presenting a TV show that holds a mirror to a nation either, and the figures for that show are solid as the rock of Gibraltar.

The answer, as is often the case, lies closer to home. It’s us. It’s the nation. The people of Ireland would watch the Late Late Show even if were presented by Lorcan Murray and featured the cast of Fair City reading tweets of the week. What incentive is there for the Late Late Show to be any good if there’s no disincentive for it to be awful? Why can’t we move the dial? Why do we feel we have to do what we’ve always done? What’s the matter with us?

There is No Free Press Without Regulation

Greybeards and seanfhondóirí who remember the ‘nineties can’t help but to have been a little bemused by the alliance formed by Eamon Dunphy and Pat Kelly on Pat Kenny’s radio show the other day. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has issued a code of conduct for broadcasters in Ireland. In response, Pat and Eamon teamed up to pretty much pour scorn on the whole idea before Michael O’Keeffe, chairman of the BAI, who didn’t really land a glove in his own proposals’ defence over twenty minutes.

What made the mouths of those greybeards grin beneath their grizzled whiskers was the memory of an article Eamon Dunphy wrote about Pat Kenny on the back page of the Sunday Independent in the early-to-mid ‘nineties, when Dunphy was the Designated Boot Boy of that particular organ. Unfortunately, the article can’t be quoted here as research shows this blog is sometimes read by children but take An Spailpín’s word for it – by the time Dunphy was finished kicking the stuffing out of Plank (sic) Kenny, there wasn’t enough of poor Pat left to put in a teaspoon and send back to his people.

Dunphy’s profile of Pat Kenny was utterly vicious. A stomping the like of which you rarely see. Appropriate to Pol Pot, maybe, or Stalin or Hitler. But not to TV show host who wore a jumper on his chat show.

And now here they were, kicked and kicker as bosom buddies, defending the right of the broadcasters to make their own decisions without interference from the dastardly BAI. Proof that principles come and go, but show business goes on forever.

It was a pity that Michael O’Keeffe wasn’t a bit more ready for them. He came across like a substitute teacher from whom naughty children have detected the smell of fear, and are determined to reduce to tears in the time allotted to them.

O’Keeffe should have pointed out that neither Kenny nor Dunphy are against regulation, per se. It’s just that they themselves are the ones who wanted to do the regulating, rather than someone else. Scholars will remember the ancient world had the same attitude to slavery; people had no objection in principle, as long as it was not they themselves who were the actual slaves.

Kenny and Dunphy found the proposed BAI regulations too constrictive. The found the forbidding of TV or radio show host to express his or her own opinion terrible, one of them remarking that such a regulation would put George Hook out of a job.

Like this would somehow be a bad thing.

And O’Keeffe took all this on the chin. What he could have said, of course, is that there are two words that prove that the broadcasters do indeed need a regulatory authority over them – The Frontline, and see what Pat Kenny made of them apples.

Not much, probably, but the facts are clear. Sean Gallagher had one foot in the Áras at half-nine on that Monday night, by midnight his head was cut clean off. No head has rolled. Not one.

The Chairman of the RTÉ Board is married to the most powerful spindoctor in the country. They say it doesn’t matter, because they never talk about work at home.

[And may An Spailpín take a moment to repeat again that the house does not belong to me. It belongs to my wife. A complete different person. Sure I barely know the woman, I don’t know why you people in the Revenue keep busting my nuts over it].

And so on, and on, and on. Of course it’s necessary for journalists to hold politicians to account, but journalists are also part of that same dance in the public square. Journalists have to be held to account too.

The BAI proposals aren’t perfect. They may not even be good. But that they are necessary in as clubby a society as Ireland’s is beyond all shadow of a doubt.

Claire Byrne is the Late Late Show's Only Hope

RTÉ has a dilemma in regard to the Late Late Show. It is this: the number of people who watch the show seems to exist in inverse proportion to those who actually like it.

If people stopped watching the Late Late, the next step for RTÉ would be obvious and inevitable. But people don’t stop watching. Twelve years since Gay Byrne did his last Late Late Show, the program remains a ratings juggernaut for RTÉ, even though the amount of people who claim to like it is equivalent to the current population of the Great Blasket.

The Late Late is an anachronism. In its glory years of the 1970s and 1980s, there was nothing else. The very presence of people in Ireland talking on television about Irish things was remarkable in and of itself. To think that that the Gay Byrne Late Late was shy about combing the RTÉ canteen is to re-write history. But that wasn’t a problem then, because the very existence of the show was novel and thrilling. Who cared if this was Maureen Potter’s ten millionth appearance? Ireland had taken her place among the nations of the Earth.

That thrill is now long gone. The audience’s sophistication has increased dramatically, meaning that they are less tolerant of the revolving guest list of Pat Shortt, Brendan O’Carroll and someone from Fair City. But they are not so sophisticated as to go watch something else. The nation hasn’t reached that level yet, it seems.

This presents RTÉ with a dilemma. The show must stay on the road because it brings in the money necessary to pay those extraordinary RTÉ salaries, but the standard of show is now so low that it has to be depressing everyone who works in Montrose. It’s time for a change. Tubridy is out of his depth. They need a new host – or hostess.

Miriam O’Callaghan is presented as the Woman Most Likely whenever this discussion comes up, but RTÉ should be a little more daring and give the Late Late Show a 21st Century hostess. Someone who can talk equally well to the Fair City starlets before the break and put the heat on public figures after.

There’s only one choice. It has to be Claire Byrne, and for three reasons.

Firstly, she can do all the frothy stuff, as she does weekly on the Daily Show. Your correspondent has never seen the Daily Show but it’s almost certainly fine, if that’s your bag. Tubridy is fine interviewing the Fair City barmaids too, but it was, famously, a point of contention for Pat Kenny.

But while Tubridy struggles with the grown-up stuff, Byrne is excellent, as she proves daily on the Late Debate on Radio One and used to prove on the Newstalk Breakfast Show. This is the second point in her favour. Claire Byrne understands current affairs. Not only is she is a tenacious interviewer, but she never editorialises. She knows he purpose is to moderate debate, rather than participate in it.

The final reason Claire Byrne would make an excellent hostess for the Late Late Show is less obvious, but vital. She can’t be pushed around.

It’s a small thing, but subtly revealing – the Newstalk Breakfast Show does a paper view every morning. And while your correspondent hasn’t been keeping score, I do have the impression that Ivan Yates always does the broadsheets and Chris Donaghue always does the tabloids. When Claire Byrne co-hosted, they alternated. That says a lot about La Byrne.

If the Late Late Show can be saved, it’s only Claire Byrne that can do it. And if RTÉ send Brendan O’Connor to Mongolia and replace his wretched show with Máirtín Tom Sheáinín’s marvellous Comhrá on TG4, that wouldn’t be a bad day’s work either.

Pat Kenny Attacked on the Frontline Last Night

When you want to see the nation as she is, RTÉ's Frontline is appointment TV. Astonishing tirade.







Technorati Tags: Ireland, recession, politics, TV, RTÉ, Pat Kenny, Frontline

Ryan Tubridy to Host the Late Late Show

The really astonishing thing, of course, is that The Late Late Show has lasted as long as it has. The very fact it survived under Gay Byrne for thirty-seven years is amazing in itself. But once Byrne retired, RTÉ realised that the brand was so enormous that it simply couldn’t be discontinued. The Late Late Show was drawing in far too much money to even contemplate the idea of Byrne taking it away with him on his new motorcycle.

And so it has marched on, presented by Pat Kenny, for ten years. Ten years! An Spailpín Fánach does not know anyone who enjoyed Pat Kenny’s Late Late Show, and yet the viewing figures were consistently huge. Ten years, and never been kissed.

The Irish nation sat at home in their hundreds of thousands every Friday night, during the most prosperous times the country has ever seen, to watch Pat Kenny pretend to be interested in what some B-list bimbo on some C-list English soap had to say about where she buys her shoes, her take on Martin Heidegger and the influence of phenomenology on his metaphysical theories, and why she loves Mamma Mia!

One of Gay Byrne’s countless gifts was that he had an endless appetite for this sort of stuff. Yes, he delighted in guests like Sir Peter Ustinov or Billy Connolly, but he was equally happy whenever Tom O’Connor popped over from the mainland, with limp jokes about golf sweaters. Deep in the hidden heart of him, is it the case that Gay Byrne was never as happy in his life as when he was interviewing Ken Dodd and the Beatles for Granada TV in the early 1960s? Was everything downhill for him after those impossible peaks?

How Pat Kenny must have despised the countless interviews with someone like Andrew Sachs’ grand-daughter, and her three charming friends. Pat Kenny, whatever else you may say about him, is no daw; RTÉ did a heart monitor survey once in the eighties to see what effect the cameras going live had on their presenters, and Kenny’s never flickered one single beat. Remember him on Today Tonight or doing the elections in the early 1980s, with the hair sprayed in place, and the steely silver specs, grilling Jim Kemmy or Martin O’Donaghue?

What a fall from that to “former EastEnder Letitia Dean talks to Pat about the effect being in the soap had on her life, being at her fittest at 41 and her current stint in the stage version of High School Musical in Dublin.” The horror, the horror.

Gay Byrne seemed to be interested in everybody, even if he wasn’t. That was one of the reasons why the famous Mike Murphy hidden camera sketch was so funny – it was astonishing to see Byrne lose his cool. Whereas Pat Kenny struggles to hide his boredom or his contempt. When Kenny tore up the entry of that lady in a competition who wasn’t impressed with her prize the writing was on the wall. Kenny is returning to current affairs now, and he’ll be much more at home.

And so Ryan Tubridy takes over. Every generation, perhaps, gets the Late Late Show it deserves. It is appropriate that Pat Kenny presented the Late Late during the property boom that is now devouring its own tail – Pat Kenny, who fought the battle of Gorse Hill, and ended up paying over one million Euro for one fifth of an acre of ground.

It’s hard to know what Tubridy will do with the Late Late. Miriam O’Callaghan was the obvious choice. She had the current affairs experience with Prime Time, and her very successful summer chat show proved that she could do light entertainment as well. And yet Tubridy has got the gig instead.

The most successful period of Ryan Tubridy’s career was when he presented a breakfast show on 2FM. He succeeded the Rick and Ruth show, and was succeeded by the incumbents, both productions that make Tubridy’s time seem like Jack Charlton’s reign as Irish soccer manager – gilded fore and aft by what went before and what came after. The rest of Tubridy’s output seems something of a mixed bag, making it hard to judge what the new look Late Late Show will be like.

What Tubridy will do with the Late Late Show is limited by the enormity of the Late Late Show itself. It is as much a part of the nation now as the All-Ireland final or Tayto crisps. What is more certain, however, is that Tubridy is very much of his time. A lot of people were hot and bothered about Kenny’s Late Late GAA tribute. One would almost wish for the GAA to celebrate 126 years next year, just to see what Ryan Tubridy would make of it.

For better or worse, Ryan Tubridy reflects who the Irish are now, and is the person to whom the majority of people aspire. The funniest thing that An Spailpín read in the speculation about who would take over as host of the Late Late Show was a squib in Irish language newspaper Foinse that Mairtín Tom Sheáinín Mac Donncha, presenter of Comhrá on TG4, had emerged as a dark horse candidate. Whatever else happens, Tubridy’s Late Late will not be anything like Máirtín Tom Sheáinín’s might have been. Whether that is a good or bad thing we’ll just have to wait and see.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, TV, Late Late Show, RTÉ, Ryan Tubridy, Pat Kenny, Gay Byrne

Hard Times Return to Erin - And Could Be Here a While

Brian Lenihan swung his axe yesterday, and the steel bit home into an Ireland that had been living beyond its means. Worst of all, this is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. The future looks bleak for quite some time. Fast forward four years and seven weeks, to the Late Late Show of December 1st, 2012...

The titles roll as the owl takes his customary flight over the credits. The cameras go live to studio 4, where host Pat Kenny comes out to the cheers of the studio audience. The lights are flickering slightly, and Kenny doesn’t look quite as well groomed as is his wont; during the show, he keeps tugging at the collar of his suit jacket, as if it itches.

PAT KENNY: Hello and welcome to the Late Late Show, sponsored by Lidl – remember folks, turnips are only five Euro a pound in Lidl for the happy hour this Saturday, from four to five, be sure to get their early, and dress for battle – and what a show we’ve got for you tonight. But let’s get right to it, and welcome my first guest, the fabulous Caroline Morahan!

Wild cheers. Caroline comes on stage, waves to the crowd, sits down, bats Pat’s paw smartly away from her shapely knee, and smiles radiantly – or as radiantly as radiantly gets when a few choppers are missing.

PAT: Caroline! How fabulous you look!

CAROLINE (whistling slightly, due to the gaps in the teeth): Pat, you’re too much! Ah hah hah hah!

PAT: Caroline, what is your secret? How are you getting through the recession and remaining so fabulous?

CAROLINE: Well Pat, I was going to keep it to myself, but I can’t not share it with the sisters, ah hah hah hah.

Laughter, hissing from the audience. And a strange smell, truth be told.

CAROLINE: You see Pat, the secret is soup.

PAT: Soup!

CAROLINE: Yes Pat. Nettle soup.

PAT: Nettles! My goodness. Tell me more.

CAROLINE (forgetting herself, and leaning into him): Well Pat, one thing I think we neglect in this country is our traditional Irish cuisine. I mean France is famous for its cuisine, it’s impossible to think of Italy without their fabulous pasta dishes, so I thought: why not get back to good old Irish tradition?

PAT (as the paw snakes across the desk): Why not, indeed?

CAROLINE (wise to the play, sitting smartly back): Exactly! So I got on my bike and cycled out to Dunsink, where you can get the most beautiful nettles, and I spent an hour or two picking them and popping them into my basket. Home then, and I popped a big cauldron on the open fire and just threw in the nettles. Six hours boiling – and don’t forget ladies, boiling also heats the room – on the embers, drain and serve a nourishing broth for all the family.

PAT: Well, it’s certainly suiting you Caroline. Your skin looks simply radiant – do you find nettle soup good for the skin?

CAROLINE (through gritted teeth): You’ll never know, Pateen my boy.

PAT: Let’s have a big hand for Miss Caroline Morahan, ladies and gentlemen!

Applause.

PAT: Caroline is off now, as her shift with the taxi company starts at half-ten. Well, it’s all go. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our first musical guest, all the way from the ‘sixties, it’s The Who!

The camera pans across to two old men, one with a guitar. He raises his right high in the air, slashes down on his Rickenbacker – and all the lights go out.

GUITARIST: Wot the fack is this?

PAT: Ah, Jesus! Where’s the floor manager?

AUDIENCE: What matter as long as we’re indoors! It’s so cold! Brr!

PAT: What do you mean, meter? I don’t know anything about any meter? What? Well, you bloody cycle it. I don’t care how long it’s been since you’ve eaten – Christ, some people can only think of their bellies. Get peddlin’ – we need the light!

Pat slowly comes back into view. It looks a little like a daguerreotype of the 19th century, but beggars, choosers, talk to the hand, yada yada.

PAT: And now, a harrowing real life tale. Please welcome my next guests, Dan O’Hara and journalist Liz Bennett.

Two guests walk on, Dan and Liz.

PAT: In 2008, in the first year of the Depression –

AUDIENCE: Oh God between us and all harm, the Depression! Will there every be joy agin in Erin?

PAT: Ah, keep the head, will ye? Or else it’s back out in the snow. Now, where was I? Oh yes - in the first year of the Depression, Dan O’Hara was sold by his father into slavery. Now, with the help of journalist Liz Bennett of the Daily Mirror, Dan’s story is finally told. Welcome Dan.

DAN: Thanks now Pat, thanks.

PAT: Dan, your father sold you into slavery back in 2008. Is that true?

DAN: Oh it’s true Pat, yeah, not a word of a lie.

PAT: And what price did he get?

DAN: That man sold me for three hundred Euro and two hundred worth of parts for an E class Merc.

AUDIENCE: Oh!

LIZ: It’s shameful!

DAN: I’m very ashamed.

PAT: Oh dear, oh dear.

DAN: I’ll never forgive him. I mean, I was a big, strong boy. He could have got eight hundred, even a grand cash, if he’d a only tried.

LIZ: Dan’s father proved, time and again, to have no head for money.

DAN: No head at all, at all. No good with the cash.

PAT: Dear oh dear.

LIZ: Pat, you have to remember, slavery was still underground in 2008. It was a sellers’ market, and this man settled for a mere half brick. It’s a scandal, and it's time that this story was told.

DAN: No good at the sums, like.

PAT: Dear oh dear. Dan, Liz, thank you for coming, you’re both very brave.
And that’s all we have for you this evening ladies and gentlemen. We hope that you enjoyed the show, and don’t forget, next week, it’s the Late Late Toy Show!

Pat gives a big wink to the camera.

PAT: So don’t forget to tune in and join all the wonderful boys and girls as they work their little fingers to the bone making cheap tat for sale in Laos, Myanmar, and Bhutan. Until then, good night!







Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, satire, RTÉ, Pat Kenny, Caroline Morahan, Late Late Show, politics, budget