It was in the Bishop and the Nightie affair, when he asked a woman in the audience what she had worn on her wedding night. She replied that she had worn nothing. This drew the ire of the Bishop of Clonfert. The very ground seemed to shake with the controversy which erupted for a few days.
Oddly enough, he was probably the only one who remembered years later that he had apologised: all the public remembered was that a bishop had made a fool of himself over a harmless joke by a woman about her wedding night.
It was the first Irish programme to invite listeners to ring in to talk about whatever was on their minds. Today, the practice is ubiquitous in Irish radio. At the time, when radio was relatively formal and stylised — before the show began to be broadcast, the station actually closed down every morning until lunchtime — it was revolutionary.
A dam broke with the hundreds of letters sent in to the show in response to the tragic death of Ann Lovett in They contained the previously untold, heartrending experiences of many women in Ireland at the time. The great contradiction of Gay Byrne, of course, was that in so many of his views he was conservative, though he did so much to undermine the very conservative approach which had characterised Irish life well into the s.
He took the view, for instance, that the country was going to the dogs economically and that State spending was too high. Too few people were working to pay welfare to too many people. Taxes were too high. He had an immense capacity for hard work. In , for instance, he commuted weekly between Dublin and Manchester where he worked for Granada. After a time, he decided he wanted to be in Dublin and moved back. His stint of many years in which he did both The Late Late Show and the daily radio programme was, to say the least, a marathon.
He was, for many years, presenter of the Rose of Tralee festival, and other one-off specials. In its later years, The Late Late Show — he presented his last one in — lost some of its controversial edge, probably because the country had shed much of that conservatism which had made the show so exciting and controversial in its early days. There were still moments of drama, though — his interview with Annie Murphy about her affair with Bishop Eamonn Casey was criticised as condescending and insensitive.
A consummate entertainer, he also provided a voice for all those who had been silenced or were afraid to speak up, and he forced us to confront things that needed to be challenged in our society. Ireland had braced for the death of Uncle Gaybo, as many called him, since he revealed he had prostate cancer in He was an affable everyman who could banter with guests and audiences while precipitating controversy in a socially conservative society dominated by the Catholic church.
During a quiz item for married couples in Byrne asked a contestant what colour nightie she had worn on the night of her honeymoon. Gay Byrne Writer. Gay Byrne height - How tall is Gay Byrne? Gay Byrne. Lucky McKee. Herman Wouk. Neil Strauss. Rachel Specter. Gay Byrne celebrates birthday on August 5 of every year. Gay Byrne Birthday Countdown 0 0 0. He was married to Kathleen Watkins from until his death in November Let's check it out!
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