Gay Byrne

I personally found Gay Byrne to be a snooty aul boll*x: this was when me and me Corpo mate Liam bumped into him on a Howth Head footpath back in ’82. We passed within two feet of him and I can’t remember which of us simply said “there you are Gay” but I do recall how he made a point of turning his head to ignore us. Needless to say someone let rip about him being too stuck up to talk to those who paid his wages, though whoever it was may have used more ‘industrial’ wording. On the other hand, he had, around the same time, been giving it large about some colleagues of ours being on strike, in the ‘holding the country to ransom vein’ ‘til, so the story goes, he happened to be stopped at traffic lights in the early hours of a miserable winter’s day in the vicinity of a picket line from these self-same strikers. Apparently the lads persuaded him to lower a window and informed him, forcibly, that these were precisely the sort of conditions they had to work in, day in day out, for a pittance compared to the salary waiting for him in Montrose when he got there in his fancy car. The upshot was that Byrne gave their point of view on the radio when he arrived, apologising over the air for making big statements on matters where he, literally, didn’t know what he was talking about- Niall Boylan, Ray D’arcy etc. please take note! My abiding memory of him though was an episode of The Late Late  where he had to make one of those phone calls to a punter who had entered a competition for some ritzy prize. You may recall them- the key was the person answering, live on-air, had to be the individual who had originally entered by post, otherwise they moved on to the next entry drawn at random. When he got through he asked if he was speaking to the woman who had written in, but was told no, it was that girl’s mother. “Why wasn’t she waiting by the phone?” he asked. “Because she died suddenly two days ago” was the heartbroken response. Now, I don’t know how a Philip Schofield-type would have dealt with this situation, with stunned embarrassment I suspect, but Byrne switched instinctively to compassion and empathy in a way which completely dismissed cameras, audience and viewers to engage, genuinely, with the poor woman as if they were alone in room. It was moving in a way which felt almost voyeuristic to watch, but I remember thinking ‘whatever we pay him, he’s worth it.’ No other broadcaster in the world could have handled that situation in the way he did. Maybe that’s why he refused to engage with the public, off the clock, because such empathy had to be conserved, just in case? Nah- it costs nothing, in any sense, just to nod your head at people on a footpath- ye snooty aul boll*x! Still a one-off though.