When Gay Byrne sent me a tie - and the demise of the Late Late

Paul Fitzpatrick

When I was in fourth class, our teacher, Mrs Flynn, announced one day that we were all to write a letter to a famous Irish person, living or dead.
It was a competition, as it turned out. I wrote to Gay Byrne, then the undisputed king of the airwaves, and complimented him on his beautiful ties. My grandfather, I said, wore old, ragged ties and was a source of great embarrasment (okay, there was some artistic licence involved, a device I used liberally even at the age of 10).
The teacher sent off the entries and mine turned out to be one of the winners. I don't know who ran the competition – I think it was the County Council – or why, but the organisers sent the letter on to Gaybo and he wrote back and, get this, enclosed a brand new tie.
It was a lovely touch. Catherina McKiernan presented the winners with our prizes – two novels each – and our picture was printed in The Celt. It was great.
For a few weeks, I was glued to the Late Late Show every Friday night to see would Gay mention the little lad from Cavan whom he had sent a tie to.
He didn't – he might have mentioned it on radio but there was no podcasting back then so we couldn't listen back – but it didn't matter. The habit stuck and soon I was a loyal fan of the show, maybe the youngest one in the country.
I watched it all through my teens and the Kenny years. Some moments stand out. I was watching it the night the crank in the brown leather jacket accosted Pat and told him he was "an insufferable arsehole". I was watching, too, for Ryan Tubridy's interview with Gerry Adams, when the Sinn Féin leader lobbed a grenade – no pun intended – at the presenter with reference to Tubridy's grandfather being a veteran of the old IRA.
But as I got older and became too cool, I started to tune out. And when I did tune in, it was clear that the great old institution had become a two-hour long advertisement for RTE's other programming, broken up by some more ads disguised as competitions.
Last Friday week, I happened to be at a loose end and stuck it on. I lasted about 15 minutes. It was pathetic.
It started with Linda Martin – a singer who seems to be on every fortnight and was actually a guest on the night Brown Jacket Man vented at Pat, funnily enough – in a duet with gay comedian Al Porter.
I mention that Porter is gay only because that seems to be his entire shtick. He's an old school camp funnyman from the Carry On school. And. That. Is It. And I mean all of it – there's nothing else to his act.
This particular night marked the dreadfully unfunny Porter's sixth appearance on RTE's flagship show. He burst in with Linda, in fishnets, singing 'Real Dead Ringer For Love'.
It turned out that this was a Valentine's Day Special (of course, Valentine's Day was four full days away, closer to the following Friday, but that little detail is irrelevant on a production this formulaic).
The crowd was filled with, Tubs told us, “200 hormonal, frustrated and very single men and women... It's going to undoubtedly be one of the most debauched and decadent nights of the Late Late Show year”.
When the crowd took their seats after the musical-style entrance, they went ballistic. “Oh boy,” chortled Ryan, as the masses – buzzing with excitement and whipped into a frenzy - broke into a chant of "olé, olé, olé".
Gay comic Al, who shouts most of his material because that's funny, couldn't have chosen the audience any better but he went for a tap-in from the off just to be sure.
“How sexy does Ryan Tubridy look tonight?” he yelled - and the punters obediently erupted. By now we were five minutes in.
Quickly, in case we forgot that Porter was gay (he is gay, you know) Ryan asked him about his love life and Al mentioned that he was “very much in love, he's great”. Why that was relevant, I'm not sure – but he was on a roll now.
“You left me waiting too long, I always thought we'd be a great celebrity couple!" he beamed, before curiously adding "it would have been Ryan and Al,” against a backdrop of delirious laughter. What else would it have been?
Anyway, encouraged by this, Al let loose. His next gag was an anecdote about his mother giving out to him when he was a kid.
“If you don't stop misbehaving,” he recounted her saying, “I'll shove that where the sun don't shine.” At that, he bent over Tubridy's desk and waggled his backside, shouting “Go on Ma, you might as well!”
The crowd (“Half of this audience I would, the other half never again!” he bellowed at one point) were lapping it up and Al was in the mood to share the love.
“Linda Martin is a national legend,” he pointed out, apropos of nothing.
“It's true, it's true,” said Ryan.
We were now 10 minutes in. Next, Porter went through a mildly amusing – yet entirely unoriginal – sketch about his mother putting on a Hyancith Bucket-style grandiose front when strangers visited. The punchline? Al being gay.
“This is the foot rest – because she wouldn't admit she had a poof in the house,” he quipped, resulting, naturally, in Defcon 1 in the bleachers.
He then went through an ancient skit about the differences between gay and straight men describing sex before Tubridy set him up with a question about his trip to Dubai.
“I was afraid to get a burger in Five Guys [restaurant chain] in case someone said 'Al Porter was in five guys in Dubai',” he cracked, to more hilarity.
And then, the coup de grace. I can't recall how it started but Al slipped into full panto mode.
“Do we think Ryan Tubridy deserves a smooch?” he asked the audience (how he resisted a 'He's behind you' gag here, I'll never know).
He then leaped on to the table and performed a striptease which was obviously pre-ordained because 'Let's Get It On' came on.
“Now, it's competition time,” squirmed Ryan, as Porter wrestled to get planting a kiss on his cheek.
At that, I tuned out. Is this what it's come to? God be with the days of Uncle Gaybo and his free ties...

*Originally published on February 28, 2017