Gaybo felt nation’s pulse at time of seismic change
World of Politics with Harry McGee – [email protected]
Who will we have to remind us the country is ‘banjaxed’ now that the great Gay Byrne – the colossus who dominated Irish broadcasting for 40 years – is gone?
The passing of this giant of Irish life has dominated all public discourse since lunchtime on Monday – and that includes the bubble of politics.
The Late Late and his hugely influential radio show might have been classified as light entertainment; often, it was anything but. Nothing else opened the door, or shone a mirror, on Irish life with the same seismic effect.
The television show was mandatory viewing, especially in the days when most of the population lived in one or two-channel land. But the radio show was also hugely influential, especially when Byrne read a plaintive letter from a woman caught in a poverty trap, or abusive relationship, or in prostitution.
He arrived at a moment in time when the country was moving from a closed society to one that embraced the new more permissive world that came with the television and information revolution of sixties Ireland.
He attacked sacred cows, including compulsory Irish. Even though I would have been on the other side of the debate to Byrne, who was not a huge fan of Irish, he stimulated a debate that has continued to this day.
He also highlighted the plight of single young women (including teenagers) who became pregnant and were then shunned by society, many being forced into mother and baby homes. At the time, that was provocative to those who had guarded society’s morals with an iron fist, but being Gaybo he go away from it. He did specials on contraception; on gay life (he did a special with gay men at a time when homosexuality was criticised and also interviewed lesbian nuns); and on morality. The show did a light-hearted quiz in the 1960s during which a woman said she might not wear a nightie in bed. It led to a complaint from the Bishop of Clonfert who was outraged at the comments.
The Bishop’s intervention was foolish but still forced an apology from Byrne, which he later regretted. Still the Bishop and the Nightie became a famous moment in Irish broadcasting.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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