Gaybo comes to The Source
Gay Byrne, affectionately known as Uncle Gay, Gaybo or Uncle Gaybo is without any doubt one of the most loved television and radio personalities ever to take to the airwaves in Irish history. His most notable broadcasting role was as the first host of “The Late Late Show,” over a 37-year period spanning 1962 until 1999. From 1973 until 1998, Gaybo also presented “The Gay Byrne Hour,” later “The Gay Byrne Show,” when it expanded to a two hour show on RTÉ Radio 1, each weekday morning.
He comes to The Source Theatre, Thurles, on April 11th next.
Gay, came from a good stable, (to use one of my grandmother’s famous quotes). Born of son of Edward Byrne, who joined the Irish Volunteers in 1912, his father later joined the 19th Hussars, Infantry Division, at the commencement of World War I. He again later fought during the Irish War of Independence, including O’Connell Street, Dublin, before taking up employment in Author Guinness. Here he worked on the barges that operated on the river Liffey, transporting wooden casks from St. James’s Gate Brewery to ships anchored at the North Wall, Dublin. Edward Byrne had married Gay’s mother, Annie Carroll, latter a native of Bray, Co Wicklow, in Belfast, in 1917, while briefly home on leave from World War I.
Gay Byrne’s “The Late Late Show,” had much to do in shaping our modern Ireland that began emerging from the 1960s. Indeed it was famously stated by one politician, Mr Oliver J. Flanagan, that, “there was no sex in Ireland until Teilifís Éireann went on the air.” The then Bishop of Galway, Michael Browne once called Gay “a purveyor of filth,” following an interview where he had asked a woman what colour night attire she wore on her wedding night and to which the latter had replied stating that she believed she’d worn nothing. This was the same Bishop who in 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, had stated; “Non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest,” and for which remark later he would be forced to publicly apologise.
Though Gay saw himself as a presenter of current debate and never a radical social reformer, he was indeed both, by his ability to open up & publicly discuss certain closed topics, which many of us growing up in the ‘Gaybo era,’ were perhaps reluctant to speak about openly, or if we were honest, too ignorant to understand that every story has two sides, both worthy of discussion.
Today the 78 year old still attracts the headlines, vigorously opposing Property Tax, which he opposed previously in the 1990s. In a statement recently to the Evening Herald, Gay states again publicly what the rest of us now accept in silence;
“I always thought the property tax was a bad idea and it is there solely to appease the Labour Party and the left-wing people in Government. That’s why it’s there, and the Troika in Europe who want it for the same reasons. This should be proof to us that we are no longer masters of our fate. We are being told what to do every single hour of every day by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They are doing the same in Cyprus.“
He said his opposition to the property tax, which he began on the Gay Byrne Hour, the weekday radio programme he presented for 27 years on RTE Radio, had infuriated the Labour Party. Gay stated;
“I know the Labour Party at the time detested me for my opposition to it. Because they saw the people being taxed as wealthy people living in big houses. But I had letters from old and retired people all over the country who were living in reasonably good houses which they had bought 40 or 50 years beforehand. These older people were certainly not earning the same money any more, and on a low pension, it seemed to be, and I said it out loud on the radio day after day, they were being taxed for just staying alive.”
Gay Byrne, will perform his show, “Gay Byrne Live,” as part of a short Irish tour at The Source Theatre, Thurles. Following sell-out shows last year, this is an exclusive chance to enjoy Gay at his very best, extolling some of the greatest show-biz stories, never told in an hilarious evening’s entertainment.
His show is one night only, on Thursday, April 11th and tickets, believe me are going to be “as scarce as hen’s teeth.”
For more booking details Click HERE or ring The Source Box Office on Tel: 0504 90204.
Leave a Reply