Reeling in the Late Late years

Presenters of The Late Late Show on RTÉ over the last five decades have included Gay Byrne, Pat Kenny and the current host of the longest running chat show on earth, Ryan Tubridy.

It’s debatable whether The Late Late Show really engineered social change. It’s more likely that it reflected it. It did, however, capture the zeitgeist on many occasions

THE Late Late Show first went out on air, 11.10pm, Friday, July 6, 1962. It was hatched as a summer filler item, which only lasted an hour. The RTÉ Guide’s listing for it was underwhelming, although it made one prescient note: “Your host is Gay Byrne and, in light-hearted fashion, he gets the ball of conversation rolling.”