It was Zoo TV — but without U2

The audience swilled beer, oblivious to the guests, and the set was a makeshift ‘pub’. It could only be Nighthawks, writes Noel Baker.

YOU know when you eavesdrop on a pub conversation and think ‘God, I’d love to be involved in that one?’. Well, on 289 separate occasions in the early nineties, RTE screened that very pub chat across the nation — and everyone was invited.

The programme was Nighthawks, and from 1989 to 1993 it changed the language of Irish television with a format that, even today, seems strange and anarchic.