RTÉ television was a catalyst for change in the development of modern Ireland

DON’T mention RTÉ’s 50th anniversary to Terry Wogan.

The second most even-tempered man in show business gets remarkably touchy about the early, the formative, the seminal days of Montrose.

He says that all sorts of chancers from overseas pitched up in Donnybrook in those days, claiming to have been controllers of programmes and producers of foreign TV stations when, in fact, they were janitors in those stations. Those chancers, he said last week, got prestigious, powerful and financially rewarding jobs in the new TV station, and once safely in those cushy posts, set out to prevent guys like him succeeding at home, forcing them instead, to knock on the door of the BBC.