Laura Slattery: What the Late Late needs now is the total chaos of guest hosts

It’s the Late Late Show, and here is your host ... oops, no, sorry, we don’t have one. Talk among yourselves.

It hasn’t quite reached that stage yet, but time is ticking: RTÉ bosses will need to pull a rabbit out of a hat soon to have a successor to demob happy Ryan Tubridy in place in advance of next season.

No obvious internal successor is lined up, potential candidates have clarified they have better things to be doing and the commercial peril is heightening by the day. The latest whispers are that RTÉ is now just one withdrawal statement away from asking the Late Late owl to step up.

I realise that advertisers would hate it, the instability would be a headache for the production team and there would be a new set of nerves, stylistic tics and weird asks to deal with each week

I would like to propose an interim solution and it is — drumroll — guest hosts. A different host for each of the 37 long weeks that the Late Late is on air. A host for everyone in the audience.

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If there aren’t 37 available, then a rotating host, and not in Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel sense of rotating.

“Like jury service,” tweeted erstwhile Irish Times arts editor Laurence Mackin while joking that we should all get a go for a night. At least, I think he was joking.

I’m not. I realise that advertisers would hate it, the instability would be a headache for the production team and there would be a new set of nerves, stylistic tics and weird asks to deal with each week.

But, for viewers, the sport and novelty of it all would be fantastic. Who will make the show their own? Who will flop and flail? Who will take us on a wild journey from effusive opening monologue to mid-show existential crisis? I’d tune in.

In 1999, Pat Kenny was confirmed as the successor to Gay Byrne on May 24th. In 2009, Tubridy was announced as the successor to Kenny on May 11th.

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There’s still time for RTÉ to get next season back on track along more traditional single-host lines. But both Kenny and Tubridy were the anointed ones. On this occasion, it seems RTÉ was counting on Claire Byrne being their safe pair of hands, yet dragged its heels on finding out if she was actually interested.

She’s not, and neither is possible alternative Sarah McInerney, sparking a hasty scramble back to the drawing board.

This embarrassment is the outcome of cracks in RTÉ's succession planning that first started to appear years ago after Ray D’Arcy was persuaded back from Today FM only for his Saturday night chat show to prove underwhelming. Its run had been shortened by the time Covid killed it off.

Speculation firmly suggests instead that the rabbit RTÉ executives hope to pull out goes by the name of Patrick Kielty

RTÉ One’s two main Saturday night vehicles in recent years have been the Tommy Tiernan Show and Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything, both pre-recorded shows that inevitably flatter their hosts in the edit. Neither Tiernan nor Scanlon are considered likely Late Late contenders.

Speculation firmly suggests instead that the rabbit RTÉ executives hope to pull out goes by the name of Patrick Kielty.

He is now the bookies’ favourite, a status based partly on the fact that he hosted a BBC Northern Ireland chat show at the turn of the millennium and partly on the fact he sounds fond of the show in a non-committal sort of way.

He’s a likeable presence. He could be excellent. Like Scanlon, however, he lives in London. And surely if RTÉ is going to shell out for a London-based outsider, it should be another comedian: Dara Ó Briain.

Add Tubridy’s disgruntled reflection on the toll that 14 years of the Late Late has taken on him to Byrne’s stressing of the “huge commitment” demanded by the show and Graham Norton’s verdict that even being a guest on it is “hard work” and it is evident that the Late Late is widely regarded as much too much.

The season length is much too much — Norton’s BBC show, a star magnet by comparison, runs for about 20 episodes. The running time is much too much — even the owl wants to go to bed by the end.

And for some lesser-tried, lesser-tested presenters — both within RTÉ and outside of it — the level of skill this tonal rollercoaster requires of them may be much too much.

There’s only one way to find out and that’s to shove as many of them as possible in front of the Studio 4 cameras to sink or swim. Look, it would still be easier than going on Dancing with the Stars.

Names who have baulked at the idea of presiding over a full season of this live chat show “institution” should be able to stop their eyes glazing over during a one-off. Some might even enjoy the experience.

I have other guest host nominees, but there are two RTÉ stalwarts who should still be in the mix, Kielty notwithstanding, to inherit the job permanently

Comedians Deirdre O’Kane, Oliver Callan and Emma Doran for one night only? Why not? Marty “friend of the new director general” Morrissey? Likewise. Ó Briain, just to say he did it once? A great coup — he’s a busy man. The versatile and also busy Baz Ashmawy? Absolutely, and maybe he’s the man for the Toy Show, too.

I have other guest host nominees, but there are two RTÉ stalwarts who should still be in the mix, Kielty notwithstanding, to inherit the job permanently, so a word on them instead.

On the surface, Brendan O’Connor and Jennifer Zamparelli might not seem to have loads in common. He is a man in his 50s with a newspaper column and a weekend Radio 1 show. She is a woman in her 40s with a celebrity dancing gig and a weekday 2FM show.

Together they could fight crime. Separately, they are viable Late Late hosts, with CVs that encompass comedy, TV talent contests and regular live broadcasting. They are united by an abundance of the most important quality of all for live television: confidence.

If I was in charge, I’d go with one or the other, BO’C or Jenn Zed, probably Jenn Zed — but only after a full season of guest hosts, because that’s the total chaos we deserve right now. Come on, RTÉ. Choose chaos.