Gay Byrne announced yesterday that as well as giving up his RTE radio show at Christmas he will present the Late Late Show for only one more season.
The broadcaster said he would present the Late Late Show until next June but would not be going on to New Year's Eve or the millennium. Speaking on Liveline with Joe Duffy, Mr Byrne said: "What I've agreed with Helen [Shaw, RTE's Director of Radio] and the DG [Director General] is that I'll do the radio programme until Christmas and then I think it'll be a good time to call it a day, and I've also agreed to do the Late Late Show for one more season and call it a day on that as well." That's how the matter stands at the moment." When Joe Duffy asked him what, after 26 years at the top, his formula was, he replied: "I haven't the faintest idea."
He said the Gay Byrne Show had taken took off from the word go. At one point it had 860,000 listeners and it was "like a huge village getting together every morning. But we couldn't keep up in the new circumstances. People will always find local radio, in certain respects, more congenial." On what the future holds, he said he was looking forward to having "this thing called a sabbatical". "I want to see what may happen by doing nothing for the short period of time and see what might attract me after that," he said.
He admitted he was a flying buff and he would like to be associated in some way with aeroplanes and flying. He hoped the Gay Byrne fund on the radio show would continue, even if it no longer carried his name. As far as daily programmes were concerned, that was finished, but he was not saying he would never work on radio or television again.
Replying to a question about the trauma of the Russell Murphy episode, in which the broadcaster lost a substantial amount of his life's savings, Mr Byrne said he was very glad it was all over. "That is a chapter in my life which is closed, bolted, and all of that is finished and has no interest for me at all."
On the controversial question of the Cabinet wishing to know the salaries of the station's top 20 broadcasters, Mr Byrne said: "We are freelance, self-employed people. "Like any other freelance, self-employed person we may be dealing next week, or next month, or next year, with BBC or ITV, or Channel 4 or 5 or TV3, and if we're going to negotiate a contract it is to our advantage that the other party doesn't know what we're paid and that gives you some sort of negotiating flexibility."
He said it was a normal competitive commercial thing. Asked if he was upset that the Cabinet would want to know what he earned, he said apparently it was not quite like that but he couldn't care less. All contracts were subject to privacy and confidentiality. There was a general prurient interest in what Gaybo, or Pat Kenny or Joe Duffy was paid, but they had no pension rights and there would be no golden handshake.
Paying tribute to Gay Byrne yesterday, Ms Helen Shaw described as "unique and groundbreaking" the contribution he had made to radio over the past 26 years. "There'll never be another Gay Byrne. The whole debate over who will replace Gay is in some way academic. Gay basically changed the sound of radio and invented talk radio in Ireland. "It will be with a great deal of sadness and nostalgia that the Gay Byrne Show will end. This is Gay's decision, and what I've committed to delivering is a very special last season for this very special show."