TV Review: Dev had good reason to quake. Part 1 of the two-part documentary, Gaybo, treated us to some poignant archive of de Valera, who, looking like an intelligent, bespectacled tortoise, head quivering with indignation on top of his delicate neck, spoke grimly of the advent of television.
"Never before," he mused, "has there been an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the masses." (And how right you were, Dev, seeing as our livingrooms were invaded once again this week by Jordan, who, thanks to a couple of bags of silicone stuffed into her already generous breasts, is reportedly worth a staggering £10 million [€14.8 million]. Not bad money for tossing your mammaries around and eating a couple of spiders. But we'll get back to that.)
Whatever about the cult of celebrity, when Eamonn Andrews, Byrne's long-time friend and broadcasting hero, presented the first night of RTÉ in 1961, no one, least of all Gabriel Mary Byrne (who watched the proceedings at home with his mammy), could have predicted that Byrne would become Ireland's most successful broadcaster and that The Late Late Show would dominate Irish television for more than 30 years.
At the time of the launch, Byrne was working for Granada Television in Manchester (where the teetotal, Mass-going Irishman was, according to then-colleague Michael Parkinson, somewhat isolated by the channel's proliferation of "hairy-arsed journos") and anxious to be part of the fledgling home station.
"I assumed," Byrne said wryly, "that they would come looking for me." His TV producer brother Ernest, who had returned from the US to set up the station, told him, however, that if he wanted a job in Montrose, he'd better apply. He did.
Byrne's canny insistence that he be his own producer was critical to the success of The Late Late. Byrne knew that a country the size of Ireland did not have enough celebrities to maintain a conventional talk-show; instead, he and his team chose a topic for a panel and a studio audience to debate. In this way, some argued, Byrne began to set the agenda for the country.
There was a scattering of highlights remembered from that gregarious agenda, looking now like postcards from another era: Nell McCafferty and an audaciously prim Mary Kenny recalled when their all-female panel (bar Gay), discussing the contentious issue of Irish feminism, was interrupted by Garret FitzGerald, who apparently had been so exercised by the debate that he vacated his fireside chair at home and dashed over to Montrose to make his contribution in the studio.
Also recalled was the time when a caller to the show revealed to the nation that she slept nude. This brought down the sceptred wrath of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who was apparently on his way to bed himself when he heard the news (presumably in his pyjamas). McQuaid wrote to the then controller of programmes, asserting that as Donnybrook was within his jurisdiction, he should have complete control of everything that happened in Montrose.
So far, Gaybo has been nostalgic if not riveting viewing and, while gently teasing the national memory, it is not a top 10 countdown of memorable Late Late moments (although that's probably in the bag). It tells us little about Byrne that we don't already know. A moderate conservative, a hard-working, tenacious and reliable host who steered the national psyche through decades of choppy waters (condoms, corruption, gay rights and fertile bishops, to name but a few), Byrne, as Fintan O'Toole pointed out, had no agenda other than entertainment. He was, above all, a superb facilitator and conduit, who saw his job as getting to know us rather than letting us get to know him.
Writer and director Alan Gilsenan was also facilitating expression in the first programme of his four-part documentary, The Asylum. Filmed in the ghostly, almost deserted St Ita's Hospital in Portrane, Co Dublin, Gilsenan's moving and sensitive exploration went beyond the foreboding red brick of this gothic seaside castle and attempted to document the now mainly "psycho-geriatric" patients that live behind those walls, some of them there for more than half a century.
At its height in the 1950s, St Ita's housed 2,200 residents on its 300 acres; the vast asylum, built in 1896 to take the overflow from Dublin's Richmond Hospital and to give safe haven to the psychiatrically ill, boasted two chapels, a bakery, a fire station, a cobbler, a butcher, a tailor, a morgue and a graveyard (where the remains of more than 5,000 residents lie in unmarked graves).
These are the dying days of the institution. The neglect that St Ita's suffered during the latter part of the 20th century is evident in the dilapidated hallways and cavernous empty wards, where the detritus of the former residents' lives is visible: a sorrowful old piano, a pink blanket, skeletal iron bedsteads and the echo of empty days, of lifetimes spent traversing highways of linoleum.
Gilsenan and his crew have faced a degree of criticism for supposedly infringing the privacy of the residents of St Ita's. Gilsenan, however, claims to have respected the wishes of everyone he filmed: at any stage, anyone could withdraw their contribution from being televised, and some did.
Certainly the crew seems to have developed a gentle and non-invasive rapport with the residents, offering a dignified picture of a much-maligned institution.
Gilsenan's series is an important document. The men and women interviewed have been heard, and will be remembered, and this has to be of value.Few personal histories have so far been related, but there have been fragments.
Larry Sheehan, at 83, pieced together the events that led to him being driven to St Ita's in a Black Maria.
"I'm here since 1952 - how long would that be?" he asked.
"More than 50 years," replied Gilsenan.
"Sometimes you're lucky," Sheehan said stoically. "Sometimes you're not."
Peadar Lynch visits daily to hold the hand of his wife, Tina, now on the distant shores of Alzheimer's. Peadar wanted to talk about his wife, about how she eventually agreed to a date with him after he called in to her parents' fish-and-chip shop with the intoxicating score of Rigoletto under his arm. In The Asylum, Peadar sang "Faustina, be my own fair bride" to Tina, and we witnessed his devotion and his great, fruitless longing to recapture their past.
And there was the extraordinary poetry of Kevin Flynn, fag in hand, cap on, talking about the day he met Jesus in a field: "Can you describe him?" asked Gilsenan.
"Sandals with feet bare, and a silent walk - and I looking after beehives." "And did he say anything to you?" "Kevin Flynn, I love you! I love you! I love you!"
Jordan and her breasts were, I suspect, behind Piers Morgan's ire in The Death of Celebrity. With not a whole lot to do since being fired as editor of the Daily Mirror, Morgan has turned his attention to inoculating us against an "epidemic of meaningless celebrity". To give Morgan his due, there are enough meandering "celebs" out there to repopulate Portrane, but surely rehashing their direst moments on TV is not the way to get shot of them.
All the usual suspects were there: Abi Titmuss, "tawdry and talent-free", and her gravity-defying implants; Calum Best, who can't actually spell celebrity; and Rebecca Loos, famous for sleeping with a man with a sarong.
"Anything else?" inquired Morgan of Loos.
"Ermm," she replied. "I have a column in Nuts!"
To give weight to his argument (which seemed boring even to him after about five minutes), Morgan interviewed people whom he dignified with having real talent. Actor Michael Gambon (who looked unsure as to why Piers Morgan had arrived in his dressing room) sardonically remarked that "they shouldn't be allowed to give the public what they want", before stifling a yawn.
Anyway, back to Jordan for the third and last time: turns out that the glamour queen has used her vast fortune to buy a house in the very country village where Morgan is resident (Ex-Editors-Upon-Hubris?) and she's driving around it in a Bentley (probably withher roots showing)! Celebs these days, eh?
KARL SPAIN CONTINUES to insist on finding a woman. In Karl Spain Wants A Woman, the comedian and his crew traverse the country to meet a series of blind dates in the wholesome light of a grey afternoon. Forget candlelit dinners or weekends in Budapest; a funfair, a footie match and a pottery class were on the Spain menu this week.
To add insult to matrimony, Spain was sent to flirting coach Peta Heskell, who, in an effort to make him appear more playful and confident, mysteriously made him walk up the stairs like Cary Grant. Then there was the man offering "aura services", who told Spain enigmatically: "The only one withholding validation from you is you." Come again?
The search for a mate continues, although I think Spain has already met his amour: it's the one, as he said himself, that he rear-ended on the dodgems on their first date. Yes, it's contestant number one, the friendly accountant in the well-ironed shirt, that gets my vote - just name me one comedian that doesn't need a friendly accountant.
