RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

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When you see clips from his tenure on the LLS, there's a definite trend starting in 2009 where he attempted to host a show similar to his predecessors by interviewing serious people on serious topics and doing a poor man's Jeremy Paxman act, and then finishing up with a show which had slowly devolved into the weekly misery slot, endless soft focus chitchats with RTE/NK Mgmt lovies and the regular "Up ya boy ya" specials, country music, Trad etc etc.

He always looked so out of his depth interviewing individuals like Gerry Adams and trying to hold him to some kind of account. He had such a black and white, rudimentary, child-like grasp of the real world and certainly couldn't relate to people who grew up on effectively a different planet to his D4 bubble.

I think he and the LLS team quickly learned that this bookish intellectual parlour act wasn't going to cut the mustard in any real sense so the show had to adapt to suit his very limited capabilites. Although I'm not a big fan of the all conquering ego that is Joe Brolly, he made some very revealing remarks on his podcast about the RTE fiasco. He recounted how in the run up to a LLS appearance, he was contacted by a researcher to get a list of topics he wanted to cover in his interview with Tubridy. Brolly being Brolly, he told the staffer he just wanted to raise awareness about X and then would like to have a free wheeling chat and a bit of craic, he didn't have a list of subjects. He was shocked when the staffer countered by saying Ryan couldn't work in this way and had to have a definite list of topics they were going to talk about. Brolly then went on say how for the entire interview, Tubridy was basically clued to the cuecards and didnt actually engage him in conversation in any meaningful way.

He really was the most unsuited person to hosting that show. Even if he and the RTE crew had made a genuine decision to attempt to move the LLS into a lighter entertainment vehicle, similar to US and UK fare, they really didn't understand their audience or what they wanted. For one thing, Ireland can't do replicas of Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross or Conan O Brien, simply because we don't get the quantity and quality of guests in the country. Plus, Irish viewers actually WANT the LLS to have robust debates in the style of years gone by. We have plenty of home grown talent to fill out the seats on the set. All that was needed was a host who was capable of refereeing it.

I think Kielty certainly has that capability and I'm looking forward to seeing how he gets on. Have a feeling he'll hit the ground running.

Perhaps that idea that Tubridy is a voracious reader is just RTE/NKM PR? I'm not sure how many books read per year would qualify someone as being bookish but Tubridy probably reads far fewer than the average book reviewer.

Regards...jmcc

Regarding Montrose culture, it's not a conspiracy if everyone is acting in the same way.

I'm amazed it's taken this long for a trigger event.

I said before I’d give Kielty a 3 month chance to settle into the show but actually I’m now giving him the first year to do it- I actually think he’ll be super - not every show will be great, partly for the reasons you’ve pointed out, but I don’t think it will be Kieltys fault - the guests and the show format play a huge role too

The Late Late Show bags new sponsor ahead of the show's return tonight

Permanent TSB says it is partnering up with a “national institution”.

We never did get a really satisfactory, believable reason why he quit - especially at that moment.

Isn't that the same one that Lotto Lottie had to hand back??