Gay Byrne

Gabriel Mary Byrne 5 August 1934 4 November 2019 was an Irish presenter and host of radio and television His most notable role was as the first host of The Late Late Show over a 37year period spanning 1962 until 1999 The Late Late Show is the worlds longestrunning live chat show4 He was affectionately known as Uncle Gay Gaybo or Uncle Gaybo His time working in Britain with Granada Television saw him become the first person to introduce the Beatles onscreen and Byrne was later the first to introduce Boyzone onscreen in 1993 According to Byrne Paul McCartney asked him to be the Beatles agent during a sound check for his show but he declined the offer From 1973 until 1998 Byrne presented The Gay Byrne Hour later The Gay Byrne Show when it expanded to two hours on RTÉ Radio 1 each weekday morning After retiring from his longrunning radio and television shows Byrne presented several other programmes including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire The Meaning of Life and For One Night Only on RTÉ One and Sunday SerenadeSunday with Gay Byrne on RTÉ lyric fm In 2006 he was elected Chairman of Irelands Road Safety Authority In his retirement he was described as the Elder Lemon of Irish broadcasting In 2010 The Irish Times said Byrne was unquestionably the most influential radio and television man in the history of the Irish State He was approached to run in the 2011 Irish presidential election but declined to run despite topping early opinion polls Description above from the Wikipedia article Gay Byrne licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia