The end of the year? Pssshaaw - kid's stuff. Who needs to yap about that when we've got the end of an era to contend with? And so it came to pass on a pneumonial Christmas Eve morning in 1998, in the Dublin park formerly known as St Stephen's Green - henceforth to be called St Gay's Grey - that Gay Byrne was carted off the airwaves, kicking and screaming, by Kenny and Shortt.

No, that wasn't old rival Pat and young pretender Alan. It was D'Unbelievables, Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt, gussied up as gardai, querying Byrne's permit to block city-centre traffic. Last we heard they were going to drive him down to Pearse Street barracks and Gay was interminably shouting something distinctly post-revisionist about the freedom we spent 700 years fighting for.

It was an amusing exit, without doubt, and in keeping with the emotional inscrutability we've come to expect from our Uncle Gaybo - but couldn't be certain he'd maintain on this day of days. While the plain people of Ireland poured out their rain-soaked tributes, he kept his farewells to a minimum and his feelings in check.

Indeed, as though to underline the "unfinality" of this final programme, Gay rather annoyingly turned up to help Daddy Christmas pack toys on Radio 1's traditional Santa send-off in the afternoon. (Like it isn't difficult enough already to sustain this "live from the North Pole" fiction for the kiddies.)

Anyway, back to the "end of an era" gig. This last Gay Byrne Show was shot through with the nostalgia that has characterised his programme all year 'round of late. This time it had a strong flavour of the capital, with The Strawberry Beds and Sonny Knowles singing "Dublin can be Heaven . . ." My Lord, by 20 past nine we'd already heard yarns about Bang-Bang and Brendan Behan.

We all felt that was mere window dressing this time, and Joe Duffy and Des Cahill went out among the broken brollies in search of vox populi. (Both men were great, though Cahill's insistence on constant GAA and soccer references suggested that he didn't know his crowd.

The crowd was full of pilgrims, awkwardly expressing a devotional love Gay couldn't reciprocate beyond calling the old wans "dote". Most were, of course, women, vying for the distinctions of earliest start and longest distance travelled. A rare male voice said he'd never before seen his wife up before the dawn; when he was asked what it was about Gay that so appealed to her, he replied, for his sex: "I've been asking meself that for so many years . . ."

Well, don't look at me. As someone once said about the would-be science of predicting and analysing public tastes, there are three maxims: we don't know anything, we don't know anything and - most important - we don't know anything.

Personally, I'd be slow to ascribe Gay's appeal to the mould-breaking and iconoclastic qualities that earn all the column inches. There's nothing wrong with being talked about, obviously, but Gaybo's enduring charm seems to be more rooted in his actorly flourishes, and in the interview style that, because it relies more on quiet sympathy than confrontational "smarts", yields far more warmth and surprises than those of, say, Kenny or Myles Dungan.

(In this respect his newest and nearest equivalent is Eamon Dunphy, who recently pulled warmth and surprises out of a phone interview with Unionist Party deputy leader John Taylor, bless us. Last week, however, Dunphy - unGaylike - let down his personal guard and croaked through a pre-Christmas hangover about domestic difficulties.)

Not that Gaybo is exactly warm. While his politics were always a breeze to read, his emotions weren't. But like many a paternal figure, this doesn't seem to have made him any less lovable . . .

Gaybo's protracted radio retirement finished too late for inclusion in the Radio News Review 1998 (RTE Radio 1, Sunday). This hour, produced and presented by Kevin Rafter, generally plays many of the year's events for laughs - well, smiles anyway - but needed more than ever to set Northern Ireland apart from the levity.

It did so most effectively. The programme's first few minutes, focusing on Omagh, were as overpowering as any of the many things we've heard on the subject at year's end. And like the next mini-segment, looking at the talks, the Belfast Agreement and subsequent events, it reminded us of the treasure that is RTE's news operation. These ephemeral voices from throughout the year are the stuff of history.

You also couldn't argue with the levity. There's enough agonising about Clinton; to hear the year's lies and Lewinsky jokes to the tune of It Started with a Kiss was fine. Mac the Knife was perfect accompaniment to the financial scandals, while Would You . . ? was happily stretched to fit Viagra, "Blue Flu" and Army deafness.

Rafter aptly called 1998 a year of revelation, and suggested 1999 might be a year of explanation. Sure, that's getting the optimism out of the way early.