RADIO REVIEW: GAY BYRNE was halfway through his weekly radio show when a listener called in to say he was glad Gay was back on the radio. Gay thanked the listener, but said his two-hour Sunday Serenade (Lyric FM, Sun) was ending in one week. (That's tomorrow in today's time.), writes Quentin Fottrell.
You may not have known he was back. He is! But for one more afternoon only. It's a pity. He had the makings of a cultish light-entertainment post-Gay Gay.
I was browsing antiques in Enniskerry, which was the perfect backdrop for his banter, jazz and show tunes. I shimmied closer to the shop radio. "Next Sunday is the final programme in the series," Gay said.
"I was only supposed to be here until Christmas. I stayed on for popular demand and because the boss asked me." I guess if anyone gets away with admitting to their own popular demand, it's Gay. (He's back in the Autumn.)
It's easy to get distracted by his newspaper diary columns and occasionally woolly television specials, and forget about what a great broadcaster he was in his heyday. (And may still be if he was back on the mat.) His infamous Late Late interview with Padraig Flynn, which I have just watched again on YouTube, is a masterclass in interviewing. He knew his subject. He flattered and coaxed him. Flynn opened up like a flower to sunlight.
On Sunday Serenade, Gay is essentially interviewing himself and talking to himself, as if he were rummaging through stuff in the attic. He reads out e-mails, newspaper clippings, sometimes refuses requests - he's played a lot of Glenn Miller lately - picks stories out of dusty biographies, and mentions family members. "I was talking to my daughter Crona who was in Killaloe enjoying the sun . . ." As was Gay.
In Enniskerry, I thought it was all a bit odd, blah and random. But as I listened on the web two days later, I heard him rolling his vowels a split second too long and over-pronouncing every consonant. It wasn't the spotlight he was craving, it was the sunlight. Gay Byrne was doing a rather good impression of Gay Byrne. And loving it.
He used his musical interludes as a ba-boom! bookmark to his stories: Sheridan Morley interviews Lawrence Olivier. Morley asks Olivier if David Niven had an affair with Merle Oberon while filming Wuthering Heights. Olivier says, "Although they were lovers, I was the one who married her." He reminds Olivier he had, in fact, married Vivien Leigh. Olivier replies, "My dear boy, you are quite right." Cue music!
Gay rarely comments on the Late Late. But he cited an article that said those "upstairs" in Montrose were uneasy about a pre-election debate between Eoghan Harris and Eamon Dunphy about Mahon Tribunal leaks. "Just imagine - 46 years later they're still asking the same questions about the same show," Gay said, his finger hovering over the play button. "Forty-six weary years later. Do. They. Never. Learn?" And he played some more music.
Speaking of Dunphy, Conversations With Eamon Dunphy (RTÉ Radio 1, Sat) had Patrick Guilbaud on the grill. He didn't roast or fry him, he marinated him lovingly and gently seasoned him. And, sure, why wouldn't he? Guilbaud is just adorable, what with his French accent, which makes him occasionally unintelligible, but I could listen to him purring all day long about his two-Michelin-star restaurant in the Merrion Hotel.
Dunphy asked him what happens when a big star waltzes into his restaurant. Guilbaud replied, "They are all star." His father - a farmer who spent five years in forced labour in Poland during the second World War - and his mother split up when he was 15 and later divorced, something which was traumatic and also taboo in France in the 1970s. His mother remarried and ran a bistro. "We 'ad to 'elp. Do the carrot. Peel the potato . . ."
Guilbaud arrived in Ireland in 1980. He had the sheriffs at the door twice back then. He approached Lochlann Quinn and "I explained to 'im my problems". Quinn and businessman Martin Naughton invested and saved him from almost certain doom.
"Some people think they are sugar daddy of Patrick Guilbaud," he said. "But they are not. I can promise that to you. They are very good business people. They are very clever."
In 1988, Guilbaud received his first Michelin star and his second in 1994. Despite some savaging by critics, it was four years before he provided salt and pepper. Dunphy asked after the third, as yet unborn, star. "If I knew, we would 'ave three star. We need to work 'arder. It is 'ard work. I make sure the team understand we are all going the same way. If today is the day I lose my drive for my three star it is the day I lose my second star."
I prefer this cosy format with Guilbaud than, say, the name-dropping of a pompous PJ Mara or superfey Lainey Keogh. Unlike Dylan McGrath, Guilbaud doesn't believe shouting or swearing is necessary in the kitchen and his music choice reinforced this gentle Gallic charm: La Mer by Charles Trenet, which was his father's party piece, Les Copains D'abord by George Brassens and Help by The Beatles. Or, as he said, 'Elp.