Gaybo fills Lassie role in bid to rival tribunals

It's over-hyped, over-praised and, two years on, it's over here. Nevertheless, the quiz show which made television history in Britain and the US is expected to grip RTE viewers tonight when Gay Byrne asks the first Irish contestants: Who wants to be a millionaire?

In doing so, Gaybo is set to make the most dramatic screen return since Lassie came home. Even if his new show was not already a global success, it seems guaranteed to do well in Ireland, where the combination of money and hard questions is a proven winner.

The success of the Dublin Castle tribunals, with their popular "How did you get to be a millionaire?" format, has paved the way for the new arrival, and it was a big public relations coup when Gaybo was called as a witness.

But Who Wants to be a Millionaire? probably didn't need the help. Some 100,000 would-be participants called the premium-rate phone lines in the past two weeks, and when the first episode goes out tonight at 7.30, as many as 10 times that number may be watching. The record is the 1.3 million who saw Gaybo's Late Late farewell.

RTE 1 is broadcasting tonight's hour-long show in two parts, sandwiching an episode of Fair City where, this week, "Lorcan comes home from prison with a threat from Joey hanging over him".

This may be an example of the State broadcaster fulfilling its public service remit by ensuring viewers retain a grip on reality, but there's a suspicion that the ratings boost is being spread.

For those still not familiar with the format of the quiz, now might be a good time to call a friend (if you have one).

The premise is simple: answer correctly 15 multiple-choice questions of increasing value and difficulty and you win the £1 million.

You can opt out at any point, but you also have three "lifelines": a phone call to a friend, "ask the audience", and "50-50," in which two of the four possible answers are erased.

There are two amounts, £1,000 and £32,000, which once won are retained. But there are dizzying drops above these plateaux, made worse by the presenter's contractual obligation to knit his eyebrows and ask, as tension builds: "Is that your final answer?"

With contestants who recorded the show last night bound to silence, Paddy Power is offering 200 to one against any of them scooping the jackpot.

The only sure winner is Gay Byrne. Many people thought he'd said farewell to big-time television last year but, as it turned out, that wasn't his final answer.