Given the widely-held belief that Pat Kenny is like the winter sun - very bright but not very warm - his presenting of the first post-Gay Byrne Late Late Show needed to be stronger on substance than on style. In the event, it probably was, although Kenny, often too wooden on his old Kenny Live chat show, visibly relaxed after a nervy opening and can afford to be pleased with his debut.
Top of the running order were Sonia O'Sullivan and her nine-week-old daughter, Ciara. As this was, after all, a quintessential Gaybo gig - an opportunity for appropriate hamming, funny voices and platitudes about motherhood - Kenny really could have been left holding the baby. But he braced himself and waffled adequately.
His next guest was journalist Ed Moloney, in the news because he could face jail for withholding from the RUC his notes relating to the murder of Belfast lawyer, Pat Finucane. Such an issue-based story, with its attendant complexities of media and legal ethics, political overtones and police motives, was ideal for Kenny. The greatest difficulty was still ahead, however. Waterford priest, Fr Michael Kennedy, who had been in Cape Cod at the time of John Kennedy's death this summer, followed Moloney. Fr Kennedy pushed an industrial-strength PR line for his famous relations. Kenny, even allowing for the fact that the story being revisited was both fresh and tragic, allowed the priest rather too much leeway. It was only when he went to the audience that other aspects of Kennedy family myths were challenged.
Roy Keane was the evening's star turn and, though guarded on a number of questions, he didn't disappoint. It was a lively, if at times coy in an adulatory manner, interview. The final guest was the mother of a 10-year-old handicapped child. Certainly, it was a worthy inclusion, reminiscent of Kenny Live interviews.
Throughout, there was, of course, the ghost of Gaybo. The new opening sequence and music were designed to minimise this presence and that is understandable. Pat Kenny will never have Gay Byrne's showbiz touch but neither has he Gaybo's patronising attitudes. The music items - George Martin, Mary Black, The Bumblebees - were MOR but, given that the new version of the show is trawling wide, they were appropriate.
This was a strong debut. The problem now will be to keep it going.