Gay Byrne
GAY Byrne has revealed that he used to dread going to school – as he was assaulted by Christian Brothers daily.
The broadcaster, 82, was a student at Synge Street in Dublin, where he finished top of his class in Irish and Latin.
In new programme Last Orders,, Gay returns to his old school to examine the history of religious orders and their role in educating us.
He said: “Many is the time of I would turn that corner from the South Circular Road with the most awful feelings of foreboding, fright and anxiety.
“I knew I would be physically hurt that day. I was going to be belted, I was going to be thumped, for some reason or another.”
Brothers Beat Up Gaybo (The Irish Sun)
Alternatively…
Chat show king Gay Byrne yesterday leapt to the defence of Christian Brother Schools – despite being disciplined as a schoolboy.
The 71-year-old said he would never have learned to read or write had it not been for the religious order schools.
And Gay admitted many of the hidings he got at CBS Synge Street in Dublin were because the Brothers “probably had no option“.
He added: “I believe they gave us a fantastic education, an amazingly well -rounded education in so many ways.”
Gaybo believes the Church-run schools were not equipped to deal with the students because of massive overcrowding.
In an interview with Catholic magazine The Voice Today, he claimed many of the Brothers were extremely nice to students and some never used physical punishment.
Gay said the media had been responsible for much of the Church-bashing that has occurred in recent years.
He claimed many of those now teaching journalism attended a CBS and their anti-Church attitude has filtered down to the students they are sending out to work in the media.
Gaybo: CBS Gave Us The Best Education (The Mirror, April 21, 2006)
There you go now.
Also:
But the star said the first time he realised – along with the rest of the country – that shocking secrets were being hidden in Catholic Ireland was in 1984 with the tragic death of Ann Lovett, who gave birth to a stillborn baby boy at a grotto in Granard, Co Longford, and died shortly afterwards.
Alternatively
Gay Byrne dismisses Sunday Tribbune coverage of Ann Lovett’s death on the Late Late Show in 1984,from the opening minutes of a Scannell documentery on Ann Lovett.
Good times.
Previously: Christian Brothers Stories
it was on last night
I always remember Gaybo savaging Annie Murphy because she had the guts to tell us what Bishop Casey was up to.
‘…Chat show king Gay Byrne yesterday leapt to the defence of Christian Brother Schools’…I was always puzzled by Gaybo’s defence of the Brothers…suppose his late exposé of those sadists is to be welcomed…kind of an epiphany Gaybo, wha…
I suppose it’s because of what he said, some of them were great.
A couple of the greatest people I know are priests though I admit, I sometimes wonder are they there more for the belief that they can do a lot of good work rather than a deep conviction in Catholic teachings
How utterly scandalous that a person’s views can change over the years!
It does happen… but one would expect a bit of humility about one’s previous incorrect views rather than a bare-faced attempt to gloss over them.
Gay Byrne had the opportunity to change things in Irish education – his assertions that ‘I got beat and it didn’t do me any harm’ and ‘some Christian brothers were dotes’ made it very difficult for people who had bad experiences of the Brothers.
Such as the various children who were abused in class in Synge Street between 1964-72 (see newspaper report from 2010 below).
http://www.herald.ie/news/exbrother-to-be-sentenced-for-boys-abuse-27955037.html
Meanwhile, Gay Byrne was giving interviews to the Irish Times around the same time saying he saw ‘no semblance’ of sexual abuse in Synge Street.
He was certainly good publicity for the school over the years. Along with its many other RTE alumni.
It’s a sad pity that someone with such a huge influence in this country for so many years kept quiet until now, now most people consider him a bit of an old crank. If there was one person who could’ve rallied the average Irish house hold in the 70s’, 80’s even 90’s to stand up against the abuse and omerta we as a nation suffered from the Catholic Church it was Gaybo. But he did nothing.
He was a product of the system along with everyone else of his generation.
He did push boundaries within mainstream TV because he was seen to be an insider, the housewives favourite. He was in a position where he could have pushed more. I think he knows that now, but perhaps not then.
That generation were in part incredibly innocent, ignorant and vicious in equal measure. They quite literally didn’t have the language to even discuss sexuality, relationships and all the complexity that goes with that.
He did that because it got people tuning in when they couldn’t get any celebrity guests.
Yeah. Blame a chat show host for not being a saviour and fixing all the country’s ills. The fact that he got SO much on the air is a credit to him.
Go blame the complicit conservative population instead – it’s less than 20 years since Tommy Tiernan caused outrage on The Late Late just by joking about Jesus, FFS.
Could have got a lot more if his interview with Annie Murphy hadn’t been deeply prejudiced by his bias in favour of Bishop Casey. Etc. etc.
But then Gay Byrne has always been mistrustful of women. Look at the comments on a female co-presenter in his autobiography.
https://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/06/01/to-whom-it-concerns-2/
You’re link is nothing to do with his autobiography?
I think his misogynist comment about Verona in his autobiography was referenced in one of the comments to that post.
Anyway, I’ve now checked the autobiography (“The Time of My Life”) myself and here’s the quote about Ms Mullen.
‘she certainly could be relied on to put her foot in it as often as possible… and to ask the most ridiculous questions at the most inopportune moment’
Funny that, as according to another broadsheet post, Ms Mullen went on to study at Harvard, afterwards.
He did loads, absolutely loads, and condemning a single man who did loads for not managing to find out and take a stand on the many, many horrible things going in is testament to exactly how much we expect other people to do all the hard work and to do it perfectly and comprehensively.
He lied about his experiences and was an apologist for institutions that abused many children.
A full appraisal of Byrne would certainly include those criticisms, and others, while also acknowledging that he was a victim of violent bullying by Christian Brothers who he later defended, and how such a mindset might have come about, and whether he might be emblematic of a generation that was struggling, often in vain, with a lot of things.
When did he lie.
‘But he did nothing.’
Wait, was Gaybo an elected representative or something?
I thought he was a radio / TV host.
Come on, the second ‘comparison’ is an utter joke. He reads the front page of a newspaper that he’s only just seen and is supposed to divine the story from a headline?
Worse than Fox news here
Nonsense.
It’s about a certain attitude on the part of Mr Byrne, typified by that clip.
An attitude that has appeared in many other interviews by and of him over the years.
You’re projecting again: Mr Byrne himself is far far closer to Fox news than the above post.
And what about those fundraisers in the 1970s for certain right wing Catholic groups?
Did you want him to react to a headline without access to ANY OF THE FACTS like people round these parts do?
Couldn’t have happened then, Rotide, because headlines weren’t headlines till Broadsheet started in 2010.
What I would have liked was him to stop being a paid mouthpiece of the right-wing establishment, endorsing their view of the world, which was that the Church was basically a good organisation and one to be followed. I would also have liked him to follow through on his general comments about politicians being corrupt, and focus on the political families, dating back to the formation of the State, who had colluded with the Church to seize the balance of power and abuse it in both politics and the professions.
Hope this helps.
Flippety Floppety
They didn’t beat him hard enough.
“he finished top of his class in Irish and Latin”
MY MAN
/degrees in Latin but a failure at Irish
Fantastic school anyway. Id great laugh in it.
What Byrne was doing was jumping on the bandwagon at this late stage
He got to know quite a few people over a long broadcasting career, and if he
didn’t know or hear about a few rumours and revelations, he must be deaf.
The brutalisation of a large section of children both in Ireland and elsewhere
was their handiwork, their running of Industrial Schools destroyed childrens life’s
and one has to only visit the Childrens Cemetery at Letterfrack to appreciate the
coldness and isolation…..all these things were crimes against the people and they
are not different than what went on in the famine, incidently how much did Tyrone
Productions get from RTE for the making of the documentary.
Looking for it with a name like “Gay”. Fuppin’ spa.
Gay is an old man trying to keep in the limelight instead of retiring. The reason the Catholic Church got away with it was poverty ,ignorance and fear. Your parents had no time for you the nuns and priests treated you like dirt at school so what could young kids do. If you got pregnant you were put into a laundry and had your baby taken off you. But things have now changed for the better and it’s time we put the past behind us. The scars will remain for a long time but hopefully the Church having been shamed will see that we don’t give a damn about their outmoded doctrine I for one was taught at a horrendous convent in Dublin and hated every moment of my school days. However, time moves on and it certainly made us better parents than ours were given how little was on offer for them in fifties Ireland.