Tag Archives: Late Late Show

Screen Shot 2014-11-22 at 02.04.19

Last night.

Singer Sinéad O’Connor was on the Late Late Show last night and, during her appearance, she interviewed host Ryan Tubridy..

At one point she mentioned she saw a video of a woman being thrown on the streets by a guard, during an Irish Water protest.

Sinéad O’Connor: “How do you feel about the 1916 people being discredited lately by the State and do you think it’s because they don’t want us being inspired by 1916 to revolt?”

Ryan Tubridy: “Ok, well what I’d say to you is that I do have a role in this programme as what you’d call a moderator. So, in that sense, I have to kind of balance and even out debate. So, when I’m sitting where you’re sitting, I have to say, ‘OK what do you think? what do you think? what do you think’. Now if I was sat here, even in this interview that we’re doing, I didn’t know anything you were going to ask me, I didn’t know we were going to be talking about 1916 and water but here we are, and I don’t mind that by the way, that’s why we’re here, that’s what we’re doing, we’re just shooting the breeze. But, if I start getting into personal thoughts about these things, suddenly, I couldn’t moderate a debate anymore. So I’ve got to be, I’ve got to leave that stuff for the pub, Sinead..”

O’Connor: “Ok, so I’ve a minute left, the lady is saying to me in the earpiece…”

Tubridy: “…which I love going to and by the way I’ll have it out with you in the pub. I love the pub.”

O’Connor: “Ok, so one final question, I’ve only got a minute and, to me, this is my most important question…”

O’Connor: “…and I’m going to ask Ryan this but I’d really want the audience to think about, and the viewers, ok? It’s my belief that nothing born of the slightest violence can succeed spiritually and, consequently, it can’t succeed financially or any other way. It’s my belief that the first republic of Ireland failed because it was born of spiritual corruption and it’s remained corrupt. To what extent would you all, and would you, consider, supporting the idea of an absolutely non-violent revolution, in the form of peaceful, civil disobedience and the creation of a second republic of Ireland?”

Tubridy: “Oh, a brand new republic? Well, look, I think that the, it’s a conversation worth having.”

O’Connor: “I think, based on the fact that the cops are throwing women around the streets over the water charges? It’s time for a revolution, right?..”

Tubridy: “Well..”

O’Connor: “Non violent, civil disobedience…”

Tubridy: “I think the emphasis should be on non-violence, so you know…”

O’Connor: “Yeah, absolutely, so you can’t throw balloons, you can’t …”

Tubridy: “You can’t rock a car with a woman or man in it..”

O’Connor: “Absolutely not.”

Tubridy: “You can’t throw a woman onto the street. I would say, and I said this to somebody on the radio this week. Because somebody gave out to me for what I was saying. And I said, ‘look, the best people you can look to in the world, iconic people like John Hume and Martin Luther King..”

O’Connor: “Gandhi.”

Tubridy: “Gandhi, they were marked and defined by their dignity.”

O’Connor: “Yeah.”

Tubridy: “And I think that the water charges has been stripped down bait because…”

O’Connor: “Yes, but let’s not be afraid, Ryan, there has to be..”

Tubridy: “…because of the dignity of the people.”

O’Connor: “But we mustn’t be afraid of all the temptations not to revolt. There has to be absolutely non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience. Non-violent means don’t throw the balloons, don’t throw anything at anyone. Sit down on the street and get shot if you have to get shot, silently sit there…”

Tubridy: “But non-violence is the key, yeah.”

O’Connor: “But we have to claim back our country. The spirit of 1916, they built a country out of rubble. We have more than they had at that time. And we don’t need to be violent or create rubble. But we need to get that spirit and resurrect it..”

Tubridy: “But didn’t they need violence to eh…”

O’Connor: “It’s deliberate that our state is trying to discredit the 1916 people.”

Cheers and applause from audience

Tubridy: “OK, but I’ll just say one thing..”

O’Connor: “One second, you can, the very fact is this discrediting of 1916 is being done on purpose so that we won’t revolt. We must understand we can revolt without violence. And study Gandhi. Everybody start watching Gandhi.”

PARKLIFE!

Watch back here in full

u2tubs

Last night.

Bono and The Edge played live in front of an adoring audience and faced tax free questioning from host Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late Show.

The only bum note? iTunes and the ‘blogosphere’.

*cough*

Bono: “You know what, it’s a funny thing… you know, to walk up Grafton Street and see all those buskers and think, are you sure we can do that, to eventually get to a place where we can…”

[cheers from audience]

Ryan Tubridy: [taking mike from Bono] “I don’t think you need that any more. Okay, Not to put on a dampener but we need to talk about iTunes for a second…”

Bono: “What’s the dampener about?

[booing from audience]

Tubridy: “Well done, that’ s what they’re saying, well done.”

Bono: “Thank you.”

Tubridy: “But obviously, the iTunes scenario was an enormous success in terms of downloading that album to all those people. [Bono reaches across him for water] What’s that? The water? You want my water?”

Bono: “We share everything.”

[The Edge laughs]

Tubridy: “How are you with the reaction to how it all went down, the iTunes?”

The Edge: “What reaction?”

Tubridy: “You tell me. What did you think of the reaction?”

Bono: “If there was any bad reaction we’d we’d definitely have heard about it on the internet.”

Tubridy: “And you didn’t hear anything?”

Bono: “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

Tubridy: [laughing] “That’s very bold. That’s bold.”

[audience cheers]

Bono: “Here’s the thing, here’s the thing. If you go into your local bar and you, you know, just check this because years ago you go into the gents this may not be true of the ladies but it’s certainly true of the gents you go into the stalls close the door there’s all manner of invective and graffiti and pictures that you don’t want to see again and if you go there now there’s none of it, there’s nothing on the walls…”

Tubridy: “Where are they gone?”

Bono: “They are in the blogosphere now and you know, just, you know, you can avoid it.”

Tubridy: “Do you let any of it in, the Bono bashing?”

Bono: “You know, I’ve got an umbrella and when the shitstorm happens I just.. put up me umbrella”

[Cheering from audience]

Bono: “You must like it that’s the thing you must like an argument we, we, I like it and Irish people don’t mind an argument we don’t mind stirring it up and’s what’s the point of being in a band like U2 if you can’t stir it up and, the truth of it is is, the music business, the model’s broken and the charts don’t really reflect what people are listening to, they reflect what good people… who are still paying for music and they’re the people also who support iTunes, so, you know, the idea that Apple would reward people who actually pay for music with a gift from them, not from us, was, was great, and, and we got to get it out there, I think there’s like whatever there is, like 80, like I think it’s nearly 100 million people now have checked out one or two of the tracks and it’s nearly 30 have taken the whole album…”

Tubridy: “That’s a million..”

The Edge: “I was going to say…”

Bono: “Thanks Edge, I’m glad you’re here. What’s a few noughts before breakfast?”

The Edge [laughing]: “Thanks for the clarification.”

Bono: “30 million people have taken this into their hearts and what took us 30 years for the Joshua Tree we did in 3 weeks with Songs of Innocence.”

Meanwhile…

bonofan

a) Bono fan?
b) Aghast hairdresser?
c) International tax lawyer?

We may never know.

Watch show in full here

interskalactic

Don’t watch that.

Watch this.

The heavy heavy sound of Interskalactic.

Now on the telly!

Ronan of Interskalactic writes:

“You guys featured a video of ours playing “Simmer Down” from Body & Soul back in July. Just thought I’d drop you a mail to let you know that on the back of some decent gigs down Electric Picnic last weekend and the great reception the vid got, we’re now playing the first Late Late Show of the season tonight on RTE One!
We’re looking forward to getting a bit of decent live ska out to the masses, The video  (above) is from Body & Soul of us playing Prince Buster’s classic ‘Al Capone’.”

*does nutty dance*

TomGilmartinJnrlatelate

[From top: Thomas Gilmartin Jnr and, above, Thomas with host Ryan Tubridy, journalist and author Frank Connolly and singer Christy Moore on the Late Late Show last Friday night].

Tom Gilmartin, who died last November, was a  Sligo-born property developer who moved from England to Dublin in the late 1980s, to create retail developments.

However, he was targeted by several high-profile politicians who demanded either money from Mr Gilmartin or a share of any profits he made on certain developments. He was also threatened after he compared the activities of certain Fianna Fáil politicians to that of the mafia, following a demand of £5million in Leinster House.

It was Mr Gilmartin’s testimony in the Mahon Tribunal that led to the resignation of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2008.

Mr Gilmartin’s son Thomas, on a panel that included journalist Frank Connolly, author of a newly-published  biograpahy of Tom Gilmartin told the Late Late Show on Friday how his father went to the gardaí with his complaints in 1990, and how he received a chilling phonecall, supposedly from a garda, after making that official complaint.

Tom Gilmartin Jnr: “[Tom Gilmartin Snr] was told that the boss [Charles Haughey] wanted to meet him and he was brought by Liam Lawlor into the Dáil and they went up to a room on a floor, which is disputed, but, in the room, anyway, he met several Cabinet ministers very briefly, including Bertie Ahern, Albert Reynolds, Brian Lenihan, Ray Burke, Mary O’Rourke and Charles Haughey.”

Ryan Tubridy: “The Taoiseach, yeah?”

Gilmartin: “Then Taoiseach. The conversation was just, it was minor chat, there was nothing major in it and, as he left, Haughey asked my father, ‘I hope…is Liam taking good care of you?’ as in Liam Lawlor. My dad thought it was an odd thing to say. Anyway, outside the room, as he left the meeting, a man approached him and said, ‘hey, you’re going to do very well out of this, you know, and we’ll expect to be paid’. My dad was taken aback, he thought this was some kind of joke or something…”

Tubridy: “And we being…”

Gilmartin: “We don’t know what he meant. It could have a collective of politics or it could have been connected with…”

Tubridy: “But you don’t know…but a man outside the Taoiseach’s office…”

Gilmartin: “Directly outside.”

Tubridy: “Yeah.”

Gilmartin: “He said we want £5million deposited in an Isle of Man bank account and he gave him a piece of paper with a number on it to my father. And my father said, ‘are you serious?’. And he said, ‘yeah’. And my father said, ‘you people make the f-ing mafia look like monks’. To which the man responded, ‘You can wind up in the Liffey for making a statement like that’. Anyway, my father left. Within hours he had told a number of people including John Fortune of IBI and others about this demand. And, anyway, within a few weeks there was, there were more games being played by George Redmond and Liam Lawlor, stopping investments and screwing up meetings that were supposed to be held with roads engineers and others because they weren’t getting paid. And so my father made a complaint to Seán Haughey, who was an honourable man, even though he was Charles Haughey’s brother.”

Tubrudy: “Son.”

Gilmartin: “His brother.”

Tubridy: “His brother, sorry, his brother.”

Frank Connolly: “He was the assistant city manager.”

Tubridy: “The assistant city manager, yes, my apologies.”

Gilmartin: “And he was taken into the guards. And he told the whole story, all the demands for money that had been made and this particular incident.”

Tubridy: “And where did he go from there, after a Garda complaint?”Continue reading →

DownloadImage

[Josh Hartnett and member of the audience Karena Graham on Friday’s Late Late Show]

Plucked from the audience.

Random like.

Not that I’m an overly suspicious sort (I am though) but the fact that this model-looking lady was picked immediately out of the crowd, had a camera at the ready and that Ryan mentioned we might know her from magazines suggests she might possibly (definitely) be some kind of plant. It might just have been to keep the stunt running smoothly, or ensure a good picture, but that doesn’t make it seem any less staged. Sure enough, it’s Ireland’s own Karena Graham – who has done a spot of modelling in her time…

FIGHT!

Josh Hartnett Takes an Awkwardly Staged Selfie with a Surprisingly Hot Fan on the Late Late Show (Daniel Anderson, Click Online)

annieScreen Shot 2013-10-05 at 12.36.50(Gay Byrne interviewing Annie Murphy in 1993, top, and being interviewed by Ryan Tubridy last night)

Gay Byrne returned to  the Late Late Show last night to promote the charity book of his Meaning of Life God slot series.

He was also asked about the unusually hostile interview he conducted with Annie Murphy in 1993 following the publication of her book ‘Forbidden Fruit: The True Story of My Secret Love for the Bishop of Galway’.

Ryan Tubridy: “If we’re taking about the church and the meaning of life and that Catholic Church and the Late Late Show and everything that goes in it, and I mention the Annie Murphy interview, what do you say?”

Gay Byrne: “Well, if 25 million people gather round you and say “Gay we don’t think you should drive home tonight” the best thing you can do is hand over the keys. And apparently there is a general consensus that it was a lousy interview.”

Tubridy: “And how do you feel about it?”

Byrne: “My answer is I feel they’re wrong. I think they’re wrong but nonetheless that’s the way it is. The only answer you can give to that is well what do you think of the other 40 years of the Late Late Show. If the only one you remember is something you didn’t like about Annie Murphy, well it was a very tricky time at that time…”
“Eamon Casey had made a run for it. He made major mistakes. Firstly he denied his son. Secondly he made a run for it to get away. Thirdly, he dipped into diocesan funds which was really unforgivable and fourthly he denied all knowledge and so on and I think that people were very strongly against him on that occasion and also very anti the Catholic Church on that occasion through him and the abuse thing was just starting to emerge, all that was going on..
“So he was a devil incarnate as far as people was concerned and she was a… a saint and you couldn’t criticise her and they took out completely the wrong meaning from my remark at the interview, totally the wrong meaning.”

Tubridy: “And why was it wrong?”

Gay: “Because its a very old expression in Ireland ‘well if he’s half the man his father is he’ll be alright’, that sort of thing and in my head at that moment what I was thinking of, which you never ever see, which was the description that she made of Eamon Casey when she first fell in love with him because she described that any bishop of the Catholic church that she had encountered was a pale faced ascetic rather frowning rather serious person whereas this man she met as bishop of the Catholic Church was big, smoking a cigar, brandy, trying to stop him singing at the party, dancing with the girls at the party, all that larger than life thing and she fell for him there and then and that was the image I had in my mind when I made the remark.”

Tubridy: “You know her son has said during the Summer, her son, yes, said he would have leapt across the deck and decked you…”

Byrne: “Yes, but funnily enough he then said that in the years intervening between that remark and growing up as it were he had met his father on several occasions and he had come to understand how his mother had fallen in love with him and he came to recognise the great good characters of his father. That’s what he said that having met him on various occasions throughout the years that he had changed his mind about his father. When he made the remark about me, it’s not surprising, he was a young fellow, his father had dumped his mother and done all of that, that sort of thing so he got very angry…”

Tubridy: I understand.”

Watch here

00003418

 

“If Peter is half the man his father is, he’ll be doing well.”

[Annie Murphy] recalls her reaction. “I simply replied, ‘Well, Mr Byrne, I’m not half bad myself’. Then I said good day and left the set. There was nothing more to say after that, we couldn’t get nasty on public television.

“Also, it meant I got to have the last word, which I wanted. After the show, Mr Byrne apologised for being hard on me, but it didn’t matter — I wasn’t angry.

“I told him I had nothing more to say to him — there was no problem, we had both won. I think Mr Byrne had read the book and thought it was over the top. Also, he liked Eamon Casey,” she adds.

 

Annie Murphy: The woman who rocked the church – 20 years on (Catherine Murphy, Irish Independent, January 2012)

I wanted to deck Gay Byrne over interview with mum – Casey’s son (Sunday World)

(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)