One of the cliches trotted out about Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show was that it held up a mirror to Ireland and invited us to look at ourselves as we really were: warts, wrinkles and all. A similar claim could be made as Ryan Tubridy oversees the return of the deathless chat for a 59th season with an engaging episode that captures the hopes, frustrations, heartbreak and sheer weirdness of life during coronavirus.
So deep are we into the Age of Covid that social distancing on set and the absence of a studio audience no longer register as strange. Indeed, it would be hugely alarming to see Tubridy joined by dozens of coughing, spluttering members of the public. Such are the raw ingredients of our nightmares nowadays.
The Late Late Show has had a solid pandemic. Tubridy clearly sees it as his mission to keep our flagging spirits aloft. He says as much at the top of the broadcast, which opens with footage of empty stadiums and venues. “We’re not going to pretend everything is normal,” he says. “[But] we’ll get there.”
The weirdness mentioned above is courtesy of movie star Russell Crowe. He has emailed RTÉ what is essentially a long-form TikTok video from Australia. In it he pours a pint in his private bar and shares a strange story about a tarantula.
There’s a rude punchline which I won’t repeat and is anyway beside the point. What matters is that an Oscar winner and box office bruiser is monologuing about tarantulas on Friday night prime time and it feels entirely normal. If anything speaks to the sheer oddness life as live as lived in the present, it’s Russell Crowe on the Late Late pouring stout and talking about arachnids.
The hopeful component of the episode, meanwhile, comes at the start with an interview with Ellen Glynn and Sara Feeney, the Galway cousins swept out to sea on their paddle boards last month. Miles from shore they survived the night by tying themselves to a lobster pot, keeping their spirits afloat by singing Taylor Swift songs. If we were watching the Toy Show, this is the point at which the actual Taylor Swift would spring out from behind the sofa holding two autographed paddle boards and tickets to see her in Croke Park.
It isn’t though. So Glynn and Feeney instead calmly recall their hours at sea, while their discovery the following morning is recounted by fisherman Patrick Morgan and his son Oliver. “We found them,” says Patrick. “But they saved themselves.”
In a Christopher Nolan alternate timeline 2020, this would be Electric Picnic weekend. The spirit of Stradbally is conjured via a Skype interview with Gary Lightbody, whose band Snow Patrol were to headline. In the studio, meanwhile, Picnic regulars Frank and Walters play their enduring hit After All, in their regulation uniform of orange shirts and black ties.
The other live performance is by Irish Women in Harmony, a collective of Irish female singers, led by songwriter and producer Ruth-Anne Cunningham. Their cover of Dreams by the Cranberries has raised €250,000 for Safe Ireland. Spaced two meters apart artists such as Erica Cody, Moya Brennan of Clannad and Una Healy late of the Saturdays reprise the song. Later they explain this is the first time many of them have met face to face – which really is 2020 in a nutshell.
There is also an interview with acting chief medical officer Ronan Glynn, who cuts a calm and thoughtful figure. “We are still in control of this,” he says of the pandemic. “And when I say “we” I mean the Irish people.” This is followed by a devastating conversation with Dr Sammar Ali speaking about the loss of her father, Dr Syed Waqqar Ali from Covid-19. “He was assessed for Covid and came out positive,” she says. “And that was the day our world was turned upside down.”
And there is trip outside the studio to Croke Park for an interview with peerless commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh on his 90th birthday.
He and the host shoot the breeze about the GAA and Tubridy presents Ó Muircheartaigh with a special All Star award acknowledging his contribution to the GAA and the fabric of Irish life. It’s a feel-good moment and Ó Muircheartaigh truly is a national treasure. However, for many it will be Russell Crowe and that spider anecdote that will linger in the memory, amusing but ever so slightly disturbing too.
