RTÉ has denied it has banned comedian Tommy Tiernan from the station after a decision was taken to drop him from a planned Late Late Show appearance next month. Liam Reid reports.
The cancellation of the slot was taken following his appearance on the show last month, which led to a near-record number of complaints.
Yesterday the comedian said the controversy was nothing but "a ball-bearing in a barrel" and criticised an investigation into complaints that he had been blasphemous as "daft".
The comedian had been due to be a guest on the show on December 10th.
The station received more than 300 complaints about his appearance in October, over the language he used and comments he made about religion and the Catholic Church. The spokesman for the Irish Catholic bishops, Mr Martin Long, has also claimed that Tiernan's performance bordered "on blasphemy".
These were given by the station to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of Ireland (BCCI) which is now investigating them. Yesterday a spokeswoman for RTÉ said a decision to cancel Tiernan's appearance was made in the context of the ongoing BCCI investigation.
She said it was felt that an appearance by the comedian on the Late Late before the BCCI decision, due in January, would be "a little inappropriate".
However, she denied that there was a ban on Tiernan and said the comedian would be very welcome on the show once the complaints were dealt with.
The station has already issued a letter of "regret" over the offence that Tiernan may have caused viewers, but pointed out that he was a comedian who specialised in satire and that it was almost inevitable in satire that the fine line between humour and offence could be easily crossed.
Yesterday the comedian attacked the approach of RTÉ towards the controversy. During an interview on the Ray d'Arcy show on Today FM yesterday morning, he said RTÉ management should be "put in charge of an abandoned farm in Leitrim".