‘Even when he was very ill, I used to meet men and women and they’d say: Tell him we love him.’ Suzy Byrne and Kathleen Watkins on the legacy of Gay

The radio show ran from 1973 to 1998, two hours a day, with upwards of 850,000 daily listeners.

“I would think: ‘Has he gone to the pub again and is she now writing the letter? She’s going to hide it and get the envelope and post it.’ And I’d think of the effort. And the relief – that she’s poured it out onto the page, for the very first time maybe.

“And this thing of hiding from the neighbours... That was the Ireland of the time. The mental suffering,” she pauses.

“People didn’t know there was no shame in having a problem. They worried about the neighbours. But maybe the neighbours had worse problems, or maybe had the same problems?”

“The mental torture,” her daughter Suzy agrees. “You think about this being carried around...”

“You wonder, did they not have a brother, a sister, a mother, they could talk to,” Kathleen says, adding, “I suppose when one or two wrote, then it was a tsunami.”

It was a tsunami. An outpouring of grief, shame, pain, misery, horror. Stories of abuse, violence, blighted lives. And there was brightness too – kindness, funny stories, generosity, sweet moments.

But those things weren’t surprising. They came from an Ireland everyone knew. A place where people cared for each other and were decent, open and entertaining. The other letters – the ones that told difficult stories – they were from the hidden Ireland, a place of secrets that was only just being revealed. And that hidden Ireland was, in large part dragged into the light thanks to the two hours that Gay Byrne spent on weekday mornings, reading and talking about the letters sent to him.

Some of these have now been collected into a book, Dear Gay, that is a startling reminder of a very different time. A time the programme both reflected, and influenced.

By reading those letters, by talking about what was in them, and by allowing others through that to understand they were not alone, The Gay Byrne Show changed the way we lived, and the way we saw ourselves. It was mirror and reflection, and the most talked-about thing in the country.

“I made the big mistake of going to the supermarket once, straight after the show,” Kathleen says with a laugh. “People just wanted to discuss it. I couldn’t get anything done. I learned it was better to stay at home and let it settle before going out.”

​The book is edited by Gay and Kathleen’s daughter, Suzy, who explains how it came about. “When dad died in 2019, RTÉ wanted to do something to acknowledge his contribution to broadcasting. A lot had been done on him before, and he’d done his own programme, so it became about the letters.

“When they went in the archives, just before Covid, it became very obvious very quickly that it was about the letters. These hadn’t been done before. It had always been about The Late Late Show – much easier to do, because there’s TV clip after clip.”

These letters became the “bedrock” of the documentary (also Dear Gay). But it didn’t stop there. Time constraints meant it was impossible to fit anything like the number of letters the makers wanted.

“Michael Gill popped out to me, and said: ‘I think there’s a book here. Would you consider doing it?’ I’d been very involved with the documentary, with [producer] Sarah Ryder, and she was genuinely deeply upset during editing at how much she had to take out. She said: ‘We’re literally tipping the iceberg here. There’s a wealth of stuff we’ll never get into the documentary.’

“It just happened that my youngest daughter was starting in first year in school. Things were easing. The timing, it just happened, was right.”

That said, says Suzy with a big laugh, she didn’t really realise what was involved.

“I had no idea how big the archive was. For much of it, I was on my own in RTÉ, because it was Covid. So I’d go in and they’d leave me there with all the boxes out, and I’d be on my own.

“And if I needed the bathroom, I���d have to bring things and prop open doors down corridors – because they self-close and I wouldn’t be able to get back in again.

“I’d be starving, having to photocopy things because I couldn’t bring anything out, and the photocopier was all keycard. I was taking photos on my phone, then the battery ran out – so I’d loads and loads of stuff. I phoned Alice O’Sullivan who worked for years with dad on the programme, and asked: ‘Can you please help me. I’m so deep in, where do I start?’

“I was trying to decipher handwriting as well, as the letters were handwritten.”

He was their link to Dublin, to other parts of the country

The programme, she emphasises, “wasn’t all sad and depressing. There was lots that was light. If he did something serious – the Christine Buckley interview for example – he’d switch between that and something hilarious. It wasn’t all doom and gloom.”

​She talks about the moment she really began to realise the true value of the show.

“A funeral a few years ago, of a friend’s mother, in Castleblaney. As I left I went to say goodbye, she was sitting with some of her mother’s friends, and she said this is Suzy Byrne, Gay Byrne’s daughter. I hadn’t been introduced as Gay Byrne’s daughter for a long time by then, and I was a bit ‘Oh...’

“Whatever my reaction was, I must have made a face. I didn’t know what to do. Anyway, she called me the next day to say: ‘I’m really sorry for introducing you as Gay Byrne’s daughter, it’s just you have no idea the lifeline your father gave to the Border counties. To my mother and her friends. The Troubles were happening, it was such a horrific time – he was their link to Dublin, to other parts of the country.’

“That really gave me a bit of a reality check. As I was doing the book, I understood that much, much more. That conversation was a real eye-opener for me. I was a little bit oblivious before to that sense of isolation in the country at the time.”

���It was his brilliance at both light and dark that set Gay apart. The way he’d switch between stories that were harrowing, and those that were hilarious with no clashing of gears. He once said of the show, “We specialised in finding things for people”. This could range from “a nice, soft, bouncy double bed” to other, more vital items.

One announcement included in the book, reads: “A young married man died recently in tragic circumstances, leaving behind a young family. This family have been unable to trace his will but feel that it may be inside the cover of an important historical book on the life of Daniel O’Connell. The name of the book is The Liberator.

“The dead man either loaned or sold the book in the last six months. This family are not interested in the return of the book – but would be most grateful to anyone who came into possession of a copy of the book recently, if they thumbed through the book to search for the missing will. Note: Book is about four inches thick – leather cover with clasp. Edges of pages are gilded.”

​“He knew I listened to the programme,” Kathleen says now. “And he always used to ring me after The Late Late Show, but he never asked what did I think of the radio programme. I suppose he knew he was on a roll with it. He was a performer, an entertainer, he brought a lot of that to the programme.

“When he came home in the evening, he’d walk across the kitchen, put his wallet and keys down, and sometimes he looked over at the table – I think he was looking to see was there a starter,” she laughs, adding, “Often, there wasn’t. But he had the ability to put things aside, which is a great strength.”

And I would imagine, a necessity. Even now, reading the letters – decades old at this stage – it’s impossible not to be devastated by the details of these people’s circumstances. As Suzy says, “What I think about the letters is the beauty of the ability to write and illustrate their lives.”

She’s right. In the absence of any kind of familiarity with the language of therapy, the vernacular of trauma that we nearly all now have, these people were laying bare the things that happened to them in ways that were utterly honest and guileless.

One writer, a man, describing his unconsummated marriage, phrased it thus: “I did not mean to write such a long letter. But the deep, deep unspoken pain of all those years drove me onwards.” It feels like he spoke for many. Another woman ended with “Forgive my long story, Gay, but I feel better already having told someone.”

For a while we talk about the particular letters that really struck us. There are many; the woman in her 50s, a mother, who wrote in response to a previous letter: “When I was four years old, I had a similar experience, only it was my own father. My mother was also downstairs. I was pinned down on the bed by a big man (my father), pulling at my clothes, pinching and pulling at my flesh. I remember everything. I screamed like an animal, screeching, wailing for my mother who was only downstairs. I remember my father’s eyes, his laughing, his mouth, him hurting me. Unless my mother dropped dead, she could not but have heard me.”

None of us really has words for that.

Then there is one from a woman whose middle child, a boy, has died after a sudden and serious illness. She is soldiering on, trying to keep the world together for their other children – but her husband is struggling. “As the weeks passed, it became apparent that Daddy was slowly crawling into a shell and closing it behind him. He spent all his spare time in bed, he spoke to no one and he hated to hear anyone laugh or be funny or happy in the house.”

“That woman,” Kathleen says, “what she wrote – she gave it everything. She was heartbroken, but she also was your classic mother figure. She realised: ‘We’ve other children. I’ve to get up and get on with it.’ People around them were feeling that she was doing great, because of that, and the husband wasn’t doing great – she managed to get all of that down, all in one letter, a whole world...

“The loss of a child and never speaking of it,” she continues. It is of course a tragically familiar tale from that time.

“My own parents lost two toddlers and a 12-year-old,” Kathleen says. “They were never mentioned. I think they [my parents] were just magnificent in the way they coped. They just focused on the three girls and the boy – every brass farthing went into sending us down the road to Sion Hill, three of us, and a boy in Blackrock. Think of the sacrifices. The things they did without. And that was their joy. I think they were magnificent parents.

“There was never fighting or shouting. If they had a row, they must have done it in secret. They were amazing. They never mentioned the [loss].

“My father had this wonderful personality, he met these interesting, artistic people – such as the playwright John McCann – that was his outing, to have drinks with them once a week.

“And my mother minded the house. She cooked, she baked. She was happy endlessly working. The Aga was like the altar. The neighbours came up two steps, into the kitchen, sat at the Aga, the kettle was on, and she was busily putting things in – scones, spotted dog, porridge overnight in the low oven – it was a great childhood.”

Because that, too, was the Ireland of the time. A place that, when it worked, was happy, safe and content. Where families thrived, surrounded by love and security. But it wasn’t everyone’s story.

​The letters around the Ann Lovett case are particularly troubling. They tell of an Ireland where women and girls were kept in ignorance and fear, where their own bodies were mysterious to them, and potentially treacherous, weapons to be used in a battle for control.

“I found that whole thing so shocking,” Suzy says. “That we kept young people, women, ignorant of their bodies – the church and the State did. And because of that, parents didn’t know what to do. They were ignorant, and then when they got pregnant, they were punished. A lot of it was incest or rape.”

“The arrogance, the cruelty,” Kathleen adds. “We’ll never understand it.”

There are happier parts – such as the Gay Byrne Fund, set up to help those in need.

“That was huge,” Suzy says. “He was obsessed with the Gay Byrne Fund. That grew arms and legs and became a huge focus for him. The work that went into it. They developed huge ties with social workers, Crumlin Hospital – every letter that came in was checked and double-checked.

“People would be writing in, saying: ‘I heard you reading out that woman’s letter, I’ve nothing myself but here’s five pounds.’

“It wasn’t huge money. It was small amounts. Someone writing to say: ‘You gave me money last year, I paid off my electricity bill, and that turned my life around, here’s £15 now because I want to help somebody else like that.’”

“Although,” Kathleen interjects, “at that time, they weren’t that small. I remember I was having an X-ray in hospital, and this receptionist said: ‘Could I have a word with you?’ She wanted to tell me that years ago she had got £50. And that to her at that time was huge. She went into detail – it was shocking what she’d gone through. She said: ‘I minded the £50, because it was huge for me at the time, until I really needed it. Now I’m living in my little bungalow in its own grounds...’

“That was the end of the story. It had seemed there’d be no light at the end of the tunnel for her. But she got £50 and that changed everything.”

“You get that feeling that the fund might have given them a break,” Suzy agrees. “Got them to a point where they could start over, break the cycle of debt that is so hard to get out of.”

Something else that emerges, crystal clear, from the book, is the sheer volume of work. The way he never seemed to stop.

“It was so busy,” Kathleen agrees. “He’d finish the radio at 11am, have a cup of coffee with the producer and talk about the next day’s programme, then it was straight over to The Late Late Show offices. The workload was crazy.”

Every year, Gay would say: ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s sand in my sandwiches’

Did she ever try and persuade him to do less work?

“Oh sure I did. All the time. When we went to Donegal in the summers, that was heaven. We’d no phone, nothing.

“Someone once said Gay used to look to see who was replacing him on the radio, as if it was important – sure, we didn’t listen to the radio in Donegal! We were up and in our rags and we were gone.

“It was just fantastic. We walked for about 26 years with a gang, and every night it was a different house, for a bit of supper. And we had a concert every night, for 26 years, we all did the same performance every single one of us, and that’s not a word of a lie.”

She laughs as she lists who did what.

“Mairead sang I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls, Liam would do Cecil Sheridan parodies and Paul did his Satchmo. I did my poetry and Eamon accompanied anyone who wanted on the piano.

“It never occurred to anyone to say to Mairead, would you sing a different song. It never occurred to her to sing a different song. We did the whole thing, every night.

“And then the picnics, and we’d go in little flotilla boats out to the islands. Every year, Gay would say: ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s sand in my sandwiches,’ And every year I would say: ‘You never got sand in your sandwiches in your life!’

“They were great times. Proper time off from everything.”

​The picture she paints of Gay is a familiar one – someone who paid no attention to the mythologies around him; a family man, a man with a close-knit group of friends, someone who outside the parameters of his professional life was low-key and almost retiring.

“He wanted to be a broadcaster from an early age, and he adored broadcasting,” Suzy explains. “He also worked hard to make sure that what came across on the radio every day and the TV every Friday looked off-the-cuff and natural. Aside from that, his social life was... functional. It was theatre, but never the after-party.”

“No,” Kathleen agrees. “He was getting up early in the morning.”

“And he stayed away from situations,” Suzy continues. “At weddings, for example, he would exit quite quickly after the meal. Once people had a few drinks, inhibitions were lowered, and they’d be over: ‘I want to talk to you...’”

That said, she marvels at his patience.

“He was always so lovely with people who came up to him. Endlessly patient. There was never any kind of ‘Not now’.”

“I don’t know how he did it,” says Kathleen. “I asked him, and he said: ‘It goes with the territory.’”

Kathleen is very funny about being married for 55 years to the most adored man in the country.

“If we were out somewhere as a couple, and I got up and went to the loo, there was always a lady sitting in my seat when I came back. And she didn’t always get up immediately,” she laughs.

“It used to drive her mad,” Suzy adds.

“I’d be standing there, looking around, smiling, waiting,” Kathleen agrees. But the humour doesn’t blind her to the serious.

“He was extraordinary. Even when he was very ill, close to the end, I used to meet men and women in the supermarket and they’d say: ‘Tell him we love him.’ Grown men and women. ‘Tell him we love him.’”

Speaking of the end is clearly still very hard for her.

“Someone said to me: ‘I’m sure he was a shocking patient,’” she says indignantly. “He wasn’t a shocking patient. He was so easy. He was just so ill. The last years were so hard.”

“I remember him getting so upset,” Suzy says. “Him saying: ‘I just hate the fact that my grandchildren are seeing me sick. I don’t want them to remember me like this.’ I think that’s the same for anyone.”

Kathleen recalls the day in 2015 of Gay’s heart attack.

“It was Christmas time, and you were all staying with me,” she says, to Suzy. “I love six o’clock in the morning, there’s not a sound, I was up and I had my trays in the oven – sausages, rashers, tomato, mushroom. Gay came into the kitchen, clutching his chest. I went to the phone, left everything, went straight to the phone and called the ambulance, then I called Ronan and Suzy. They were dressed in a minute.

“I got Gay into a chair and the men came, and they looked after him. They were so well trained, It’s extraordinary how you do what you have to do when you have to do it,” she says, and then adds quietly: “We had some moments.”

We talk again about the letters. The volume. The range. The revelations. And the impact – most of all on Gay himself.

“The effect of all the letters that he read was, I think, on his tolerance of people. He was very understanding,” Suzy says. “The letters taught him that you never know what’s going on in someone else’s life.”

​‘Dear Gay’ is compiled by Suzy Byrne and published by Gill