Gay Byrne has died

Here’s Gay presenting the short lived Irish version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?



And here’s a longer run from a pre-euro celebrity episode.

The funeral coverage of Gay Byrne will start at 11.30am tomorrow on RTE One and RTE News Now and will run through until 1.30pm, followed by their half hour lunchtime news until 2.00pm.

Over on VM One, the Elaine Show is at 11.00am followed by Live at 12, so I can guess they will use this time to air coverage of the funeral too.

Did they film it in on the UK set I wonder?

RTE Studio 4 at Montrose could have been used. At just over 6,500 Sq Ft it could have fitted an adapted form of the British set, along with wide angle camera lenses to make it look bigger.


RTE also have two sound stages, at just under 6,000 Sq Ft each, they could have used one of them.

I do not see RTE using the British set, as this would have meant flying out the Irish contestants to London, a production cost which would have bankrupted RTE fast giving the state of their finances, even in 2000.

No a new set and recorded in Ardmore studios.
I only remember because there was a controversy a few years later about the storage cost of the set. RTE spent at least 2 years seeking new sponsors when Vodafone/Eircell pulled out, the National lottery were close at one point but got cold feet.

Ardmore Studios is used quite often by RTE - Dancing with the Stars uses it, as RTE does not have a large enough studio at Montrose for it.


Maybe RTE should consider doing a deal with Ardmore and use the complex more often. Saying that, judging RTE's current financial mess I assume that will never happen under Dee Forbes?

You can tell there are slight differences the audience looks a bit smaller with possibly less rows and the floor seems to be frosted, presumably due to a smaller budget. To be fair for a small nation the set was quite impressive compared to some nations like Australia who had/have tiny sets.

These days I’m sure they’d use the UK set but I’m guessing availability was a bit lacking in those days with Millionaire shown several times a week and recording quite close to transmission and semi-retired Gay might not have wanted to keep flying over.

I was in the audience, it was Studio 4.

It was definitely at Ardmore for 1 series not sure about the rest.

Of course Gay worked for Granada for a bit.

So the funeral of Gay Byrne is being aired live this morning on RTÉ One and RTÉ News Now in Ireland and for audiences worldwide, it'll be streamed on RTÉ Player and at RTÉ.ie live at 11:30am.

Here's the route the cortege will be taking and this special programme will be presented by Bryan Dobson, with commentary by Mary Kennedy and John Bowman.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/1108/1089477-funeral-of-broadcaster-gay-byrne-taking-place-today/

RTE Player is truly CRAP - I am having problems watching the funeral of Gay Byrne online, a truly appalling service.