Claire Byrne reveals one segment she refused to take part in during first TV job
Newstalk presenter Claire Byrne has revealed the one segment she had to turn down during her first TV presenting job, almost three decades ago.
Claire, who is one of the best known presenters in the country, kicked off her return to Newstalk on Tuesday morning (February 3) after spending over 15 years in RTÉ, hosting shows such as Today with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio One and Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ One.
Despite being a familiar face on our screens in the 2010s and 2020s, many might’ve forgotten that Claire cut her teeth on the telly as a news reporter on Ireland AM — with her explaining that she got the job after a brief stint in radio in the UK.
Newstalk presenter Claire Byrne has revealed the one segment she had to turn down during her first TV presenting job, almost three decades ago. Pic: Newstalk
‘Ireland AM was my first telly job,’ Claire told her distant sucessor in Muireann O’Connell on Ireland AM on Tuesday. ‘I was radio before that — radio reporter and news editor in the Channel Islands — and I came back and applied everywhere.
‘I got called for an interview and a screen test here [in Ireland AM], on TV3 at the time, and I ended up being the news anchor on Ireland AM in 1999.’
While Claire presented the news on Ireland AM, there were some other segments she would also partake in. One such segment was, Muireann joked, ‘Gogglebox before Gogglebox’ and Claire had to turn it down when she and the rest of the presenters were asked to react to ‘the puppetry of the penis,’ something she remarked was: ‘exactly what you think it is.’
Claire’s first TV job was as a news reporter on Ireland AM, where she added that she was asked to react to a puppet show titled ‘puppetry of the penis’ — which is exactly what you think it is. Pic: WireImage
‘There was a show in Dublin, like, I’ve never seen it — I never want to see the show, just putting that out there — but they were brought in to Ireland AM, to stand in front of us and do their puppetry of the penis, which is exactly what you think it is,’ she explained.
‘Obviously they couldn’t film the act because that couldn’t be broadcast, but they could film the reactions of the presenters,’ before Muireann added: ‘this is getting so meta. This is Gogglebox before Gogglebox. Behind the cameras, the puppetry was happening.’
‘And the idea was that we would sit here and watch them, and our reactions would be broadcast. But I think I said to them at the time, “I can’t actually do that. I’d die!”‘ Claire explained as to why there was no hilarious footage of this.
‘Did you say to them: “some day I’m going to be Claire Byrne. I’m not doing that”‘ Muireann joked, to which a laughing Claire added: ‘I think I just said I wasn’t able. I was very bad at corpsing as well, laughing inappropriately, particularly with Alan [Hughes].’
Muireann confirmed that things haven’t gotten better in the near three decades that Alan’s been on Ireland AM, telling Claire: ‘He does it to me all the time. The euphemisms just flow out of him.’
‘But also he can’t control it, which I absolutely love,’ Claire added. ‘He tries to control his mouth but his eyes are streaming. It’s great.’
Claire would present on Newstalk from 2006 until 2010, when she joined RTÉ and became one of its most well-known and top-paid presenters — before announcing her departure from the national broadcaster and her return to Newstalk last August.
After presenting her final show on RTÉ back in October, Claire made her Newstalk return on Tuesday (February 3) when she took over from Pat Kenny — and, reflecting on her time with RTÉ, she said in a recent interview that the national broadcaster is ‘scared of tackling controversial issues.’
