February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — Worries about his health led housewives’ favorite Gay Byrne to scale down his work schedule and finally decide to give up his radio and TV shows. He said he felt that the pressure of work meant that he was heading for a nervous breakdown.
Byrne, who is 64, will give up his morning radio show at Christmas. He plans to stop hosting his "Late Late Show" TV chat program at the end of the current season next June, said he was "not retiring."
"Rumors of my death are vastly exaggerated," he said. He is taking a sabbatical with his wife, Kathleen, and then he’s open to offers from the new TV3 channel, which started last Sunday, independent producers and RTE.
Byrne said, however, that he would not do another TV chat show again.
He believes the "Late Late Show" — whose 36-year run is a world TV record — should remain on air with a different host.
Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter
He told the Sunday Independent that he was feeling depressed and the pressure of work meant he was living in a "prison of his own making," which was a six-and-a-half-day week.
"I was feeling unwell and felt that I could no longer cope with the demands that people were making on me," Byrne said. "I felt I was heading for a nervous breakdown. I took some advice and the advice was, having been examined and everything was in working order, ‘You’re terrific at the moment, but if you keep going at the rate you are, you’re going to be in trouble in two to three years’ time.’ "
Byrne said he would be wealthier and more respected if he had emigrated and become famous somewhere other than Ireland.
"I think if I had gone to America, England or Australia . . . and if I was a fraction as successful on radio or television there as I was here, then, needless to say, that I would be a multimillionaire and in that case I would be a great Irish hero," Byrne said. "The mortal sin you can commit is to stay in Ireland and still be successful.".