New Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty has sidestepped questions on the RTE payments scandal – saying he’d need a few beers to discuss it.
The Northern Irishman takes over the Friday night chat show from September after Ryan Tubridy stepped down last month.
Tubridy has now found himself at the centre of the controversy, with Kielty making light of the scandal, with members of the media warned beforehand that he would not be taking questions on the scandal.
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He said: “I’d need a few more beers before I could talk about that.”
It was first revealed last week that RTÉ had been paying Tubridy a total of €345,000 more than what was publicly stated from 2017 to 2022, which Tubridy claimed he was not aware of.
Kielty was on stage alongside former world champion boxer Carl Frampton as they discussed their documentary film-making work in the closing event of the Belfast’s Docs Festival at Cineworld in the SSE Arena.
It looks unlikely that the comedian has plans to reveal his salary just left as efforts made by us to contact Kielty’s agent went unanswered. We asked if he will be revealing his Late Late Show salary before he starts the new job in September, but his agent declined to respond.