RTE host Brenda Donohue has praised former “visionaries“ in Rte for their reality TV show ideas – but admitted the national broadcaster would never get away with it today.
The presenter worked on the Gerry Ryan Show for almost 20 years as the late shock jock's “roving reporter”.
Brenda said back when she first joined Rte, she felt privileged to be working with such remarkable visionaries such as Philip Kampf, who is now the Director of Vision Independent Productions Ltd, who make shows like Operation Transformation.
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But she said having a team like Gerry and Gay Byrne thrown into the mix is what made their ideas work on radio.
She said: “I love I’m A Celeb…..but I think there were a couple of visionaries in RTE. Philip Kampf was one and Gay (Byrne) of course but then to have a personality like Gerry, who had it all going on, it was the combination that really worked with them all.
“They were risk takers… they did all that and of course Gerry had his own radio show.”
Brenda recalled Tipperary native Michael Meaney who was buried alive for 61 days in Mitchelstown in Cork.
Meaney was trying to break the world record of 45 days entombed underground by an American adventurer called Digger O’Dell.
Brenda said: “I remember we did the skit that went on for weeks about the fella who was buried alive. That was brilliant and then there’s three old man in a pub with Gerry and two others - completely bold.
“It was him and two actors,” as she recalled Three Old Men In A Pub.
“The ideas we would’ve come up with…. whether it was an interrail race around Europe or getting a bus and going around Ireland and getting women to bring out their symbols of domestic slavery for international women’s day… like these were all amazing ideas but then you had a bunch of people who just clicked and Gerry was brilliant as well.
“He could get all that kind of supernatural stuff. All those things combined to make him push the boundaries of what is acceptable on the airwaves.
“I was kind of considered very bog, you know from the country, and I’d bring that and Gerry of course was sophisticated but he understood theatre, he understood drama and he pushed the boundaries so much. We did mad things. None of which we would get away with now.”
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