We can’t even imagine.
Last night, a special episode of The Late Late Show aired in honour of Gay Byrne.
It was a once off, where countless influential Irish people took to the couch to remember the greatest ever Irish broadcaster.
One of the people paying tribute to the man was, of course, Pat Kenny.
Pat, who took over hosting The Late Late Show from Gay Byrne, spoke fondly of all his memories.
However, one stood out among the rest – that being the time he attempted to kidnap Gay.
Oh, we’re serious.
Former #LateLate host Pat Kenny remembers an early meeting with Gay Byrne during his student days which involved him pranking the broadcasting icon pic.twitter.com/4MHDK6TC5g
— Entertainment on RTÉ (@RTE_Ents) November 5, 2019
Pat revealed that he once tried to kidnap Gay Byrne as part of a student prank back in the 1960s and hold him to ransom to RTÉ.
“My first meeting with Gay Byrne was when I was an engineering student in UCD,” he said.
“It was before the Troubles so we wouldn’t have been able to do it shortly afterwards, but we decided as a student jape to kidnap the foremost broadcaster in the country and to hold him to ransom to RTÉ.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Pat continued:
“One of the chemical engineering students feigned an accident on Howth Hill and Gay was heading into the Late Late Show in his car.”
“It was Saturday afternoon and he squealed to a halt and we emerged from the bushes to kidnap Gay Byrne.”
“Gay was wise to us very quickly and sped off but we told the Sunday independent about it and we had our picture in the paper and all that and the next Monday morning we get a call from Gay and we thought we’d have to apologise but Gay said `how would you like to recreate that for next Saturday’s Late Late Show?'”
Brilliant!
