Wokeness in Ireland--1966 style

I have recently been thumbing through the memoirs of the late great Gay Byrne which were published in 1989 and in which he discussed, among other things, great controversies from his time as host of the Late Late Show. One in particular, which has gone down in legend, was the "Bishop and the Nightie" affair which occupied the national newspapers of the day for quite a time in 1966 and caused no end of anxiety in RTE headquarters.

I quote an extensive passage from the book below for anyone who wants to read the whole thing. What I found so astonishing about it is how familiar it sounds in these days of "woke" outrage and cancel culture. Sure, the viewpoints which are held so vehemently and from which one dare not deviate too much are very different 55 years later but the righteous indignation, the tyranny of peer pressure, the willingness to use powers separate from the normal chain of command within any public organisation to bring influence to bear on someone deemed to have outraged popular sensibilities are pretty much the same as today.

To summarise for anyone who thinks the passage is a case of TLDR: In February 1966 the Late Late ran a short item in a then popular format (called Mr and Mrs) in which a married couple are asked the same questions about each other while out of each other's earshot. The humour comes from then comparing each other's answers and realising how different they are. Hilarious, and very very dated in these days of cohabiting and indeed single-sex couples.

One of the questions asked of this particular couple was the colour of nightdress the wife had worn on her wedding night. After humming and hawing for a time she replied that she probably hadn't worn one at all. The minx!!!

The audience had a good natured titter and all seemed well until the Bishop of Clonfert got in touch to say how outraged he was and that he intended denouncing RTE, the Late Late and Gay Byrne in particular from his pulpit the following day (Sunday). What has Mr Byrne to say about that?

The response from RTE moved pretty quickly from "You can't be serious!" to "Oh ****, we're in big trouble" Hurried apologies were made, Gaybo was forced to say how sorry he was (when he wasn't at all) and various organisations up and down the country (town councils, GAA boards, Catholic newspapers) were very sure to declaim publicly their outrage and intolerance of such reprehensible behaviour.

It's quaint to note that, writing in 1989 about these events, which took place in 1966, Gaybo was optimistic that "This sort of thing couldn't happen today." Poor lad must be spinning in his grave!

It's important to note that the Catholic church had no direct power or responsibility over RTE and its programmes. But it had massive influence over its flock and that was clearly what spooked RTE management. Gabyo's reaction resonates very clearly with anyone today who has faced a hostile college mob demanding his or her "removal" or "deplatforming" or other ostracisation unless of course a fullsome apology is proferred along with a sincere promise never to "offend" in such a manner again.

I don't actually like the terms "woke" or "Political correctness". They're just the same old priggishness expressed by a different crowd with different views but just as much self righteous indignation.

They all need a good ride!!!!

Anyway, for those willing to soldier through the full "horse's mouth" passage, here it is.

From The Time of my Life (1989) by Gay Byrne

"What I do believe is for the better is that there is this new willingness at least to hear the other guy out—if not always to listen: the two things are not synonymous. And there is a new perspective on what is truly important and what is not.

Radio and television over the past twenty-five years have made it easier for people to realise the normality of their reactions and their situations, and they are prepared to talk about it—or at least to write to Gay Byrne about it or to Marian Finucane or any of the clones of the 'Late Late Show' or the 'Gay Byrne Show'.

I do not believe, for instance, that the Bishop and the Nightie incident could happen today. This episode, which has gone down in history and folklore and to which I refer for the benefit of those who are not old enough to have seen it, happened because we had decided in February 1966 to include, as one of the lighter items on the show, a pastiche of a quiz that was popular at the time on other channels, in which husbands and wives were asked the same questions while out of earshot of one another but within earshot of the audience. The object of this exercise was to see how much their answers tallied with each other, to what extent they knew each other's thoughts and attitudes or to what extent they would find they did not understand each other at all. The questions were pretty harmless—or so I thought.

Two of the volunteers for the quiz, a Mr and Mrs Fox, were asked individually what colour nightdress had been worn by Mrs Fox on their wedding night. Neither could really remember, and Mrs Fox ventured, in all innocence and good humour, that perhaps she had worn none at all. . . The audience laughed delightedly, and that, I thought, was that.

You can imagine my astonishment when, after the show, I was told there was a most urgent phone call for me from a reporter in the Sunday Press, who wanted to know if I had any statement to make in answer to the strong attack made on the programme by the Bishop of Clonfert, Dr Thomas Ryan. I knew of no attack, and knew only slightly of the Bishop of Clonfert and I asked for further details. The Sunday Press had them, in the form of a most forthright denouncement of the 'Late Late Show', which had been provided to them by telephone by the bishop's secretary, and which denouncement he intended to make the subject of his sermon in Loughrea Cathedral the following morning. Further, the Sunday Press was going to give its full front page over to the bishop's statement, and make it the major story of the day. I was so surprised that I had to ask the reporter which part of the show had so affected His Lordship, and I was told it was the section of the programme that featured the husband-and-wife quiz; they had their front page made up and were able to give me full details of it.

The Sunday Press plans for such a big story made everybody surprised, except presumably the bishop and his secretary, and I went home that night not a little convinced that the whole thing was some huge gag being perpetrated by someone just to see what my reaction would be. But not so. The next morning [my wife] Kathleen and I went to ten o'clock Mass in University Church in Stephen's Green, and coming out we bought both Sunday papers. There it all was. They differed little in their coverage of the story, and it was obviously the most serious thing to happen in the country in decades. I remember as we drove up Dawson Street on the way back home that we were overtaken by an old friend of ours, Fr Brendan Heffernan. He had seen us coming out of Mass and had read the newspapers; he raced after us to offer his condolences, and I was somewhat relieved to find that he had seen the show and was as much at a loss as I was to know what all the fuss was about. I say I was relieved, because I was beginning to think I was going a bit mad.

That morning [my brother] Al was having a few friends round for drinks, and he had asked us to drop in. When we got there, Gunnar Rugheimer, the Controller of Programmes, was also there, and was in rollicking good form about the whole saga. He thought it was intensely funny, and another indication of the quaintness of the Irish mind. Everyone present had a good laugh about the whole thing; but by the next day, after the story had gone out on both the radio and television news bulletins on the Sunday, the atmosphere had changed somewhat, and the laughter died down a little.

On the Monday I was told that the Controller of Programmes and the Director-General wanted to see me. They had obtained a transcript of the whole programme and had examined it minutely—that is to say, they had had typed every word spoken by everybody on the show from beginning to end. I was forced to admit as I looked at the transcript that in the light of the bishop's criticism it was quite the most filthy, double-meaning and suggestive programme that had ever been transmitted anywhere in the world. Right from the moment I came on and said, 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the "Late Late Show!"' one could sense an evil glint in my eye and a knowing, suggestive smirk about my mouth. The further in we got the worse it became, and, of course, in cold print, taken out of context, the husband-and-wife encounter was sheer dirt from be­ginning to end. Again, bearing in mind what the bishop had seen in the programme, my final 'Good night and God bless' was pornography ram­pant. One didn't need to hear the actual words: one knew instantly what was in my mind.

Both the Controller and the Director-General were agitated and wanted to get out a statement. Why they wanted to do this was never very clear to me, but I got the distinct impression that there was a bad case of the screaming funks going around, and everybody was catching it fast. I be­lieved then, and I still hold the belief, that the bishop should have been told by the DG that we had thought about the show and that we had come to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with it; therefore we were making no apology for it. But this is not what happened. Having run up and down the corridor a few times with draft statements, the Controller and I sat down and wrote something to the effect that we now realised 'that part of last week's programme was embarrassing to a section of our viewers and we should like to say we are sorry about this.' And that became the official statement in reply to the objection. I was quite appalled at how so many people in responsible positions must have known that they were right but allowed themselves to be placed in a one-down situation—and I include myself in that criticism.

But that was not the end of it. The wolves were out on the rampage and saw a field-day being presented to them on a plate. Every good soul in search of a bandwagon to clamber onto realised that his day had come, and thousands must have been hurt in the scramble to get on board.

The Irish Times on the Monday was toffee-nosed and amusing, and right. Its leading article was headed—predictably— 'The Bishop and the Nightie'. It ended off by saying: 'While feeling that His Lordship was killing a fly with a sledgehammer. . . the Bishop in this case may find that, as our music-hall correspondent tells us, Saturday night's joke is one of the staples of vaudeville and may have bored more viewers than it offended. A lapse of taste has been treated as if it were an outrage to morals.'

The bishop was quoted in Monday's Evening Herald as saying that he had been 'inundated with calls to congratulate him on his stand in speaking out against an objectionable show.' He added that he had seen the show on a few previous occasions 'but could not see anything then which could be regarded as morally objectionable.' He said he was not a great television fan, and added that he mostly watched news and sporting items, and one or two other programmes, such as 'Tolka Row', for relaxation.

Loughrea Town Commissioners got in on the act in their weekly meeting on the following Wednesday (surprise, surprise: they just happened to live around the corner from the bishop). 'A dirty programme that should be abolished altogether' was how one speaker put it when the commissioners were discussing a vote of congratulation to the bishop on his stand. 'It's time to nip this thing in the bud, and His Lordship deserves the support of the people in this matter,' said Mr Devine. The Mayo GAA Board joined with the Meath Vocational Education Committee in passing resolutions condemning the show. The letters pages of the evening papers were full of controversy, and of course the Irish Catholic was not behind the door in pointing out just why they supported the bishop against those who were abusing him for his action. By the time the Irish Catholic got to it, however, what had happened on the 'Late Late Show' had become, not just a quick question on a superficial quiz 'but a public discussion of bedroom relations between married couples'! (The exclamation mark is mine.) Further, thundered the Irish Catholic, 'what is important is that a person with authority and courage has drawn public attention in an arresting manner to the growing tendency to play down the grave implications of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and the unworthy part that Telefis Eireann, deliberately or unthinkingly, is taking in that process.' Dear Lord, I thought—what, little old us doing all that!

There was much more, and it went on for quite some time. The newspapers loved it and kept coming back for more bites of the cherry. But eventually the point of overkill was reached, and the turn came in the public reaction.

The outpourings of outraged self-righteousness eventually became so overpowering that a lot of people, all of a sudden and all at the same time, decided that they'd had it and that this nonsense had gone on quite long enough. The point was made, somewhere along the line, that if the bishop had wanted to make the front-page headlines in the Sunday papers, there was surely a sufficient number of real and important questions to be tackled in our society that were much more worthy of his attention. And anyway, when all was said and done, what precisely was wrong with a husband and wife describing a nightie with good humour on an adult programme, designed for adults, late on Saturday night? Perhaps, it was suggested, His Lordship was slightly out of touch with how real people lived? Gradually a lot of people came to the conclusion that never had so much fuss been made about so little by so few—and never had it all been exaggerated to such nonsensical lengths. The tide of criticism turned, basic good humour took over, and the incident became the subject of jokes for many years afterwards.

However, for me, one of the most telling and truthful points was made in a letter to one of the evening papers. It said: 'The worst aspect of this squalid little affair is that Gay Byrne, knowing that his conscience was clear, should have apologised in public' That was the one lesson that I took from the entire episode.

The Bishop—who had not at the time realised the implications of his action in issuing the hasty statement, which could and in my opinion should have been held on his behalf until the more clear-thinking light of the following morning—was deeply embarrassed; and months later he sent an emissary to Kathleen's brother, Jimmy Watkins, who is a vet, asking for a meeting with his representative in Bewley's cafe. When Jimmy went along, the representative, a clerical gentleman, asked him to convey His Lordship's regrets to me over the entire incident. Decent man.

Poor Tom Ryan! Clearly, a bunch of the boys had been tippling a few in the back room that Saturday night, which, God knows, they were perfectly entitled to do. But Tom failed to build in protection for himself in the event of having one over the eight, and thus found himself embroiled in something that was to cause him the most acute embarrassment for the remainder of his life.

It has dogged my days for twenty years also, to the point of boredom; and the only reason I tell the story here again (and believe me, this is a very shortened version of it!) is because I know the younger generation will find it hard to believe that such an incredible fuss could have been made about so little. The hypocrisy, the cant, the posturing, the lies of that period are beyond credence, but the whole ridiculous incident is a historic marker of how seriously Irish people took their telly in those days. They've improved! "