The Telly Ten

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The stars of the RTÉ Guide photo shoot

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Jennifer Maguire

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Fair City's Jennifer Kavanagh

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Claire Byrne

Jennifer Maguire (One Night Stand, RTÉ Two)

What can we expect from you this autumn?

A lot of fun and a lot of laughs! You're going to see me everywhere. You're gonna be sick of looking at me. I'm doing a dating show called 'One Night Stand' and no, I've never had a one night stand. It's a reality dating show and each week I go on the pull with a group of girls or a group of guys and we hook them up with people around the country. It's going to be a lot of fun -organised chaos. We start filming next week and we don't know what's going to happen.

What are you looking forward to in the new autumn schedule?

I'm very excited about the new dramas on RTÉ and I'm looking forward to the return of Sonya and Brendan. I'm excited to see 'The Republic of Telly' and not just because I'm involved. I think we need to see more comedy. At the TV awards last year, there wasn't one award for comedy. By the way, I want an award for being best messer.

What would be you dream show to present?

I am doing it! I'm very interested in the whole dating thing. I was going to set up a dating website as a business, so to be able to do this and have fun and have a great production company behind me and have a laugh with it, is great.

What old show would you like to see making a return?

I want Glenroe back because it reminds me of my childhood. I had to go to bed when it was over. I loved Miley and the storylines. I don't think you can get better than Glenroe.

Brendan Courtney (Off the Rails, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you this autumn?

Well, it's all change on Off the Rails. I'm turning into a woman because you can't buy decent clothes for blokes in Ireland. We're upping the ante on the makeovers. Last week I did one with a 78-year-old woman which was really good fun and very interesting. We're high-ending the gloss and the fashion and we're doing a new feature called On The Radar which is our top five favourite things.

What are you looking forward to in the new autumn schedule?

I don't just sit down and put the telly on. I'm an appointment to view person. I'm a bit of a BBC Four head to be honest. I watch a lot of documentaries. I love Mary Portas. I'm not a fan of 'Mad Men'; I think they should just call it 'Slow Men'. It is beautiful; I watch it for the style, but then I get bored. I love 'X Factor'. I have 'X Factor' nights with my friends.

What would be you dream show to present?

I love television and I love what we do and I'd love to do a show about the world's biggest trendsetters. The fashion world is frivolous and fun in some ways and very influential in others. I'm fascinated by what makes people buy things.

What old show would you like to see making a return?

I think they're very clever at the BBC the way they exploit their archives and I think RTÉ could learn from that. People are always asking me to bring back 'Wanderlust'. It was ahead of its time but I used to be embarrassed by it actually. I didn't realise how relevant it was with social networking and everything.

Sonya Lennon (Off the Rails, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you this autumn?

'Off the Rails' will be all about glamour and aspiration this year. We worked very hard to get to grips with the makeovers and transformations on the show. The focus for us is really making 'Off the Rails' beautiful to watch and filling it with covetable things.

What are you looking forward to in the new autumn schedule?

Gosh. I don't know to be honest with you. I do enjoy a lot of cookery shows though.

What would be you dream show to present?

I'd like to find a way to explore what's really happening for women in Ireland, find a way to connect with them. I think it's a very interesting time sociologically with all of us forced to make big changes. Things we took for granted are no longer there. But I still think women want certain things. They want to be loved and feel sexy and feel good about themselves and I'd like to explore other ways we can make that happen.

What old show would you like to see making a return?

I'm addicted to MasterChef and I was reminiscing about the old format from about 20 years ago with Loyd Grossman. I'd love to see a re-run of that now, not only because it's so old fashioned, but also to see what people were cooking then and to see how much has infiltrated our lives now. We were introduced to pesto and nobody knew what it was and now it's available down the Spar. I'd like to see a retrospective of when MasterChef began.

Joe Duffy (Joe Duffy's Spirit Level, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you on TV this autumn?

'Joe Duffy's Spirit Level' will be live at five every Sunday. Being live is the most interesting aspect of a show where we will be investigating topical issues within a religious remit. People say that religious affairs aren't current affairs but in Ireland they are! Also I will be championing James Connolly for 'Ireland's Greatest'. I knew a good bit about Connolly but I've learnt so much more and I'm utterly convinced that he's Ireland's greatest person and especially relevant today.

What are you looking forward to watching in the new schedule?

The new season of 'Mad Men', which I have been following from the very beginning. I used to work in advertising in the 1970s at ARKS where nearly all the members of Horslips, including Barry Devlin, Jim Lockhart and Charles O'Connor, were involved to some degree. The brilliant thing about Mad Men is that they all drink non-stop, eat non-stop and smoke non-stop and it has no effect on them.

What would be your dream show to present/star in?

I love doing live television, which I did for the first time towards the end of the last season of 'Spirit Level'. So I'd love to do a live show. A chat show? There's no room for that at the minute but there's plenty of room for conversational, off-beat, confrontational stuff. And I want to do it standing up as well.

What old show would you like to see make a comeback?

Either 'The Phil Silvers Show (Sergeant Bilko)' or 'F Troop'. Brilliant slapstick comedy, especially the Bilko show, which was so well-written. And to think it was done on a basic set with two desks and one army jeep passing by the window every so often. Genius.

Jennifer Kavanagh (Fair City, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you on TV this autumn?

God, there's so much happening for Cleo on 'Fair City'. She has got tied up in such a crazy web of lies but the truth comes out in the end and it kicks her in the face. You're seeing the old feral Cleo again. It's almost like her story has come full circle from that day I started on 'Fair City' as a 17-year-old and the first line I read was: 'spare change mister?'

What are you looking forward to watching in the new schedule?

I'm a sucker for 'Two and a Half Men' at the moment. It's a bit of a giggle and perfect for me when I come home late after a big day of work. And I have to say 'Fair City', because I know some of the storylines coming up and I just can't wait to see how they pan out on screen.

What would be your dream show to present or star in?

I'd love to present 'The Afternoon Show' or the latest version of it. I'm a sucker for the adrenaline buzz so anything that will give me that rush appeals to me. Live TV is like theatre in a way: if anything goes wrong on stage you have to think and act on your feet. I'd love to star in 'Grey's Anatomy' or failing that any medical drama, so that I could pretend to operate on people.

What old show would you like to see make a comeback?

'Power Rangers', because I wasn't allowed to watch it as a kid, because I used to think I was one of them and I'd start jumping off things. I loved them and I wanted to be the Yellow Power Ranger.

Eddie Hobbs (The Consumer Show, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you in the autumn schedule?

There's a massive vacuum in consumer rights and consumer courage in Ireland, and that has a lot to do with a lack of leadership, and people feeling that they can't do these things. We will be dealing with big issues; the professionals; the barriers to competition that keep prices high; what needs to be done to take them down as well as showing, on a very practical basis, why things are the way they are, and what people can do about it.
Hopefully, we'll be covering these issues with a bit of sharpness, because you have to be prepared to take risks with a consumer show - you have to be prepared to be opinionated, otherwise it's pointless.

What are you looking forward to watching in the new schedule?

I'm not a general television viewer. I tend to watch news and debate programmes, history programmes and documentaries - that type of thing. I tend not to watch many entertainment programmes, but I do watch 'The Good Wife'. I think that's fantastic.

What would be your dream show to present/star in?

What I'd love to do as a once-off is a television treatment about the huge story of the Irish involvement in the creation of America, and particularly the American Civil War. About 100,000 Irish people fought on both sides. It's a dramatic moment in human history and it's never been told properly. I think the audience for it would be enormous.

What old show would you like to see make a comeback?

'Hall's Pictorial Weekly'. That was biting political satire that managed to lance the boil and performed a very important function, and used humour. Spitting Image performed a similar role during the Thatcher period in Britain.

Lucy Kennedy (Do the Right Thing, RTÉ Two)

What can we expect from you in the autumn schedule?

Myself and Baz Ashmawy on 'Do the Right Thing'. He's great craic and we're very similar in a lot of ways. The idea is there are going to be 80 people who will be vying for the position of the ultimate volunteer. We're going to whittle it down to 16 people. There'll be eight men and eight and women, from all walks of life, and each week they're going to compete against each other. Two people will be knocked out every week, they'll whittle it down until there are two people left. And these people are going to give up a year of their lives to do charity work. They're very good people.

What are you looking forward to watching in the new schedule?

'Living with Lucy!' My soaps: 'Fair City', 'Coronation Street' and 'EastEnders'. I will not miss them and if I go away, I have to have them recorded. I literally cannot miss them for a day. I'm also looking forward to 'The Consumer Show' - that'll be interesting, I think.

What would be your dream show to present/star in?

I've always said 'Big Brother', but I have to let that go. It would have to be reality-based. Maybe a 'Celebrity Love Island' type reality show, without a shadow of a doubt.

What old show would you like to see make a comeback?

'Blind Date'. That is something I would love to do. Big time. Same idea, bring back Graham for a quick reminder. I loved Blind Date.

Claire Byrne (The Daily Show, RTÉ One)

What can we expect from you on the autumn schedule?

I'm really looking forward to 'The Daily Show', and we're in rehearsals at the moment and it's all really exciting. Myself and Dáithí [Ó Sé] are getting on great. What we're going to do is cover the stories in the newspapers and the stories of the day that you actually read and listen to, and the stories that affect your lives: the human interest stories. Along with that, we'll be covering entertainment news and celebrity news. So it's going to be a healthy mix of the information that you need for your day, and the stuff that keeps us all gossiping.

What are you looking forward to watching in the new schedule?

Eddie Hobbs'programme ('The Consumer Show'). I think we're long overdue a good consumer programme, so that's something that I'm really interested in seeing. 'Mad Men' is back again, and I'm such a big fan. I'm really looking forward to that.

What would be your dream show to present/star in?

Well, the one I'm about to do is really what I'm looking forward to. Reality shows fill me full of fear and terror. The only one that I would see as a real challenge would be something like 'Celebrity MasterChef'. I'm completely addicted to it.

What old show would you like to see make a comeback?

I loved 'Wanderly Wagon'. I'd love to see that coming back, and I think it would be a real success. The characters were fantastic. We still do impressions of Sneaky Snake in the Byrne household at Christmas.

Interviews: John Byrne, Suzanne Byrne, Alan Corr and Donal O'Donoghue