As Ray D'Arcy prepares to return to TV screens on Saturday nights in September, the broadcaster admits that he missed the "buzz" of live television during the summer.
The Ray D'Arcy Show returns to RTÉ One on September 14, and Ray says he's "really looking forward to it."
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment at the RTÉ New Season Launch, he said: "We had a great season last year.
"This is a bit sad, but I've actually missed it during the summer because there’s a buzz about live television that you can’t get anywhere else."
The TV and radio star says that the excitement doesn't compare to other daredevil activities he has taken part in.
"I was up with the Jordanian Falcons flying upside down over Lucan and I was on a flyboard on Terryglass, like a James Bond thing, all very exhilarating and exciting but neither of them matched the buzz that you get from live television", he explained.
D'Arcy singled out "that connection with people" as one of the reasons he loves it so much.
"You know that people are sitting on their couches in Cork, Galway, wherever, and at that moment they’re sitting down, and the floor manager’s going '45 seconds to air' and I say to the audience in Studio 4 'we’re going live to the nation in 45 seconds' and there’s this frisson of electricity that goes through everybody.
"There’s something very special about it."
They have already got some guests lined-up for the upcoming run, but crucially, they leave some slots free.
"I think that worked for us last year is a bit of flexibility", D'Arcy said. "So you have some guests but you wouldn’t be full every week. You need to leave room for the story of the week.
"What’s exciting with this year is we’re going to do more cross platform projects, so we’re going to start things on the radio and then finish them on the TV. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do since I came to RTÉ, but we just didn’t get the chance until this year."
When asked who would his dream guests be, the TV star pivoted and singled out one of his most memorable guests from last season.
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"One of my favourite guests of last year was Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor. She danced in front of Doctor Death, she wrote a brilliant book called The Choice which I see is still in the book charts", he said.
"She's in her 90s now, she came up from America, just this amazing positivity for a woman who’s gone through hell and back. And then at the end of it all the two of us just got up and danced.
"That’s live and there’s something very special about that, and then the audience got up and gave her a standing ovation.
"On paper you probably would have thought that’s going to be a good guest but not a great guest but on the night she out of this world, a dream guest."
The Ray D'Arcy Show returns to RTÉ One on Saturday, September 14.
Click here for the full rundown on what's to come on RTÉ's autumn schedule.
