Patrick Kielty on why he never reconsidered taking the Late Late

As Patrick Kielty takes over the reins of The Late Late Show, following an eventful summer in RTÉ, he talks about why he never had any second thoughts about hosting the show, his 'accidental' career and how comedy helped him cope with tragedy. Donal O’Donoghue meets him.

Patrick Kielty is fixing up the interview room in RTÉ when I arrive. I can see him through the window, rearranging the blinds, switching on lights, and plumping cushions. "Jeez, Pat," I say, stepping into the space. "I didn’t know your new gig also involved cleaning up the place?"

The gig, of course, is hosting The Late Late Show, the hottest ticket in town which became much hotter in the wake of RTÉ’s pay controversy.

Now, for three days in Montrose, Kielty has been meeting the press and most likely fielding questions about Ryan Tubridy, poisoned chalices, and second thoughts. Water off a duck’s back.

RTÉ Player: Watch Patrick Kielty's first episode of The Late Late Show now.

Never for a moment did the 52-year-old consider withdrawing. Instead, in the wake of the controversy, Kielty revealed his contract details, waived his expenses, and got ready to rumble.

"One of the greatest TV jobs in the world" says the man whose dream was to host the flagship RTÉ chat show ever since watching it as a wee lad at home in Co. Down in the dark 1980s.

We meet in the Late Late Show’s old green room. Once upon a time, Kielty himself sat here, an up-and-coming comic primed for the bright lights. And in more recent times too he was a guest discussing the political legacy of the Good Friday Agreement, as well as his own tragic story: his father Jack, murdered by loyalist paramilitaries, when Patrick was just 16.

Passionate and politically informed, the man from Co. Down is a man with many strings to his bow – comedian, TV presenter, producer – with the latest being actor following an impressive debut in the film Ballywalter.

"I asked could I be a guest on the first show, and they said absolutely not" he jokes, immediately warm and utterly unaffected. "I’m going to have my porridge," he says, and gets stuck in.

The cereal is his daily kick-start at home in London where he lives with his wife, TV host Cat Deeley, and their two sons, Milo (7) and James (5). "No matter what time you put them to bed they’re up at the crack of dawn," he says. They didn’t lick it off the stones.

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Kielty has signed up for seasons of The Late Late Show for which he will be paid €250,000 per 30-show season. He did not seek out the job. Rather RTÉ approached him.

"I don’t know who else was in the hat. I got a call and thought: ‘Ooh, that’s interesting’."

Did RTÉ say why they wanted him?

"I don’t know if that actually was revealed," he says and laughs. "The call was very much, ‘is this something you would consider?’ and ‘can we make it work?’. Logistically I had to think about it but emotionally I didn’t, having sat on the floor as a kid in Dundrum, watching the show on those weekend nights with mum and dad and my brothers.

"One of the first bits of TV I ever did was a comedy competition when Gay Byrne brought me on. No matter what shows I’ve done, coming back here to RTÉ and hearing the show’s intro music, the hairs go up on the back of my neck. And that’s when you’re a guest! So, the idea that the music will be playing with my name called out as host is amazing."

When the RTÉ pay controversy story broke, he never thought about pulling the pin. "The idea of a live event that so many people are watching is like the stand-up comic drawn to that flame of walking out onto a stage," he says.

"So, there was never any second thoughts. As you get older in life you realise what is noise in the background. Now it was very important noise in this case, but it’s not your business and something you can’t change. My business was and is this show."

Did he worry that the show’s reputation or image might be damaged (the show has yet to secure a sponsor)?

"It never crossed my mind. I was just thinking of the show and TV people in London and beyond (the former head of NBC Entertainment also called him) were congratulating me after the news emerged. So now I’m the custodian of the show, the lighthouse keeper, but the lighthouse is always going to be there."

Kielty is the first host of the RTÉ chat show from beyond the Irish Republic. "One of the things that maybe people down here don’t realise is how significant The Late Late Show was for us during the bad times. On a Friday night you could always tell who was watching the show because you had to have two TV aerials: one for Belfast and the other for Dublin. For my family and lots of other families, that Friday night was a mixture of escapism and a window into the normal Irish life that we wanted.

"As someone who has always had a keen interest in politics, the opportunity to sit in a chair that gives you a ringside seat on maybe some of the important debates over the next few years, was a big thing. I don’t think I would have been ready to do this show five or ten years ago. But having done a few serious bits and pieces on TV has made me more comfortable in my skin, able to segue from a bit of craic to something more serious."

He sees the show, with its wide embrace shifting from light entertainment to current affairs, as a prime example of public service broadcasting.

"I understand the anger behind why people won’t pay their TV licence fee but when all this stuff dies down, the value of public service broadcasting will endure," he says. "I think the Late Late Show has always reflected Irish life in a unique way. It has always managed to segue from ‘we know how to enjoy ourselves to we know how to listen to the stories that are at the heart of who we are as a people’.

In the early days of his appointment, a rumour swirled that his wife, big in the US, would co-host some of the Late Late shows? He chortles. "Yeah, Cat is in fact doing the show! Jeez! There have been so many deliciously silly rumours and that was one of them." And then there’s the other big deal, The Toy Show. So how are his singing and dancing skills? "I’ll have to brush up on both. The wife hosts a show called So You Think You Can Dance, so I might need to get a few lessons in that respect."

Kielty and Deeley married in 2012, having been friends for many years previously. "As I get older, I tend go with my gut," he says of his decision to host the Late Late and so it went with his impromptu decision to fly from Belfast to LA to surprise Deeley on her 30-something birthday at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And that’s how it started.

In January 2020, after 14 years in the US, they moved from Los Angeles to London. "We swapped a house in California with outdoor space and a swimming pool for a three-bedroom flat in North London with no garden just two months before a global pandemic. We couldn’t return to America – there was no vaccine at that stage – so when we got a good offer on the house, we took it. I remember packing up the house on Facetime with the removal firm and because of the time difference it could be one o’clock in the morning, and you’re three gins in saying to them ‘just take all of that stuff there and none of that!’"

Earlier this year Kielty quipped: ‘When you come from a country village in Co. Down, it’s basically illegal to be famous’.

"That’s true," he says now. "Getting into stand-up was not something I chased. It came about accidentally. I used to play a lot of Gaelic football and was goalkeeper on the St. Pat’s team in Downpatrick. I was also good at doing impressions, down the back of the bus taking the piss out of teachers and famous people like Barry McGuigan and Billy Connolly.

"Our coach, the late, great Pat O’Hare, said he wanted me to do the Christmas concert. I was not interested so he said if I didn’t do it, he’d drop me from the quarter-final match. I said, ‘Isn’t that like, blackmail, Pat?’ and he said ‘Shure there’s only two of us here and no one’s going to believe you!’. I was petrified about doing it. I went home and told my dad and he said to lean on the leg that shakes the most. Good advice but the problem was that both legs were shaking."

Later there were other moments – increments he calls them – that lead to a career as an award-winning stand-up comic and a successful TV presenter and producer. His list of credits includes the award-winning PK Tonight and Fame Academy (his co-host was Cat Deeley), while in recent years he has made several documentaries about the legacy of The Troubles.

"Fame is a weird thing," he says now. "I have had it to varying degrees from ‘Oh my god that’s your man’ to ‘Is that him?’ to people getting you totally mixed up. I’ve been mistaken for Ian Beale of EastEnders and Les Dennis. A man who once told me that he loved me on the radio, and it became clear after a few minutes that he thought I was Dermot O’Leary. I don’t take fame too seriously because it’s something that comes and goes."

As for his thoughts on his predecessor Ryan Tubridy, he keeps his counsel. "The whole thing is a sorry mess, but this story has been regurgitated and analysed so many times my take on it is not going to do anyone any good."

In recent times he has recalled his own story, a family tragedy, and its legacy (his father Jack, liked by both sides of his community, was murdered when he refused to pay protection money). In its aftermath, young Paddy Kielty never for a moment considered the path of vengeful violence, not wanting to visit on others what was visited on his home.

In the film Ballywalter there is a narrative that comedy can in some way heal the comedian. Does he believe that? "I didn’t use to think that" he says.

"For a long time, I thought that I was telling jokes about other people, that it was me describing an outside world. The penny dropped in later years that my take on that world was shaped by what I’d been through. And comedy helped me through. There is also a line in Ballywalter that there is a truth in comedy, and I believe that the idea of comedy and having a chat with someone is similar in that it is all about getting to a truth."

Patrick Kielty believes the passing years have helped him get to his truth. More than anything he strives to look at life from both sides now.

"Everybody carries something," he says. "Does it affect who you are and what you do? Of courses it does – it has to. Down the years I’ve come to realise that this life is not life or death, it is life and death, both sit beside each other. You never know what people are carrying day to day, but I believe that we are getting better at smelling out the humanity. It’s important to work out why people are a certain way, to understand what might lie beneath.

"Of course, it can be dangerous to think that certain things have brought you to this moment. Often there’s a randomness or luck to things happening. But I also think it is nice to look back and piece together those building blocks of your life where you can be amazed at how certain things have brought you to where you are."

And that’s where we came in.

Patrick Kielty on why he never reconsidered taking the Late Late

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