It was the three hours that turned your living room into Times Square, NYC of a dreary 1980s Sunday afternoon.  MT-USA was a game changer in many respects, not least because it was Europe's very first music video TV programme and Vincent Hanley – aka "Fab Vinny" – was the face behind the music.  Dave Fanning is at the helm of The Ryan Tubridy Show this week and he was joined by Bill Hughes, producer of the iconic music show.

"Vincent Hanley was spending time in New York and MTV launched over there.  He saw the immediate impact of what it was doing, that it was opening peoples' musical tastes, it was launching certain bands and he just thought, Europe is crying out for that kind of launch pad, so he got together with Conor McAnally and they set up Green Apple Productions.  They went about the painstakingly difficult task of negotiating music clearances for music videos because no music video show existed in Europe at the time.  The only place you'd see music videos was thirty seconds of them at the end of Top of the Pops…  They had to go to the record companies and say, we want to show the videos in their entirety the way they're doing it on MTV in the States and the record company said, no, you can't do that because you have to pay.  They always saw videos as a revenue source in themselves.  They didn't realise that videos were going to become the key promotional tool for music."

Bill was a great pal of Vincent's and the two would take off on adventures to play at discos across the country with a car full of chocolate, Lucozade and laughter.

"He'd get up, do his hour of high energy and the crowds would go crazy.  He'd have 2fm t-shirts and promo material to throw out into the crowd and it was like he was a visiting rock star.  Then we'd jump in the car and come back and laugh the whole way back to Dublin.  He was so full of life and such a character and such a part of the fabric of Irish life." 

Thirty years on from Vincent's untimely death at the age of thirty-three, Bill has brought his story to the small screen in documentary form.  Fab Vinny airs tonight, October 31st, on RTE One at 7pm and marks the highs and lows of his glamorous and all-too-short life.  Bill remembers Vincent acquiring a high profile agent in London and procuring a sought-after slot on the BBC, but by that time, Vincent knew something wasn't right within himself.  Spending a significant time in New York and coming from a very repressive culture in Ireland, Bill says, "Vincent embraced the New York gay life," and devastatingly at that time, contracted the AIDS virus.

"He became incredibly gaunt and incredibly weak, hollowed cheeks and his eyes deepened and you just knew there's something seriously wrong with Vincent.  We became more and more concerned.  In my heart of hearts I knew but he wouldn't confirm it until it got to the point of no return and he had to…  It's very distressing to think that Vincent who had been so full of life was still planning what he was going to do when he got better. He used to say to me, now when this has passed and when this is over, and he would say ideas to me and I just knew that there wasn't going to be another time"

Tragically, Vincent would pass away shortly after his thirty-third birthday of complications related to this disease about which so little was known in the 1980s.  While Bill continues to be devastated by the loss of such a great friend and such an extraordinary talent, he is keen to point out that since decriminalization of homosexual acts, Ireland is a very different place.

"It's great to be gay in Ireland today.  Everything has changed.  The Gardaí have liaison officers.  The society is totally accepting.  We have gay marriage.  It's very, very different."

Fab Vinny airs tonight, October 31st on RTÉ One at 7pm or can be seen on the RTÉ Player.  Click here to hear the full interview.