Surprise at Gabriel’s sex pest claim
GABRIEL Byrne’s claim there was an ‘absolutely ridiculous’ climate of ‘abject sexism’ in RTÉ in the past has been met with surprise by a number of Montrose stalwarts.
The Hollywood star made the allegations on Today With Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1, claiming there had been a flippant attitude towards men and their behaviour in the 1970s and 1980s.
The 67-year-old said that one of these individuals at RTÉ made his then girlfriend’s life ‘an absolute misery through his sexual improprieties’.
But when a number of former RTÉ stars were contacted by the Irish Daily Mail yesterday, none could back up Byrne’s account of a sexist culture during that period.
Longtime employee Pat Kenny said: ‘I never came across that. That wasn’t the environment in RTÉ in
‘It was just the climate’
which I worked.’ While Shay Healy, who first worked with the broadcaster in the early Sixties, remarked: ‘If there was any sort of flirting that went on, it was done in a userfriendly way, it wasn’t objectionable. In my time, I never saw anything objectionable between a man and a woman.’
Bibi Baskin, one of RTÉ’s most popular presenters during the 1980s, yesterday said she ‘never heard a single thing’, and ‘nothing like that ever happened to me or anyone I knew in RTÉ’.
However, she went on, ‘I would not be shocked because it probably goes on everywhere, even to this day.’
Byrne told O’Rourke when another friend started working there two producers made a bet ‘about which of them could get her into bed first’ during her first week on the job.
He added: ‘It was just the climate and nobody questioned it.’ The movie actor, who worked on RTÉ TV soap opera The Riordans in the 1970s, said that when he looks back on it, the ‘climate of abject sexism’ was ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
He added: ‘And there’s still a few people walking around the place who were regarded as… I don’t know what you would call them: sex pests?’ He said his former partner did not make a formal complaint as it was ‘common knowledge’ that it was ‘never an option’.
An RTÉ spokesperson said: ‘Any formal complaints by RTÉ staff during the period referred to by Gabriel Byrne would have been dealt with at the time. RTÉ takes its responsibility to all staff very seriously.’