Gay ready for TV return on ‘Meaning of Life’ after his cancer battle
GAY BYRNE is to return to our small screens with the 14th series of ‘The Meaning of Life’.
Last year, the legendary broadcaster informed listeners to his Lyric FM show that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Having spent the last several months being, by his own admission, “a terrible patient”, Byrne (83) will front another run of his popular series. Filming on the series has yet to take place but the production team hope to interview a range of major public figures “about the people, experiences, choices, ideas and beliefs (or lack of them) that give their lives meaning.”
Previous guests on the show include Stephen Fry, Garry Hynes, Dolores Keane, Joan Burton, Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, Hozier, Majella O’Donnell and Rory O’Neill.
The broadcaster is also due to return to the airwaves this October with his Lyric FM show. Speaking previously about returning to work, Byrne said: “Kathleen was very much against it because she doesn’ t want me to take on anything which is stressful or a strain.
“But my radio show is not a stress or strain programme, it’s a little Mickey Mouse radio programme on Sunday afternoon.” Next year, Byrne will celebrate his 60th year working in broadcasting.
Details of Byrne’s show will be announced as part of the RTÉ autumn launch later this week. The station has managed to enlist several A-list Hollywood celebrities to present TV shows; Gabriel Byrne will host a documentary about the life and work of playwright George Bernard Shaw.
The programme, ‘My Astonishing Self: Gabriel Byrne on George Bernard Shaw ’, follows on from the success of Bob Geldof’s centenary documentary about WB Yeats.
Academy award-winning actress Anjelica Huston will front ‘James Joyce: A Shout in the Street’. This will trace the tumultuous life of Joyce, beginning with his chaotic childhood in Dublin.
‘Downton Abbey’ actor Hugh Bonneville will present ‘Countdown to Calvary’. In this programme, he travels to Jerusalem to tell the story of the week that changed the world – the last six days of Jesus’s life.