News

It was all over the media last Friday morning that O Searcaigh was going to appear on the Late Late show that night.

The Daily Mirror ran a front page piece under the heading: TEEN SEX POET FACES LATE LATE QUIZ which was a well-written piece about angry child protection campaigners hitting out at the national broadcaster for giving O Searcaigh a platform, and describing his actions as "indefensible"

Gerry Ryan covered it on national prime-time talk radio, and a couple of other papers ran pieces confirming that O Searcaigh would be interviewed on Th Late Late Show.

For those readers outside of Ireland, The Late Late Show is RTE, the Irish national broadcaster's flagship entertainment chat show, attracting audience figures as high as 700,000 - well over 50% of the Irish television audience.

The interview was going to be a one-on-one interview with the presenter, Pat Kenny. No-one from the film team was invited. Nor were any experts on child abuse, child protection specialists or victim counselors invited.

Then it all went horribly wrong. RTE decided to pre-record O Searcaigh's interview before the live broadcast, so that what he said could be legally vetted before it went out, and when O Searcaigh was informed he withdrew from the programme.