Time of My Life: An Autobiography - Tapa dura

For more than 30 years, Gay Byrne has broadcast on Irish radio and television. He tells his life story of growing up in Dublin and how he became a household name by the time he was 30. He tells how he copes with the stress of stardom on his private family life. The youngest of six children growing up on Dublin's South Circular Road in the 1940s and '50s he could never have foreseen that he would become the celebrity of later years. But this son of the captain of a Guinness barge was to become a household name by the time he was 30 and establish himself as the outstanding figure in Irish life, outshining every other prominent individual by the flair and consistency of his performance and by an extraordinary capacity for hard work. Early days in radio (while working as an insurance clerk) led inevitably to television, first at Granada and then the BBC. The beginning of Telefis Eireann in 1961 opened a unique opportunity which was grasped eagerly and the Late Late Show was first broadcast - as a filler in the summer schedule - during 1962.