Sometimes other people ring in to complain about George and sometimes they say nasty things about Tom in print. In the pubs and clubs, sometimes, they shout at the television sets. But the sets stay on, the channel unchanged.

Their figures are phenomenal.

Simply, nobody in Ireland watches rugby on any other channel.

"They've carved out an incredible niche, " says Ryle Nugent, rugby commentator and commissioning editor for TV sport in RTE.

"They've struck a heck of a chord with the people out there. It's hard to ever put your finger on why it works . . . it's just a blend of personalities. If you could bottle it and sell it, you would, but you can't."

They will be on duty again next weekend for Munster's latest tilt at the Heineken Cup. There has rarely been a rugby game more anticipated, and Tom McGurk and his panel will be acutely aware of the proximity of the nation's hearts to their mouths. Sometimes, their own might even be too close for comfort. "Tom is much more passionate than I am, " says Hook. "He cares much more deeply whether Munster win than I do. I tend to look at it more as, are Munster playing well? For Tom, it's all about winning."

He has been the face of Irish rugby for a decade, though his stripes were earned at the frontline of current affairs. But sport was always a passion: he boxed, and played rugby, GAA and soccer back at school . . . St Patrick's in Armagh . . . and again at Queens, where, when indoors, he studied English and philosophy. He graduated in 1972 and joined RTE Radio as a news reporter, moving to television in 1974.

Alongside Aine O'Connor, he fronted a long-running current affairs show and quietly accumulated a CV as a documentary-maker.

It took him to London at the start of the 1980s, where he worked on Radio 4's influential current affairs show, Start The Week, and continued making documentaries for Channel Four and the BBC. His film Stolen Children, which focused on the children who went missing after the Argentinian Junta, won a European Documentary Award.

He was in Berlin for the fall of the wall and reported back on the collapse of the communist regimes of eastern Europe for The Mail on Sunday. In common with most young Northern Catholics of his generation, he was involved in the civil rights movement and maintained an interest in miscarriages of justice throughout his time as a journalist in Britain.

He was close to the Maguires and through them met the Conlons. Dear Sarah, the powerful drama he wrote for RTE . . . based around the correspondence between Sarah and Guiseppe Conlon . . .

was broadcast while Gerry Conlon was still in prison and was responsible in no small measure for an increase in awareness of the plight of the Guildford Four. It remains the only RTE-produced drama which was broadcast across the networks in Britain.

He returned to Ireland and RTE in 1990, immersing himself again in current affairs, chiefly in radio. He would become the longest-serving presenter of The Sunday Show since Andy O'Mahony . . . he was widely regarded as the patsy for the Marian Finucane/ Ryan Tubridy musical chairs manoeuvre that saw the popular Sunday morning magazine axed two years ago. The preferred understudy to Pat Kenny for the late-morning radio show, he will return to that comfortable chair for a two-hour daily show for the duration of this summer.

He came to sports presenting late, but immediately found a rhythm to match his passion for his subject. The current affairs beat helped, and with the recruitment of Hook and Pope, RTE's rugby coverage soon became a peculiar hybrid of sports, politics, exceptional analysis and occasional insult.

As its anchor, McGurk sometimes turns crusader . . . his cause, in these breathless days of divvying up TV sports coverage to the highest bidder, the future of sport itself.

"We're gradually seeing the terminal demise of sport, " he says. "When sport is owned by people who own television, it ceases to be sport and becomes sports entertainment. It happened in the States 15 years ago with football, basketball and baseball, and now it's happening here. It's now becoming a social problem: live football every night of the week, people in pubs and clubs watching it every night. Where is society in all this? The number of kids who buy Manchester United jerseys and never kick a football?

There's something profoundly sad about that, and my worry is that rugby is going the same way."

He believes the decision to schedule one of next year's Six Nations games for 9pm on a Saturday night is an ominous one and he wishes more people would kick up over RTE losing the rights to show next year's Heineken Cup live. But these, he believes, are small portents in a bigger, darkening gloom. "Sports is one of the last places in our PC society where masculinity has survived. It's a huge part of the father/son relationship. And all that is being jeopardised now."

He had met Miriam O'Callaghan in 1980, when she was a 19-year-old solicitor.

They married in 1983 and had four daughters; he already had a child from a previous relationship. They moved to London and back together, but separated in 1996.

He married PR supremo Caroline Kennedy (sister of designer Louise) three years ago. The couple share their Co Carlow home with dogs . . . McGurk breeds and shows kerry blues . . . ponies and occasional waifs and strays from the animal kingdom. Wildlife is another significant passion.

As a broadcaster, he has consistently balked at towing the PC line . . . a contrary stance that endears him to many and exasperates more. "He's very charming, " says one female former colleague, "but I'm sure that under there, beats the heart of a chauvinist." Another colleague describes McGurk as "other-worldly". "Sometimes I wonder which century he comes from, let alone which country."

Others say he is "strong spirited and strong-willed, " "simultaneously infuriating and devastatingly funny", while one rugby source suggests "he does seem to have quite a number of people in the long grass waiting for him."

George Hook insists they are not friends . . . "we don't go to each other's houses or drink pints together" . . . but says his wife gets on extremely well with McGurk, with whom she shares intellectual interests that Hook knows little of.

On the subject of the McGurk intellect, there is unanimity: he is smarter than George Hook and most of the rest of us as well. There is also consensus that under his able stewardship, RTE currently boasts the best rugby coverage in the hemisphere. "In comparison to the competition, " says one former rugby player, "they're light years ahead. But it kills me to say it."

C.V.

Occupation: Broadcaster
Born: Dungannon, Co Tyrone, 1946
Educated: St Patrick's, Armagh; Queen's, Belfast
Married: To Miriam O'Callaghan, 1983 . . . 1996; to Caroline Kennedy, 2003. Five daughters
In the news: As anchor of RTE's rugby coverage, he will talk the nation through Munster's final assault on the Heineken Cup next weekend