Joe O'Shea, a journalist with the Irish Daily Star, grinned from photocall pictures in a sharp Louis Copeland suit with Grainne's hair artfully tousled at his shoulder. While the Star gushed about "the sexy pair", most were politely shocked about the decision to bring in an 'outsider', and wondering, 'who'?

"The charm and wit with which his readers are already familiar, will, we believe, equally endear him to television audiences, " declared Grainne McAleer, RTE's commissioning editor for daytime and lifestyle programmes.

So with the producers and researchers left to come up with content that doesn't infringe on the Six One News or The Afternoon Show . . .

between which the tongue-tripping 'Seoige & O'Shea' is sandwiched . . .we're left wondering what to expect from the latter.

O'Shea was born in Cork city 36 years ago to Corkonian parents.

His father, Joe, a taxi driver, is from Cork's northside and his mother, Norma, who works in a letting agency, hails from Kaiser Hill.

The second eldest of four children, his sister Niamh has worked in marketing for both the GAA and Cork City of Culture. His older sister Jennifer is a teacher and his brother Ken is a reporter with RTE's Prime Time.

He grew up smackbang in the city centre in Barrack Street, about 10 minutes' walk from Grand Parade and attended Sullivan's Quay CBS on the river Lee by South Gate Bridge, before going on to Deer Park CBS secondary school.

As a teenager, O'Shea played guitar and sang in bands with his brother Ken around Cork. His father owned a rundown building in the city and Joe convinced him to rent out some of the rooms as band practice spaces. Pretty soon, Joe was running the operation, renting out six or seven rooms to bands, including the popular Frank and Walters, and using the money to buy musical equipment.

In 1989, he started a course in journalism at Rathmines College of Commerce. A work placement in the Star newspaper followed and pretty soon, O'Shea found himself in the thick of tabloid journalism.

The newspaper had been just recently established, and was edited by Michael Brophy, a man who came to be a big influence on junior reporter O'Shea, who went on to work under editors Paul Drury, Gerry O'Regan and Ger Colleran.

He was just 19 when he started work during the summer of the 1990 World Cup, an event that made the Star, and the content of many of the colour pieces was written by O'Shea.

He has since travelled to many of the World Cups and European soccer championships.

Working as a news reporter up until 1998, O'Shea was a colourful writer, but didn't possess the hunger and determination to break stories required of a tabloid newshound. The Star and himself recognising this, O'Shea was switched to feature writing and started the kind of daft and witty barstool column that endeared him to the paper's readers. Called 'Last Orders', O'Shea intends to keep writing it, despite this RTE sojourn.

Unafraid of courting controversy, O'Shea kicked off his column stint by writing that Michael Collins was gay, an allegation that saw him receive death threats from very heterosexual Cork people.

Another . . . this time, rather wisely anonymous . . . column of his in In Dublin magazine followed and ran for about a year, detailing the misadventures of a hack.

O'Shea's announcement as Seoige's cohost came as a surprise not just to the general public, among whom he doesn't exactly have a high profile, but also within media circles.

RTE has taken the rare step of bringing in an outsider for a high-profile position.

And it managed something even rarer in keeping the appointment quiet, with even some members of the Tyrone Productions team, which is in charge of the programme, oblivious to the choice until a press release was issued.

O'Shea is currently being guarded by a ferocious PR buffer zone, who are refusing to allow him to talk to any press ahead of his first broadcast on 9 October.

The slot on RTE One will run from 4.30pm to 5.15pm, and is a difficult one to fill. Still too early to get the pre-news ratings, RTE will be hoping that the spillover from Afternoon Show viewers, (or those who are tuned to Judge Judy on TV3) and a curiosity factor, will boost viewership.

The format of the programme itself is still a bit muddled, lying somewhere between current affairs and lifestyle with a Joe Duffy-esque 'issues of the day' element.

O'Shea himself is well-versed on public opinion and issue-driven material, although there are still uncertainties over how Seoige's previously formal presence on television will work as an off-the-cuff style.

It's not O'Shea's first TV experience, though. He has in the past filled in occasionally for his friend Dara O'Brien on Setanta Sport's flagship programme The Hub, and has been offered several other gigs in the past by production companies, but nothing that really interested him until now. Clearly not desperate for the limelight, the format of the new programme seems to have appealed to him as a journalist.

The Corkman is a likeable, all-rounder with little time for the loftiness of ego that such a television 'profile' often produces.

A keen follower of Cork hurling, he also spends much of his time attending gigs and music festivals, and socialising in pubs around Dublin, namely Whelan's, the Stag's Head and Grogans.

But his main passion is classic cars, a subject he wrote about for two years in the Sunday Business Post's Agenda section.

Previously the owner of a convertible Triumph and a Fiat 850 Spider, he's currently to be seen behind the wheel of a 1972 BMW. O'Shea is also a bit of a history buff and has read every Patrick O'Brian novel ever published. Those closest to him say he is generous and hospitable to a fault and a walking encyclopedia of general knowledge, almost obsessively frequenting pub quizzes.

O'Shea's success on television will lie in his ability to transfer his personality onto the small screen. A chatty and gregarious character, how he fares at RTE will probably have less to do with his obvious capability and more to do with the programme itself.

C.V.

Age: 36
Occupation: Journalist and now TV presenter
Status: single
In the news: has just been named as Grainne Seoige's co-host on the much hyped 'Seoige and O'Shea' afternoon programme on RTE television.