Gerry Ryan has set his stall out for his own chat show after successfully filling in for Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show.

Approached at short notice to deputise for Pat on the day he buried his mother, Gerry's three hours of chat and interviews with guests, including Tony Curtis and Tommy Tiernan, was praised by even his harshest critics, with some calling it "a triumph".

Gerry told me last week, "Of course, I would consider a chat show if I was offered one. That's the great thing about being 52 and not 32, I felt I was much more relaxed doing The Late Late Show.

"All I did was try and not wreck the show or not make a fool of myself. I had a superb team to help me. I didn't think about what the critics were going to say.

"I knew who the audience were and that I could have a pretty good stab at delivering the show to them, so I was amazingly surprised when I saw some of the positive reviews."

However, he said, despite all the positive press, he had no idea if he would actually get to front his own chat show for RTÉ in the future. "It's a very complex package which leads you to ending up presenting a show like The Late Late Show. There's politics in it, there's money in it, there's the existence of programmes that are already on air and there is a very substantial commitment. There are a lot of roads that would need to be travelled.

"I'm glad I'm not the person who makes those decisions. All I try and do is give value for money."

Gerry says it's ironic that the possibility of a chat show should come along when aged 52 when he hasn't been happy with some of his previous TV incarnations, including the infamous Ryantown of the 1990s.

"A lot of my TV appearances on large-scale entertainment shows in the past were me overcompen-
sating for what I felt were a lack of resources or a lack of interesting guests. That really just meant that what you were being treated to was a kind of frenetic hysteria. That's what I brought to the party a lot of the time.

"And I don't think that was present on The Late Late and I don't think it was present on any other TV show I do now, I have calmed down a lot.

"You can never really tell how or why somebody like me ends up on the radio or on the TV. There are many more factors other than beyond the fact that you are able to do a programme. Or even beyond the fact that people were surprised that The Late Late turned out okay.

"First of all, they have a few chat shows already there. Do we really need another chat show? You must bear in mind that there are still people in RTÉ who do not believe that I work on TV."

Any chat show Ireland's favourite shock jock will present for the station will have to fit in alongside his other TV commitments on Ryan Confidential and Operation Transformation as well as his popular weekday 2FM show.