Publisher John Ryan is used to getting some stick and he is expecting to get plenty tomorrow night when RTÉ airs the first episode of his new weekly parody, This Is Nightlive, set on a fictional TV news show with Ryan in the role of anchorman Johnny Hansom. RTÉ was so wary of what the critical reaction might be, it refused to send advance tapes out to journalists.

Ryan himself is expecting the worst. He told one pal this week, "I expect to be taken out the back and given a good kicking. The thing is, I can take a punch at this stage."

Indeed he can and that's why I was amused to hear that Ryan plans to reproduce the worst reviews for the show on a ticker tape going across the screen during the next episode. (I hope the Sunday Tribune's TV reviewer, Patrick Freyne, is short and succinct, so.)

However, insiders say Ryan could have more to worry about from colleagues in RTÉ on whom some of the spoof characters in his show are based.

Entertainment correspondent Jackie Byrne-Daly, sports reporter Trevor Corcoran and weatherman Mike 'Cloudy' Walsh are all alleged to bear a striking resemblance to people you could meet in the RTÉ canteen.

Ryan declined, in a friendly way, to give me an interview this week saying only: "everything I've done in the last 10 years has been blown out of proportion. To avoid any hype, I'd like people to discover This Is Nightlive themselves."

A source close to his show said: "you walk around RTÉ and you bump into these newscasters, weather people and presenters with ideas about themselves. Even after they've been dumped off their shows they will obviously take any gig going. They might get a bit of a wake-up call watching This Is Nightlive."

However, this could make Tuesday mornings out in RTÉ rather uncomfortable for Ryan and his co-writers.

Sources on the show tell me after filming a parody targeting one Montrose luvvie in the first episode, they came face to face with the same RTÉ star in the corridor outside.

My source on the show said: "the meeting was really uncanny. I think there is probably going to be a lot of that going on."

Meanwhile, TV3 don't escape fire either.

The source added: "the team on This Is Nightlive hate each other, but while the camera is on they all play cheesy and friendly. The inspiration for this is a couple of episodes of a TV3 show where the presenters clearly don't like each other and can't be bothered hiding it anymore."

It's wise then that John Ryan isn't planning to stick around Dublin after his show's six week run.

After stirring up a hornets' nest on Irish TV, he intends to go off travelling for what someone on the show described as an "unspecified time".