Former news reader Anne Doyle has admitted she was “relieved” she didn’t embarrass herself on Tommy Tiernan’s Saturday night chat show.
The retired RTE icon opened up about how she didn’t see the point in getting married on the hit series.
The episode was watched by almost half a million viewers (490,000) on Saturday night and Anne said she was “relieved” she didn’t make a “gobs****” of herself.
Speaking exclusively to The Star: “I was relieved to be honest. You know yourself, you never really know how something will turn out or how it will go down. I don’t do social media but everybody I know does.
“It was a great experience and I enjoyed it and I was glad it worked out well. We all shrug our shoulders and say we don’t care but at the same time we do care really. You’d be afraid you made a gobsh*te of yourself.”
The former News anchor opened up about how marriage and children were not her main priorities when she was in her 30s while chatting to Tommy.
"I wasn't reared by a Mrs Bennet, it didn't cross my mind that the best thing I could do was find the best marriage prospect, it just didn't cross my mind," she said on the Tommy Tiernan Show.
“I was a freer spirit than that and then I suppose like most people I fell in love here and there along the way.
"I was never unfortunate enough to fall in love with somebody who was a disastrous human being, quite the contrary, I was always quite fortunate.
"But I suppose I never really fell in love with somebody to a point where I felt like upturning my life and becoming a part of a married couple.
"Then as I got older, and I suppose my views were quite broad anyway, and quite frankly I didn't see the point."
Her honest interview was met with widespread praise, with many viewers calling her a legend.
But Anne told us she was nervous ahead of the show.
“I would always be a bit nervous, but I think everybody in their right mind is. I just don’t really know how something is going to turn out or how it will be perceived. I would shrug my shoulders and say with a great air that I couldn’t care less but you do care really.
“You care some. You’re going to be a lot more relieved that it turned out well rather than feeling like you’ve looked like an idiot.”
Anne praised Tommy and RTE “peculiar” format, saying it was an interesting experience.
“The programme is a huge success. It’s quite extraordinary. It works extremely well. I’m not much of a viewer but I have watched quite a few of the interviews and he just gets better. He has just got such a great way with him and it is such a peculiar format, but it works.
“I was always kind of dubious, until I was part of it myself. I was always thinking, does he really not know who is going to be on? But he quite clearly doesn’t. He definitely doesn’t. And they’re very careful, they make sure you’re whipped in and put in a corner, well not quite,” she said jokingly.
“They are very careful to maintain that. He seems to have mastered that capacity to just come at a thing with an open mind. It was an interesting experience. It passed,” she said.
But she said Tommy’s show is incomparable to Ryan Tubridy’s Late Late Show, which raised more than E2.5million for Daffodil Day last Friday.
It previously emerged Tommy trumped Tubridy in the ratings one weekend on Saturday, March 13, after he attracted an audience of 453,000 compared to 441,000 who watched the Late Late Show on Friday, March 12.
But Anne said the two shows are different in every way.
“I wouldn’t see it that way at all. They’re quite different. They’re totally different formats. You wouldn’t be comparing like with like at all and I’m not much of a viewer with anything. I’m probably the wrong person to ask that question to. There will always be an element of competition with the numbers, but I think they’re totally different in every way.”
