By Cian Murphy

As he counts down to what will be his first time to host the Late Late Toy Show in his debut season at the helm of TV's longest running chat show, and Ireland’s cultural institution, we caught up with Patrick Kielty to talk about how the GAA influenced him.

His father Jack was a highly regarded club and county administrator prior to his murder by Loyalists in the 1980s. The GAA pitch in Dundrum, Co Down bears his name and the club continues to have a huge role to play in Kielty family life.

GAA: Who were your GAA influences growing up?

PATRICK KIELTY: I was taught by Jarlath Carey who was Headmaster in Sacred Heart Primary School in Dundrum and Jarlath won two All-Ireland medals with Down in ‘60 and ’61. He marked the mighty Mick O’Connell (Kerry) in the 1960 final, and he looked after the teams and so he would have been a massive influence growing up.

Eddie McKay was the goalkeeper on the Down team in 60-61 and he was from Dundrum, and he was the guy who got me into being the goalkeeper. He gave me my senior start and I played senior football for Dundrum whenever I was 15, and then the late, great Pat O’Hare would have been my Games Teacher at St Pat’s Grammar School in Downpatrick. He coached and was the trainer alongside Pete McGrath for Down’s win in 1994. Looking back on it now, there were so many amazing people.

GAA: Goalkeeping, it is often said, is a thankless task, how did you end up there?

PK: I had shin splints whenever I was 12 or 13 and I was told I needed to take six months off running, and so I went into goals and it became really apparent that while I was quite bad out the field, I was sort of average to middling at goals and weirdly, that’s how I got into it. I had my older brother John who was a year older than me and he was centre-half forward, so it just sort of worked out then that he was going to the field to practice and if he wanted to practice his catching and kicking that if I was the goalkeeper it tied in, and so he was putting me to the test and I was putting him to the test and that’s how it worked out.

Goalkeeping is very much like stand-up comedy: with stand-up you either get a laugh or you don’t and with goalkeeping you either save it or you don’t - there is no middle ground, so I think it suited the personality.

GAA: What does it say about the comedic value of the GAA that two of Ireland’s biggest exports in yourself and Chris O’Dowd were both county minor goalkeepers?

PK: Ha! Well, all good goalkeepers are wired in a slightly different way I would say. Chris and I have spoken about this a few times, though I think Chris probably ended up playing in more games than I did, though I was lucky enough to win the All-Ireland. I would say that if you look at the state of football currently, and the way it is being played, that there is way more comedy in what is going on on the pitch than what Chris or I ever put forward on screen.

GAA: The Yellow and Black Down jersey from the 1987 minor final was fantastic. Did you get to keep yours?

PK: I did. It was around the time that Meath started wearing the crisscross jerseys and that was the big thing. In 1986 if you had a Down jersey it was just a straight colour red and then suddenly Meath had these amazing jerseys and then the Dubs did the same thing. Because we were playing Cork in the minor final and obviously Down are red and black and Cork are red and white, we went to provincial colours for the final so we played in yellow and black and Cork played in white that day. I still have it, still have the jersey in the house and the brother still has his jersey from that day too. Iconic is the word – the iconic yellow and black jerseys.

GAA: How long were you on the county panel for and what were your standout memories? Sharing the experience with your brother must have been special?

PK: I was on the panel for three years. I was a sub the first year when we won the All-Ireland and played the next two years. The team didn’t get out of Ulster, so make of that what you may in terms of a coincidence or not! Winning the All-Ireland was the absolute stand out. At the time you didn’t realise how hard they were to win, and you maybe thought the following year when you were playing ‘ah well, we are the All-Ireland champions, you know, we’ll probably get as far again,’ so winning was the stand out. Playing with the brother, the two of us on the team, the first round of the championship in ‘88 we played Derry, and we won that game, and he scored four points and I didn’t do too bad in nets that day so that was a proud day.

GAA: What’s more nerve shredding – running out onto Croke Park or the Late Late studio?

PK: It doesn’t get more nerve wracking than running out onto Croke Park. When you are on tv, people think that is a lonely place to be but you’ve got so many people who are helping you look better and making things sound better and try to nurse you through the thing so, the support you get when you are hosting TV, even though it looks like it is just you out there, that’s not the truth. Standing in Croke Park, with the game going on and a team on the break and it is only you between the goal there is no lonelier place.

I hosted the Special Olympics in 2003 and even just standing on that stage walking out on that stage at Croke Park that night, that’s probably the highlight of my career so far and definitely harder than hosting any TV show.

GAA: We are told by our friends in Down that one of your earliest packed audiences was in front of the crowd of the Burlington Hotel on the Monday after the All-Ireland where you entertained people doing impersonations. True?

PK: Very good research! In the Burlington on the Monday (after the All-Ireland final) there used to be the lunch for the four teams, and it was always tradition that someone from each team got up and said a bit of poetry or a song or did a turn which represented the county. We had to put in for a special dispensation for me to get up and tell a few jokes. Meath and Cork played in the senior final that year and I ended up getting up there and did Micheal O’Hehir and I think there was Billy Connolly, Barry McGuigan and Ian Paisley as a few impressions in a rerun of the game from the day before. That would be one of the very first performances that I ever did.

GAA: How big of a role did football play in your life and are you able to stay in touch with Down and the GAA in general these days?

PK: It is massive for me. My brother is still the Chairman of our club in Dundrum, and my younger brother manages one of the teams and my nephew plays in one of the teams and is on the Down minor development panel this year, so we are all very proud of the progress he is making.

For me, one of the best memories of 2023 would have been bringing my son Milo to the Tailteann Cup final, getting a Down jersey on him, bringing him to Croke Park for the first time. It’s been a long time since a Down man has had a day out there and the result didn’t go our way but once it is part of you, once the GAA is in your fibre and in your family, it doesn’t disappear, thank God.

GAA: People speak fondly of your late dad Jack, and he is remembered as a progressive administrator who was ahead of his time. The GAA field in Dundrum is named after him, it must have been nice to have him remembered in that way?

PK: Having the field named after the aul fella is just the greatest thing. I suppose at the time when it was named after him you didn’t realise what a big deal it is, but then with the passing of time and new generations coming through, it starts to mean that wee bit more. They upgraded the floodlights at the pitch last year and I had my two boys over for a couple of weeks, we get over as often as we can, and they were running out on the pitch under the lights and the eldest fella turned around and said ‘dad, dad, these lights are amazing, it never gets dark at Kielty Park.’ For him to say it never gets dark at Kielty Park - that just put me over the edge so for that pitch to be named after him, it puts a big smile on everybody’s face in the family.

GAA: Last April, the GAA hosted a group of Unionists at Croke Park for an afternoon of conversations as part a Shared Ireland initiative. How important is it that there are those types of initiatives like this and developments like East Belfast GAA as part of what a New Ireland might be?

PK: I think any initiative like this where people from different traditions come together and no one is trying to change anyone’s tradition, nobody is trying to dilute anyone’s tradition, but if people can actually get together and experience the other side and see how people live their lives…when you come from Dundrum what’s lovely about Dundrum is you’ve the Gaelic football pitch at one end of it named after my aul fella, there’s an Orange Hall at the other end of it, there’s a cricket pitch in the village as well. We are sharing the island and sharing the space and the more we can do to just build trust between the communities, and I think the GAA has been good at doing that, and I think under our new president Jarlath Burns I’m looking forward to more initiatives like that happening.

The Late Late Toy Show airs Friday 24th November at 9:35pm on RTÉ One & RTÉ Player.