Gay Byrne's Classic Late Late Show Music Moments: Therapy?

THERAPY? (MARCH 2001)

Therapy? lit the TV centre switchboard up with complaints after becoming the first band to say “fuck” not once but twice on the Late Late.

“The group had spent the afternoon rehearsing their profanity-free cover of Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’, only to switch without warning to the somewhat fruitier ‘Knives’,” we were told by an RTÉ insider. “Gaybo and the production team went spare. The procedure for all live programmes is that the lyrics to songs have to be submitted at least a fortnight beforehand to make sure there’s nothing offensive in them.

“Everyone freaked when they switched – first, because the ‘f-word’ is definitely unacceptable on the Late Late and secondly because the cameramen had worked out all their angles for ‘Isolation’. They didn’t have a clue what was going on.”

Quizzed about the incident, Andy Cairns told us: “We were meant to be playing ‘Isolation’ but the sound crew were really fucking about saying, ‘You’ll have to turn it down’, so we meekly gave in. Or so they thought! Come live broadcast time, we turned everything up to ‘11’ and did ‘Knives’ instead which is full of rude words and gave the grannies from Mullingar in the front-row a heart-attack.

“Gerry, our manager, went mental: ‘At least if you’d told me I could’ve prepared for it!’ We were literally escorted from the premises and told never to come back. Oh for the days when you could piss people off so easily!”

Before you ask, no, there wasn’t a Therapy? t-shirt for everyone in the audience.