TV & Radio

Did you enjoy the Late Late's 50th birthday bash? Well you should have, that one show cost us €30,000 alone.

It's not a cheap business getting B-list celebrities into town and then boozing them up with enough alcohol to float a small ship.

The liquor-fuelled birthday extravaganza spent a whopping €8,000 on 'refreshments', that's over 6 times the normal spend per episode. Now, while the number of guests doubled to 400, that's still three times more spent per head for the 50th bash.

The refreshments normally include beer, spirits, wine and then some sandwiches for soakage, something Liam Neeson seemed to be in desperate need of.

The rest of the costs for the June 1 show consisted of travel, accommodation and guest fees. Yes, they had to pay a considerable €3,742 to ensure certain guests would bother showing up. But, according to RTÉ no appearance fees were paid to 'speaking guests'.

That pales in comparison, though, to the €17,710 spent on travel and accommodation for all the audience darlings.

So the price of seeing Irish people drunk on TV for a few hours on a Friday night is €30,000 according to RTÉ. But, to save a bit of money from now on, couldn't we just show video of the Irish fans at Euro 2012 in Poland?

RTÉ have promised that the higher spend on the anniversary show will be balanced out but cuts elsewhere. We've a feeling that means an awful lot less 'one for everyone in the audience's next year.