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A former director of television at RTE has branded The Late Late Show as ‘utter shite’ in a brutal yet obvious attack on the station’s flagship show.

The Friday night chat show has come in for plenty of criticism since Ryan Tubridy filled the seat vacated by predecessors Pat Kenny and most famously Gay Byrne, with its detractors suggesting that Tubridy is too easy on guests and that it is just a pit stop for various celebrities peddling their latest book, album or film.

In one of the most brutal condemnations of the show to date, Helen O’Rahilly, a former director of television at RTE, wrote online that standards on the show have slipped dramatically, and panned Tubridy for his failure to quiz Ronan Keating on the affair that nearly broke up his marriage when he appeared on the show earlier this year.

“If I was back in charge of RTE, you wouldn’t see this utter shite on Friday night,” wrote O’Rahilly.

“The opinion seems to be, ‘Let’s get whoever is in town, who’s flogging books, who’s flogging movies’. I haven’t seen the Late Late set the agenda in a long time – other than when Ryan is giving out about people slagging him on Twitter.”

O’Rahilly took particular exception to Tubridy’s bland and matey interview with Keating, comparing it negatively to the interview with Andrew Cowles, the late partner of Keating’s former bandmate Stephen Gately, who was ‘reduced to tears’ in front of the audience.

“Why was Ronan allowed to sail through and say, ‘All is grand and here is my new CD’? It’s just not on to do wishy-washy interviews on some and then really go for it on the wrong target,” O’Flaherty added.

Irish viewers will be spared the sight of Tubbers when the Late Late Show takes a hiatus in the summer, during which time he will fill in for the vastly more entertaining Graham Norton on a Saturday afternoon show on BBC Radio 2.