Have we been led up the garden path by Claire Byrne's shed?

Why is Marty Morrissey's shed so similar? Questions need to be answered urgently about RTÉ presenter Claire Byrne's garden shed and those infamous Covid broadcasts...

Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been led up the garden path and back again? The questions surrounding Claire Byrne’s garden shed certainly indicate that all is not as it seems. Did the RTÉ presenter really present Claire Byrne Live from her garden shed at her home in Bray, Co Wicklow in March 2020 when she apparently got ‘Covid’ or at least, as she told viewers, experienced ‘the symptoms of a cold’? 

“According to the HSE guidelines you need to self-isolate when you have the symptoms of a cold so that’s what we are doing. And I have contacted my GP. My GP has put in train all the necessary requests to get me a test for the Coronavirus. That test hasn’t happened yet but I expect that it will in the coming days. Now rest assured, I’m feeling quite well, we’re just being cautious, we’re being careful and we’re being compliant with the HSE guidelines because let’s face it, the last thing I want to do is put my colleagues at risk if I do happen to have the Coronavirus, or indeed our guests”.

Aside from HSE compliant Byrne looking and sounding perfectly healthy, the wood panelling behind her sleekly coiffed bob looked freshly constructed, as if newly built. The Irish Times even remarked on the design of her garden shed. Ed Power wrote on March 17, 2020:

Her shed, as it happens, is lovely, with tasteful Scandinavian-style panelling and a lamp that ties the room together.

It’s a funny sensation, coming down with shed envy during the Covid-19 apocalypse. Still, watching at home many of us will hope we are never likewise required to front a high-rating current affairs broadcast from our own hut of horrors at the end of the garden. Were I to do so, I would be vying for the camera’s attention with three kids’ bikes, an upended lawn-mower, and enough spiders to give Covid-19 bad dreams. I’d also muck up my ankle clattering into paint-pots on the way out.

For sure, this was the tidiest garden shed of all time. No clutter. No shivering March temperatures. No passing traffic sounds. Why not the spare room in the main house for some comfort and heat? How curious. Time passed. Byrne apparently got Covid again in April 2022. Will we ever know for sure? The PCR tests could never tell. Plus the cycles were run too high for any kind of credible result. Anyway, the presenter was back in the famous garden shed, not a hair out of place, the picture of health, complying with those HSE regulations with virtue signalling glee.

Surely if the mother of three had the ‘deadly virus’ she would have been tucked up in bed feeling sorry for herself, with a snotty red nose and a box of Kleenex. Nope. Brave Byrne somehow, miraculously, struggled on and managed to broadcast a live prime-time show from her garden shed. For three weeks in a row. What a trooper. That wood panelling though, it was so similar, strikingly close, to Marty Morrissey’s shed in County Clare.  What a strange coincidence. Two RTÉ presenters with the same taste and choice in wood and carpentry.  What are the chances?

Mary Hannigan in The Irish Times described Marty’s shed in May 20, 2020

“…he’s a broadcaster helping us through the pandemic with a chat show in a shed in the corner of his west Clare back garden, where he has a larger-than-lifesize cardboard cut-out of himself and a framed montage of photos of him gyrating on Dancing with the Stars.

Marty’s shed, then, is kind of a shrine to Marty, having the look of a place that contained a sunbed and a sauna pre-lockdown, before they were replaced by two laptops and a big telly so that he could do his show.”

Just in time for everybody to work from home, a grand act of solidarity with the wider public.  Remember it was becoming much too dangerous to head into the office, the ‘deadly virus’ with the 99.97% survival rate was on the loose. Why was RTÉ so taken by garden sheds?

More time passed, then a curious message arrived to my Telegram channel stirring suspicions that may have dissolved with time. Jeff wrote: 

Aisling I know for a fact and can prove Claire Byrne presented her show live in a shed in RTÉ. She was never in her own garden…never. Theatre.

It turns out Jeff’s friend had apparently helped to build the shed on the grounds of RTÉ, Montrose in Dublin but did not want to go public, so proof was not going to be straightforward. I thought it would be easy to find out one way or another. Just ask. If the garden shed was really at the end of Claire Byrne’s back yard, we’d get a fast response and I’d get a swifter kick up the rear end for daring to question the narrative. I thought it was too important to ignore so took the risk by first putting it out on Twitter on April 2, 2023 at 10.15 am:

I also sent questions to the RTÉ press office, making sure to CC most members of the large team to make sure they were addressed in a timely fashion. No response yet from the Press Office but RTÉ’s Information Office has kindly reported that my questions have been delivered. Here’s what I asked…

I am looking for clarification on Claire Byrne's garden shed broadcasts from March 2020 and more recently from April 2022 when she apparently contracted Covid. 

 - Was Claire broadcasting from her garden shed at her home in Bray?

 - Or was the shed in fact on the grounds of RTÉ in Montrose, Dublin?

 - There are striking similarities to the shed Marty Morrissey broadcast from, in his Marty in the Shed series, from the wood panelling to the finish. Did Marty broadcast from the same shed? If so, was that also on the grounds of RTÉ in Montrose? If not, why are the sheds so similar?

Can you please clarify? I've put the questions out on Twitter, last count, 168K views. This should be easy to clear up one way or another.

Many thanks

Aisling

The latest viewing count on Twitter since that email is 208,000 views and growing, so this is definitely a matter of public interest in more ways than one.

Some on Twitter ask, “Why is this important?” “It doesn’t matter”. Except it matters greatly. It’s unethical for starters. Dangerously unethical. If Byrne was lying about her location during a ‘deadly pandemic’, what else was she lying about?  Current Affairs allegedly deals in facts, not fiction, although it’s hard to tell these days. Was the whole thing just theatre? Was Byrne pretending to be in her garden shed while being surrounded by crew and hair and make-up in Montrose? The silence is giving me doubts about this garden shed in Bray. Why not explain in a timely fashion? The long pause indicates something’s up.

Surely all Byrne has to do is take a photo of her garden shed and confirm she was indeed broadcasting from there in March 2020 and April 2022. It’s easy to solve this one. Why not solve it now? The more time passes, the more time to build a shed in the back garden and pretend it was there all along. Why prolong the affair? The public deserves to know either way.  It’s of the utmost importance. If she was lying about her location, she is no longer trustworthy and must step down for leading the public up the garden path so to speak. It’s a big deal. There are basic standards of ethics in broadcasting. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.  

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