RTÉ Radio 1 (Irish: RTÉ Raidió 1) is the principal radio channel of Irish public-service broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann and is the direct descendant of Dublin radio station 2RN, which began broadcasting on a regular basis on 1 January 1926. The station is a rare modern example of a mixed radio network, broadcasting a mixture of music and speech programming.

The total budget for the station in 2010 was €18.4 million. It is the most listened to radio station in Ireland.

The Department of Posts and Telegraphs opened 2RN on 1 January 1926, the first Irish radio station. Station 6CK, a Cork relay of 2RN, joined the Dublin station in 1927, and a high-power transmitter at Athlone in County Westmeath opened in 1932. From the latter date the three stations became known as Radio Athlone, later being renamed Radio Éireann ("Irish Radio" / "Radio of Ireland") in 1937. Like most European national stations at that time, Radio Éireann attempted to satisfy all tastes on a single channel. It broadcast a mixed schedule of light entertainment and heavier fare, Irish language programming, and talks. Sponsored programmes, which also featured in the schedule, tended to be lighter in tone and more popular than the programming made directly by Radio Éireann itself.

Tommy Tiernan (born 16 June 1969) is an Irish comedian, actor and writer. He and Hector Ó hEochagáin presented The Tommy and Hector Show on i102-104FM. Tiernan also featured in Father Ted as a depressed priest.

Tiernan was born in Carndonagh, County Donegal. His father is a native of County Kerry while his mother is from County Limerick. He moved, with his family, from County Cork as a child. After spells living in Zambia and London, he attended the same school as Irish television presenter Hector Ó hEochagáin and Dylan Moran, in St. Patrick's Classical School, Navan, Co Meath, a former Roman Catholic junior seminary. He later attended a boarding school, Garbally College, in Ballinasloe, County Galway.^{[citation needed]}

Tiernan has appeared several times on The Late Late Show. In the United States he has appeared several times on the Late Show with David Letterman. Recently^[when?] he appeared on the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow, Lee Mack Show, DAVE's One NIght Stand and joined comedic legends Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble at Laughs in the Park.

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief." As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Gabriel Mary "Gay" Byrne (born 5 August 1934; affectionately known as Uncle Gay,Gaybo or Uncle Gaybo) is a veteran Irish presenter of radio and television. His most notable role was first host of The Late Late Show over a 37-year period spanning 1962 until 1999. The Late Late Show is the world's longest-running chat show. His time working in Britain with Granada Television saw him become the first person to introduce The Beatles on screen.

From 1973 until 1998, Byrne presented The Gay Byrne Hour—later The Gay Byrne Show when it expanded to two hours—on RTÉ Radio 1 each weekday morning. Since "retiring" from his long-running radio and television shows Byrne has presented several other shows, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, The Meaning of Life and For One Night Only on RTÉ One and Sunday Serenade/Sunday with Gay Byrne on RTÉ lyric fm. In 2006 he was elected Chairman of Ireland's Road Safety Authority. Since retiring he has become the "Elder Lemon of Irish broadcasting".

In 2010, The Irish Times said Byrne was "unquestionably the most influential radio and television man in the history of the Irish State". In 2011, he was approached to become President of Ireland but declined to run, despite topping opinion polls.