Thousands visit Examiner website for Ray Dolan Late Late article

Ray Dolan, one of Mullingar’s best loved sons, fully embraced the spirit of April Fool’s Day when the Westmeath Examiner asked him to play a joke – that he was announced as the new presenter of the Late Late Show.

Ray presents a popular online show, the Bus Sessions, and sings solo and with the Dolan Family Band, so he’s well used to performing.

He called to the Westmeath Examiner office, suited and booted and up for the occasion, and got fully into the part.

The video and article on the announcement garnered a huge reaction on social media.

The stats show that more than 100,000 visited the Westmeath Examiner online to read the article.

It also reached 70,000 people on Facebook, and the video footage, in a separate post, attracted 23,000 views on the Examiner website.

This week, the Westmeath Examiner caught up with Ray to find out how much feedback he had received.

"The amount of people that came to me and said, ‘Tell us – is it true!" he said.

"And I had to say back to them; ‘No, did you see the date it was published?’.

"There was an unbelievable reaction to it, even people that know me well, said, ‘Jaysus that was some laugh’, but it still hadn’t got through that it was April Fools.

"Loads of people I met said it to me, even in town just yesterday, I met a postman with broken English, who said ‘The Late Late Show!’."

Ray has also had a number of requests looking for inside information on who the new Late Late Show anchor might be.

"People are asking me who is going to be the next presenter, so it was a great bit of craic altogether.

"But in all honesty, it’s been a massive piece of publicity for me. The whole thing coincided with speaking to Ray D’Arcy about the Bus Sessions, so yeah, it worked very very well."

As to who the next Late Late Show presenter will be – it’s a guessing game at this stage, unless you’re someone in the know at RTÉ.