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Zig and Zag on the Big Brekfast with host Chris Evans. Channel 4

'The lads who sold out on Ireland': How Zig and Zag's RTÉ exit caused a stir in the 1990s

We take a look at the good, bad and the bizarre of Ireland’s TV past every Wednesday in The Tube.

EVERY WEEK SEEMS to bring a bigger and bigger news story. But we’ve got to go all the way back to the early 1990s to find a moment that really rocked the nation. 

Bigger than Cromwell’s conquest, worse than the Famine and more tragic than Thierry Henry’s outstretched hand – at least, according to one eminent turkey

The incident, of course, was the flight of Zig and Zag to UK TV screens – abandoning RTÉ for fame, fortune and Chris Evans on Channel 4′s Big Breakfast show. 

Long before Brexit threatened to sour relations between Ireland and the UK, it was the exit of the two beloved, anarchic characters that made headlines here. 

Fame

Zig and Zag, created by Ciarán Morrison and Mick O’Hara, became a firm fixture of The Den alongside Ian Dempsey from 1987 onwards, later appearing alongside Dempsey’s successor Ray D’Arcy. 

But the two excitable aliens eventually found the bright lights of London too tempting. In 1992, the pair joined the ground-breaking (and fondly remembered) Big Breakfast show. 

The decision ultimately brought the pair to new levels of fame – a hit single reached number five in the UK charts in January 1995, while they even received somewhat dubious business lessons from Donald Trump. 

doublezwynne / YouTube

But the exit from RTÉ did cause something of a stir. In 1993 the Irish Times reported – tongue firmly in cheek – that the arrival of Zig and Zag in the UK, following on from Dustin’s general election antics, should “cause a few shivers around the Palace of Westminister”. 

“The potential merchandising opportunity in the British market is ‘huge’, according to informed sources, and has already made a millionaire out of the man who merchandised Roland Rat,” the paper reported. 

“In Ireland, Zig and Zag merchandising, of which a percentage goes to RTE, has reached saturation point.”

An interview with the pair in December 1993 suggested they weren’t agonising too much about jumping ship. 

doublezwynne / YouTube

“Dustin is still there, he’s getting on fine without us. He rings us in London sometimes,” Zig said.

“He has the sock monster with him now. The sock monster says things like ‘flap, flap, flap,” Zag added. 

The pair also revealed that their faces were on 200 million packets of Golden Wonder crisps and were planning to get into ice cream merchandising too. 

It wasn’t bad for a pair that started out as a frenetic pair of sidekicks on The Den. Still, bitter feelings remain among their co-stars – who never received the same kind of welcome from across the Irish sea. 

“We have the two British lads, the lads who sold out on Ireland, Zig and Zag. I’d say they’re out of money so they’re back brown nosing again.I sort of get on with Zig, I don’t really get on with Zag, he actually looks like the coronavirus,” Dustin told TheJournal.ie recently ahead of The Den’s reunion for RTÉ Does Comic Relief. 

Show-business, eh? 

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    Mute AnthonyK
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    Oct 1st 2024, 1:52 PM

    A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.

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    Mute ben wu
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:02 PM

    @AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
    That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
    However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.

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    Mute Niall English
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:00 PM

    maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:03 PM

    @Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?

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    Mute ....
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:07 PM

    Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:06 PM

    The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.

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    Mute Brian D'Arcy
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    Oct 1st 2024, 4:58 PM

    @Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.

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    Mute silvery moon
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    Oct 1st 2024, 4:59 PM

    While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
    As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.

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