In time for the last Late Late, the show's theme tune has been tweaked for the times, Kevin Courtney reports

It's Monday night in Ri-Ra night-club, and Dublin's Celtic Tiger cubs are dancing to a mix of happy house, handbag, funk and soul. Suddenly a strident, military-style marching beat echoes through the p.a. system, stopping the dancers in their tracks. A strangely familiar voice breaks through the beat, announcing, "ladies and gentlemen, to whom it concerns . . .", and an explosion of trumpets, trombones and tubas adds to the dancers' bewilderment. Eventually, the crowd twig it, realising with a mixture of confusion and horror exactly what it is they're hearing. Yes, it's the Late Late Show.

Before the crowd can react, however, the mother of all big beats comes stomping into the mix, and a skanking ragga rhythm takes over,inducing involuntary hip-swivelling on the floor. Eight bars in and the whole club is heaving, while the voice of Gay Byrne wafts through the air, sprinkling catchphrases such as "Roll it there, Collette", "Let's take a break, Dennis" and - no double entendre intended - "There's one for everyone in the audience". When the tune finally comes to a shuddering halt, the sweat-caked audience breaks into spontaneous applause, delira and excira by this bangin' new choon.

This weird scene really happened last week, when DJ Aiden Kelly played a white label copy of a new dance single by Strictly Fish, entitled To Whom It Concerns. It's a turbo-charged version of the Late Late Show theme tune, tweaked up for the dance floor and larged up with some big, Fatboy Slim beats, and it was released nation-wide yesterday, the day of the very last Late Late Show. This disco death knell for the longest-running talk show in Irish broadcasting is the brainchild of In Dublin editor Alanna Gallagher and Strictly Fish club promoters Martin Thomas and Jimmy Costello. "We wanted to mark the end of the Late Late with something celebratory and good-humoured," says Ms Gallagher. "It's not a piss-take - if it was then Gaybo wouldn't have given us permission to use his voice. It's just a way of marking the end of an era and getting ready for a new era. We'd like to see grannies dancing to it instead of just sitting down and saying the rosary."

Alanna and the Fish crew approached Late Late Show producer Cillian Fennell with their idea, and "after some consideration", Fennell gave the project the thumbs-up. Musician Robert Arkins - better known as Jimmy Rabbitte from The Commitments - was charged with the task of taking the original tune and rewriting it to suit the 1999 scene, and D.J. Wool was recruited to remix and rejig this timeless theme for Friday night television viewing.

Alas, Arkins was unable to use the original recording of the show's spoken intro, because of its poor quality, so he had to imitate the accent of Gay Byrne's late brother, Ray Byrne, who was the voice behind the most famous introduction in Irish broadcasting history. Happily, Arkins's uncanny impression is so bang-on, it would fool even Gaybo's granny.

The original tune, entitled To Whom It Concerns, was composed by Chris Andrews during the "blue-beat" era of the early 1960s, and was a staple of dancehalls up and down the UK and Ireland before it became better known here as Gaybo's theme. Now it's back on the dance-floor in the late 1990s, in a muchaltered form, and Alanna is confident that the single will go straight to Number One in the Irish charts. 10,000 copies have been pressed up in anticipation of demand, and all proceeds will go to charity via the Gay Byrne Show fund.

"The whole style is very 60s, but with a 90s feel," she says. "Everybody who has heard it loves the tune - it's disgustingly infectious and it gives you itchy feet as soon as you hear it. We've got an old photo of Gaybo on the cover, wearing a sharp suit and skinny tie - he looks really cool."

But what, I ask Alanna, has Gaybo got to do with the young Irish people of today? Surely the kids who would normally dance to this record care not a whit that Gaybo is retiring? Not so, answers Alanna.

"About a quarter of the Late Late Show's audience is under 30," she asserts."It's reassuring - like your mother's skirt. Retro Irish is very cool right now, and young Irish people are taking typically Irish things from their past and putting them in a modern context. You see it in that TV ad which features Peig, and you see it in plays like The Dead School. Gaybo has a certain amount of cult status among young people - he's been a constant through our lives, and we hope this song will help him go out with a bang."

To Whom It Concerns by Strictly Fish was released yesterday on Lime Records