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Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie
# He's back
George Hook to return to Newstalk with an early Saturday morning show
Hook’s Saturday Sit-In will run from 8am till 10am every Saturday.
NEWSTALK HAS CONFIRMED that George Hook will return to the station, with a new weekly show this Saturday 6 January.
The presenter will host Hook’s Saturday Sit-In from 8am till 10am every Saturday.
In a statement, Newstalk said that his new show will feature interviews, reviews and regular items on travel, music and US politics.
He had been suspended from the station in September, over comments he made on his daily High Noon show about rape.
Referencing a UK case in which a Commonwealth Games swimmer was accused of raping a 19-year-old woman, Hook asked “is there no blame now to the person who puts themselves in danger?”.
Hook and Newstalk offered full apologies after his comments were met with widespread criticism from former abuse victims and campaigners.
The fallout from his comments and subsequent suspension saw Irish Times journalists banned from appearing on Newstalk after a column from journalist Fintan O’Toole in the paper where he claimed the station had become “the most flagrantly sexist public organisation in Ireland”.
Newstalk’s managing editor Patricia Monahan wrote a right to reply in the Irish Times defending the station and calling O’Toole’s article “an outrageously unfair attack”.
Following an internal investigation, it was announced that Hook had stepped down from High Noon but would return to Newstalk on a weekend show. He had originally been earmarked for a December return, but that was pushed back to January.
The announcement of Hook’s return came among a host of schedule changes at Newstalk.
Other new appointments will see tech correspondent Jess Kelly present her own new show Tech Talk on Sunday evenings, news presenter Andrea Gilligan will host current affairs and politics-focused show Between the Lines, and presenter Kieran Cuddihy will present current affairs show On the Record.
