Ryan Tubridy was equal parts outraged and emotional this morning as he discussed the Great Famine and the impact it's had on the country.
The RTE superstar was audibly moved by the depiction of the Great Famine in an RTE documentary that's currently airing.
But he insisted that "we love the English" despite the sins of the past.
He hailed the documentary, narrated by actor Liam Neeson, as "epic", adding: "The destitution, the workhouses, the emigration, the death, the cannibalism – all of it was laid bare in the documentary."
The programme also featured discussions on why the Famine happened, with one historian arguing it did not amount to an ethnic cleansing but rather a practical move against an Irish people that amounted to an "economic inconvenience."
Tubs raged: "This is language that makes my blood boil. Because no man, no woman, no child in a country should be an economic inconvenience.
"To read and to watch a million people dying by starvation because they were an economic inconvenience is incomprehensible.
"Even after all this time, I still feel ... the Irish Famine still has the national impact on somebody like me, and I presume on lots of others, as the Holocaust would have had on the Jewish people.
"It was that big, and that awful, and that catastrophic, in terms of what it did to this tiny island.
The Dubliner clearly had strong thoughts on the matter, but was quick to tell listeners that "we love the English".
"They're our friends. Jesus, I mean, they gave us a living, half of us, down through the decades.
"There's absolutely no sense of that at all. But there's no point in denying history.
"History is there to tell us please try not to do it again. It's not there to demonise whole people – particularly when it comes to the now.
"Now we say: We like them now, because we learned we shouldn't be doing that.
"Don't be starving a nation – now we can be friends."
