Mario Rosentock joined Off the Ball before Christmas to look back at some of his favourite sketches over the years.

The Gift Grub star reminisced about how his career moved from the small screen - where he had a role as a doctor on Glenroe - to his sketch series with Ian Dempsey on Today FM.

Asked by Joe Molloy how long it takes him to do an average sketch, Rosenstock explained: "Usually about two and a half/three hours to write and then about two hours of vocal work - producing it on the voice and then about and hour and a half/two hours or sometimes three hours with the guys up in commercial production - Emily and Caz - who know exactly the kind of stuff that I like to do and they're brilliant at it. 

"So, it might take seven or eight hours to put together a typical sketch where there's lots of characters interacting and lots of voices and that's from nine o'clock in the morning maybe, where you have the idea and then go into a meeting and then start writing at ten, finish writing at one and then produce until three and it goes into post-production until five or six.

"And then in the evening the guys will send me a copy of the sketch...so it might go on until eight. At the beginning I used to produce them myself on Today FM and I remember often being here until one in the morning!" he added.  

"Believe it or not, when I started in 1999 - so there was no Twitter, there was no YouTube, there was no Facebook, there was hardly much email and there was no text-in really to radio stations...so, I had a three month contract which turned into 19 years!"

The full discussion can be heard here: