As I was channel surfing this weekend I had the misfortune to stumble across The All Ireland Talent Show, our rip-off of Britain’s Got Talent. The premise is much the same as its more popular counterpart, except in true Irish fashion, we’ve given it a twist. Contestants from the South, West, East, North and Dublin (the newest addition to the modern compass apparently) are pitted against each other like some sort of bloody GAA tournament. And said contestants certainly have about as much grace and poise as a pack of savage men wielding wooden instruments. While I watched in horror at a man from Kerry, with one front tooth, aptly named “Johnny Bongos” play the spoons and beat a drum to some sort of African tribal song to rapturous applause from the audience, a thought struck me. Why is it that any Irish venture is so horrifically, well, unsexy?
In the past decade every single reality TV show or television series has been so toe-curlingly embarrassing to watch that I sit there in dumb shock. It’s like watching a very, very slow car crash. It’s addictive stuff, if only so afterwards I can heave a sigh of relief and think, “Well, thank god I’m not like that.” But what if I am? What if we all are? It’s so easy to dismiss any sort of embarrassing activity on Irish television as terrible editing focusing on intellectually challenged people from the country. But what if this slew of bilious broadcasting is actually the most honest representation of our population? If you think about it, almost every single export from our country, while famous, lauded and critically acclaimed, will never, ever be described as sexy. Our Irish models, while not bad looking in any way, are still seriously below par compared to the rest of the world. Even The Corrs, while no doubt beautiful, never got any temperatures rising with their tin whistle improvisations. They didn’t even have the courtesy to keep Jim out of the videos.
As I read a review for yet another “Hollywood star goes to Ireland and finds love” movie my heart sank. While there’s no doubt that big budget films make the most of Ireland’s landscape and beauty, where are the scenes where the heroine meets a sexy man from the North who buys her a glass of champagne in Krystle and maybe, if she’s lucky, a lap-dance in Club Lapello? Non-existent. If she’s lucky, she gets a tumble in the hay with a guy who barely passed his junior cert but charms his way into her knickers because he’s Irish. I’ve been to those villages, and the only available men have been snapped up long ago and rightly imprisoned through pregnancy by the local slag. There is such a lack of original and truthful Irish television out there no wonder we have to steal everything from overseas. Or debase our country with yet another leprechaun joke in P.S I Love You.
But the definitive example of the sheer irrelevance and unsexy nature of much of Irish culture can be found within the ‘hallowed’ pages of the Sunday Independent’s LIFE magazine. Never have I seen journalism stoop so low. If it’s not the obligatory orange half naked girl on the cover promising a tell-all interview on how she gets her underarm botox just right, it’s the level of absolute self-indulgence that every article possesses. If I have to read one more line by Barry Egan rhapsodizing about the “raven-haired beauty of Ireland’s ‘It-girl’ Glenda Gilson, clad in classic Paul Costelloe, sipping tea with the kind of feline grace normally only found in the puma family” I will do damage to someone. These lauded Irish celebs and the magazine dedicated almost exclusively to them make my stomach turn. It’s not just because they’re so very unattractive, which a lot of them are, but because they really seem to believe that this is it, they’ve made it. Once you’re on the cover of LIFE and have been “papped” by that photographer/cab driver Barry keeps on tab to make himself feel important, then you’ve reached the height of fame in Irish terms. Which is why that anyone with any discernable talent and pride has left this country long ago. On a side note, I would have expected so much better from Brendan O’Connor. From Don’t Feed the Gondolas to Editor of LIFE magazine can only be the cruelest of descents. Somehow his idea of “sexing-up” what used to be respectable publication is flogging a dead celebrity. And that’s just Katy French. Wikipedia is certainly on the mark when it describes him as a “former” comedian. Although any editor that allows the following excerpt to be published must have a semblance of a sense of humour.
“Amanda Brunker drops her chin, lifts her eyes, and smoulders for the camera. It’s a practised pose – slight pout, eyes wide, hair tousled, buoyant bosom, and she slips into it without coaxing or ceremony. The girl has had plenty of practice at working it for the camera, and that come-hither look she’s pulling has long been her trademark.”
A truly shocking newsworthy item at last…
