TV Comment – The Bertie show will run ...

LAST Thursday's long-awaited final report of The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, otherwise known as the Mahon Tribunal, has become the talk of the country and was given an RTE Prime Time Special all to itself on the evening of publication. I'm not a Prime Time devotee but I was impressed by Thursday's programme and by its established anchor Miriam O'Callaghan, if only for her quick few questions to Minister Pat Rabbitte and her reluctance to take a ministerial no for an answer. Given the Byzantine nature of Irish politics, especially since Charlie Haughey's time, I wasn't much the wiser after Prime Time, merely dismayed and fascinated, and won't it be the great day that will bring the rest of the story, if we ever live to see it. Fifteen years on from its establishment and a cost running into telephone numbers, Prime Time analysed the Tribunal report and its findings with special emphasis on the section relating to Bertie Ahern, the bit we were all waiting for. Those in studio with Miriam included the aforementioned Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte, Mayo's Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary who gave further evidence of a steady pair of hands, and Paddy Duffy, a former special advisor to Bertie Ahern and a loyal friend still fighting the good fight in Bertie's corner. The discussion touched on many aspects of what is beyond doubt a damning report, not just on Irish politicians but on all if us, and yet there were those on the panel who were content to linger on the report's devastating criticism of the last government for 'sustained and virulent' attacks on the Tribunal, and linger even longer on Bertie's trials and tribulations. On a difficult day for his party, Dara Calleary took every opportunity presented to him to emphasise that Fianna Fáil is determined to put its house in order and move on, but he queried were Fine Gael equally ready to do so. He 'reminded' Minister Rabbitte that the current Taoiseach was prepared to share a public platform in New York a few days earlier with an individual against whom there were serious findings last year in the Moriarty tribunal. To make sure Pat got the message, Miriam O'C added 'He's talking about Denis O'Brien'. To which Pat responded that we can all be comfortable that the Taoiseach is a completely honest politician. Dara agreed but Miriam wasn't playing 'Yes, Minister', nor in letting Pat slip off the hook as easily as that. She asked Pat again about it not looking so good to see the Taoiseach standing beside a person seriously criticised by Moriarty. 'Is that what's wrong with our country, the optics part?' Rabbitte, the complete television performer, was looking very uncomfortable. Is there a discomfort in Labour, I wondered. Pat's reply was weak: 'I've no idea how people who were there were there.' And then Miriam put in the boot. 'Were you happy at Denis O'Brien being on the same platform as the Taoiseach on different occasions last week?' Pat wasn't prepared to tell her but told her instead that Wall Street was full of people with a lot to answer for. Miriam asked the question again. Pat ducked and sidestepped, as well as Bertie ever did and tried 'He has serious questions to answer'. 'Who has?' Pat was sweating. 'Denis O'Brien'. Miriam asked the original question again but Pat was at last finding the range and countered by returning to an earlier answer. The one about he being comfortable with the Taoiseach being an honest politician. Checkmate, but Pat had been rattled. As with any good television presentation, there was much to ponder later in moments of quiet solitude. None more so than footage that was included from a speaking engagement by Bertie in Honduras, Central America. Events of that kind have become a handsome earner for the former Taoiseach and in this one he told his audience how he regularly looks at himself in the mirror and comforts himself with the knowledge that he has always told the whole truth, never the half-truth because he couldn't live with that. This will run and run. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ SOMETIMES it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry but I'm certain that an unrelenting diet of bad news is depressing, and that's what RTE serves up on the hour every hour on radio and television. The usual fare is the financial fix coupled with with one or more of the now daily (it seems) spate of murders and lately, of an evening, I notice the mix not going down well with my boiled egg. That's not the situation with other news services and I've come to like the evening news from CBS which I catch on SKY in the wee small hours. There's bad news there too but leavened with a healthy quota of more inspirational / heart-warming material, and I like the newsreader too, Scott Pelley, and the way he might smile at you. Pelley won some major award recently, the name of which escapes me but I made a note of the citation: 'He restores a little of our faith in TV news, while performing important, world-bettering, reports along the way.' One evening last week he had a report on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announcing government support for a new search to solve the mystery of aircraft pioneer Amelia Earhart, whose plane went missing over the South Pacific nearly 75 years ago when she was making an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Amelia was the darling of the age and was the first woman and only the second person ever (Charles Lindbergh being the first) to fly solo across the Atlantic, landing in Derry. At an event in Washington to celebrate Earhart's legacy, Clinton met with a group of scientists from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which will begin a new search for the wreckage of Earhart's plane in June. Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, during a flight from New Guinea to Howland Island in the South Pacific. They never arrived. 'We can be as optimistic and audacious as Earhart,' Clinton said. 'There is great honour and possibility in the search itself.' â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ MERCIFULLY, this year's Eurovision Contest from Baku in Azerbaijan is all of two months away but I was reminded of it last week when I saw the United Kingdom putting paid to whatever slim chance it had of winning by selecting the very elderly Engelbert Humperdinck to sing its 2012 entry. As if to make doubly sure of unquestionable and undeniable failure, Engelbert has been saddled with a dud song labouring under a clichéd title 'Love Will Set You Free' and, whatever the merits of old dogs, this road is too hard. At 75, Engelbert will be the oldest Eurovision performer ever and he's so long in the tooth he was around even when I was out. It must be all of 50 years since his big hit with 'Release Me' but hopefully 'Love Will Set You Free' will not be his swan song. I heard it for the first time last week and I never want to hear it again. Over here we're going for youth and have placed all our trust in Jedward. They're not letting the grass grow under their feet while waiting for Baku and I see where they took a daft notion a week or two ago and took part in the Los Angeles marathon. What's more, they stayed the course and were given certificates to prove it. They can't dance, as we know, and can't sing either which is why we have such hope for them in Eurovision and now we know they're very fit. Awesome, as they would describe it themselves and, undoubtedly, it's young dogs for the hard Baku road. I'm barking for them.