In the valley of the imbecile, the half-witted man is king. Hector O hEochagain is the undisputed Irish champion of what’s kindly described as laddish endurance TV. But, unlike his competitors, he has sufficient brains to appreciate the brainlessness of his endeavours.
While O hEochagain’s trademark TG4 ventures are thinly disguised as travel programmes, they owe more to the sadomasochistic idiocy of stunt shows such as Jackass and Dirty Sanchez, in which beer-swilling Cro-Magnon dolts scour the planet in search of ways to damage each other’s penises.
As he conducts his self-harm experiments through the medium of Gaelic, however, O hEochagain is regarded by some as an inspirational cultural crusader, an icon of provincial cool. A penchant for making shouty references to his native Navan in a mudflat Meath accent has also earned him a reputation in some circles for sparkling wit.
Unfortunately, as those who have watched his recent programmes will know, the emperor is naked — sometimes literally. Hector San Oz (TG4, Mon) is O hEochagain’s latest attempt to prove travel does not broaden the mind. Following rampages through the four continents, he takes his frenetic bogman act to Australia, where he’s evidently keen to ratchet it up a notch.
A nation of enormous contrasts, Australia offers a breathtaking range of experiences to the visitor. O hEochagain, however, decided to open his antipodean sojourn with a trip to a Sydney S&M club, where he hastily stripped off and demanded a vigorous spanking, his bare buttocks as pink and trembling as the proverbial shrimp on a barbie.
For reasons that were never explained, O’hEochagain was accompanied by Tadhg Kenneally, a former GAA footballer who is now with the Sydney Swans.
On arrival at the surprisingly well-lit dungeon, they were fitted with studded dog collars by Miss Imperia, a 6ft, vinyl-wrapped dominatrix with slash-hook fingernails and breasts like an armful of pillows. As Kenneally was forced to crawl around her feet, you could almost see him yearn for the comfort of a full-blooded International Rules clash.
Ever the professional, O hEochagain managed to keep his mind on the job. At the height of an energetic thrashing he was still crafting his signature bons mots.
“This one’s a right slapper, lads!” he quipped as Miss Imperia wielded her paddles. The hilarity then mounted further as our hero put on a gimp mask and began flogging Kenneally’s rear end with a knotted whip while bellowing the names of celebrated Meath footballers.
If any of the foregoing sounds almost demented enough to be amusing, then it clearly works better on the page than on the box. The truth is, O hEochagain’s madcap schtick is forced and consequently tedious. The more frenzied he becomes, the more mirthless his frantic antics appear.
Now bloated with self-regard and reliant on unfunny Navanisms, O hEochagain can no longer pull off the larky, innocent-abroad routine that made his earliest travel shows so refreshing. Suddenly the onscreen punishment he so gleefully invites seems less gratuitous and more richly deserved.
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Bertie Ahern also volunteered for televised public humiliation last week during his self-exculpatory interview with Bryan Dobson on Tuesday’s Six-One News (RTE1), as he offered his side of the cash- donations controversy. Rather than nipple clamps or thumbscrews, the torture implements to which the taoiseach had chosen to subject himself are the most feared among political kind. They are the fiendishly painful devices known as pointed questions.
On TV, Ahern usually has somewhere between nothing much and nothing to stay. It was remarkable, therefore, to witness an on-screen performance by this glib and often indecipherable politician in which virtually every word counted and some even seemed heartfelt.
As the broadcast of the prerecorded interview began, the tape froze momentarily, creating the impression Ahern had closed his eyes in silent contemplation before battle commenced. If he had done so, it was surely to shield his secret weapons from view before unsheathing their devastating power.
Wide, pleading and doleful — and brimming with a monsoon of tears as he spoke about his children — Bertie’s eyes played a blinder. How could we believe this nice man had acted with impropriety when he stared into the camera lens with such an endearingly hang-dog expression? As the interviewer, Dobson had little to do but probe gently, aware the subject was primed to release a certain amount of information anyway. Nevertheless, he wisely avoided any of the counterproductive badgering that would have afforded Ahern the easy escape route of indignation.
Determined to portray himself as a modest man with modest tastes, the taoiseach struck a consistent note throughout the conversation: one of modesty. He is not the first Irish politician to benefit from the largesse of friendly businessmen, but he is the first to look shamefaced about it.
Much of what he said sounded rehearsed, and the tone in which he delivered it was carefully calibrated to suggest sorrow rather than anger. Through his facial and body language, however, he semaphored two short messages over and over: I’m sorry and trust me. He and his handlers will be hoping that most TV viewers will look at the pictures and ignore the sound.
This is certainly the only way to watch 1 to Remember with Brian Kennedy (RTE, Sun), the mesmerisingly awful karaoke show that concluded last week. Ostensibly a search for the nation’s favourite number one record of all time, the series was actually a comprehensive countdown of the reasons why Irish television is incapable of making decent music programmes Produced by Palomino Pictures, the series was bereft of passion, much less soul. The songs chosen and the artists to sing them were, almost invariably, creaky antiques. The performances were perfunctory, insipid and poorly amplified.
Meanwhile, the show was hosted with barely restrained hysteria by Kennedy, a talented singer who now dominates Irish cabaret TV in a way that earlier generations of MOR artists usually only managed after years of international failure and creative stagnation. Behold the mighty power of Eurovision.
Ironically, the further Kennedy sinks into the showband rut, the more arrogant he seems to become. Halfway through each of these supposed showcases for the finest popular music of the modern age, he performs one of his own songs, and not one of his hits either.
In the valley of the musically illiterate, the deaf man is, well, lucky
