One way to end this muppet show - give up yer aul' pensions

RADIO REVIEW:NOBODY SAID it was going to be a dignified climbdown, but it was an inevitable one. On Monday, EU Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn finally bowed to public pressure and gave up her ministerial pension . . . until she retires like the rest of us.

One by one, other sitting TDs and senators in receipt of ministerial pensions did likewise. Even Bertie Ahern said he will surrender his pension while he serves in the Dáil. "I can announce with great pride and joy that Bertie has handed back the pension," George Hook said on The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) on Tuesday. A little part of me wished Ahern had hung in there for just a few days longer, if only because the Mexican stand-off would have caused more Pavlovian gnashing of teeth by Hook, and by Livelinelisteners, which can be mildly entertaining while you're doing the washing-up.

One can understand his (and our) frustration with the happy-go-lucky former Taoiseach, who left office before the proverbial hit the fan, but it can become tiresome to hear Hook constantly taking swipes at a man who is effectively a political ghost.

Spare a thought for those politicians who had already given up their pensions without being asked. Before Geoghegan-Quinn made her announcement, Matt Cooper asked Mary O'Rourke on Monday's The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays) if she thought Geoghegan-Quinn should give up her ministerial pension. O'Rourke thought it was the right thing to do. "I don't want to go preaching, anyway, I just hate it. I hate being goody two-shoes," she said.

Clearly frustrated at being the go-to woman for media queries about the Fianna Fáil leadership, which in fairness prompts the question why she decided to go on in the first place, O’Rourke asked Cooper to call Geoghegan-Quinn and ask her himself. “Did anybody seek to speak to Máire Geoghegan?” Cooper replied, hesitantly,

“Yes, I think she’s been refusing requests for interviews, is my understanding.”

That didn’t exactly conjure up the image of a manhunt to get her on the phone.

O’Rourke said legislation will be introduced to stop working politicians receiving ministerial pensions. Cooper pounced: “Why not introduce that now?” O’Rourke snapped: “I gave mine up, so you needn’t be addressing me in that tone.” Cooper replied, “Fair play to you.” O’Rourke didn’t like that either: “Matt, I don’t want congratulations. I kept my mouth quiet about it. I did it 14 months ago and I didn’t run around putting an ad in the paper saying what I had done . . . I decided that there was something creepy and wrong about getting a pension when you’re earning money.” And once again for the folks in the gallery: that is why we love Mary O’Rourke.

Washed-up children's television characters don't get pensions because they never grow old and they're not, like, alive, but they do get wheeled out from time to time by trendy radio shows. When you hear TV tunes from yesteryear you know it's time for The Tubridy Show's(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) nostalgia slot, where Ryan Tubridy implores everyone to get excited and start texting!

I understand the challenges of a magazine show sandwiched between two hard news shows, and the need to have serious items coupled with lighter ones, but Tubridy forces these creaky memory lane features upon us with increasing regularity. At least they played the theme from The Womblesat the top of the show as a warning.

Here's the cliched postmodern rule for children's TV: cool adults love Bosco, but they hate Barney, that lumbering purple dinosaur. "As somebody who watches SpongeBob SquarePantswith or without children present, I can tell you, you don't have to be of a certain vintage to enjoy anything," Tubridy said.

Paula Lambert, who voiced Bosco, said children go wild during her live puppet shows: "It's amazing how the kids interact." Francesca Simon, whose appearance in Dublin to promote her popular Horrid Henry books presumably sparked this item, said kids like to escape through books: "Children get to indulge all their aggression and meanness. Here I am sitting with my hands folded, being really good, really intense, but there's another side of me that would quite like to run around this room screaming." That made two of us.

qfottrell@irishtimes.com