Irish dancing is the latest skill screen-hungry wannabes have signed up to learn and demonstrate in front of a live studio audience. Rosita Boland wonders how long before Dana dons a curly acrylic wig?
You can get away with an awful lot in the name of charity. The latest home-grown reality television show, Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels, which started last Sunday on RTÉ1, will be raising money for seven different charities, as chosen by said "celebrities". Never mind that this show is so perfectly awful it's already compelling viewing; if it's raising money for charity, well, who cares about the quality, seems to be the current broadcasting philosophy.
Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels is a very Irish take on that staple of the British television schedules, a "reality show" which pairs a professional dancer/skater/singer/cook/gardener/candlestick-maker with a punter who hasn't a clue. Week by week, the mentor teaches the punter the art and craft of his trade and then the punter performs in front of a live audience for the amusement of all, especially the judges. Then they get voted off, one-by-one, until someone wins, although merit usually has little to do with the reasons for winning.
In RTÉ's case, the reality radar has been turned on traditional Irish dancing, in adulthood usually practised only at weddings, after a little too much activity at the bar. Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels was dreamed up by Bill Hughes and his Mind the Gap production company. The format of the show, presented by Marty Whelan, is this: seven professional Irish dancers have been teamed up with seven, er, celebrities. Don't worry that you've been missing something if you haven't heard of most of them - Suzanne Walsh, Paul Byrom, Emma O'Driscoll, Jen Kelly and Killian O'Sullivan - the term "celebrity" in Ireland has more elastic in it than a pair of knickers. The only two celebrities everyone will know (and if you don't know this pair you really do need help), are singer/politician Dana Rosemary Scallon and Olympic boxer Michael Carruth.
The real-deal dancers will try their best every week to impart some of their skills to their celebrity other halves, and teach them steps and routines of ever-increasing difficulty. Then the odd couples will go out and perform to non-traditional Irish music and despite their best attempts, people at home will fall about laughing at them. Half of the judging panel - old pros Jean Butler and Colin Dunne - try to give the proceedings some gravitas by talking knowledgeably about the direction feet should be pointing. The other half - broadcaster George Hook and man of manners, Robert O'Byrne - talk a lot of enjoyably pointless nonsense.
Each week, one couple will get booted off, via a public vote which will raise money for the seven chosen charities: Aware, the Bubblegum Club, the Motor Neuron Disease Association, the Irish Hospice Foundation, the ISPCC, Temple Street Children's Hospital, and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin. The highlight routine of the opening show had to be boxer Carruth doing a fine imitation of a man whose feet have been superglued to the floor. It all makes highly entertaining television (although not perhaps for the reasons the producers intended), as borne out by the fact that Sunday's show took 42 per cent of all available audience.
"We'd been tossing the idea around for about a year," explains Hughes, who also produces the show. "It's an old-fashioned, straightforward entertainment show. People want to see celebrities doing something outside their remit." (Didn't we already have that with Dana's entry into politics?) "It's played for fun and entertainment, but, as judges, Jean and Colin have to be seen to be taking it seriously. They can't be parodying their own profession."
Butler - who is commuting from New York weekly to do the show - and Dunne, are almost certainly doomed to have less fun than the other two judges for the next five weeks. Understandably, their responsibilities are to their profession, but, on Sunday's showing at least, they're rather lacking in the humour and laissez faire attitude that's essential if they're not going to take themselves too seriously as judges.
Fellow-judges George Hook and Robert O'Byrne don't have the same professional worries in making their critical comments. "George and I are there to be Everyman," explains O'Byrne. "We're the Odd Couple. George and I have nothing in common, although I think he's a perfectly darling man." O'Byrne reports that he has never actually seen a reality television show, since he doesn't possess a television. "I'm probably better coming to it innocent, because watching other shows might have coloured my judging," he says. "Our responses must be more emotional, personal and instinctive than those of Jean and Colin, who are the pros. It's a bit like panto, with the audience booing whenever Jean and Colin make critical remarks."
Meanwhile, the show must go on. For the next five weeks, the celebrities most people have never heard of, and their mentors, will be putting their best left foot forward in dance studios all over Dublin, as they practise their steps and routines. "It's been very difficult to get studio space," Hughes says, "once they hear we're doing Irish dancing. The shoes are very hard on the floors."
In the weeks ahead, we can look forward to routines featuring music by bands as diverse as the Sawdoctors, Something Happens, An Emotional Fish and Snow Patrol. The million-dollar question has to be, though - will we see our celebs sporting acrylic curly wigs and neon dancing dresses, those sartorial horrors seen at most feisenna these days? "No, that would be unkind," says Hughes. Then he laughs. "But I should never say never . . ."
Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels goes out on Sundays at 6.30pm on RTÉ1