How much more of this can we take? The sheer ugliness of the panellists and audience on Questions and Answers is getting beyond a joke. Something has to be done. John Bowman, himself quite a good looking man, must find it near impossible to concentrate on holding the programme together while faced by such unattractive and gruesome-looking folk. Noticeably on last week's show he spent much of the programme staring down at his shoes so as to avoid eye contact with the endless line-up of fat-faced monsters in the audience, self-consciously reading their one-sentence questions off scraps of paper. A friend of mine (a Jesuit priest incidentally), appalled by the weekly line-up of horrible-looking freaks, has started a petition to try and get some fairly decent-looking people on the programme. They wouldn't have to be George Clooneys or Liz Hurleys by any means. Just normal people who wouldn't make you feel a bit queasy when you catch sight of them. My friend reckons that the only half-decent looking person on Questions and Answers in the last 10 years has been David Andrews. That about sums it up. We're not talking Miss Universe here. The point is this: those Nazi propaganda films featuring beautiful Aryan youths running around and throwing javelins - they would be the complete opposite of the Q&A line-up. The question which is puzzling the nation remains - when did the rot set in? Granted, there have been some hideous looking audiences in the past. By their freakish physical forms, crazy facial characteristics and dowdy dress sense The Late Late Show audience could have dispersed a herd of marauding dinosaurs. Likewise, the infamous Kenny Live audience of the late 1980s could surely have turned milk sour (or into yoghurt). Q&A trumps even these shows in the ugliness stakes by having on the panel various politicians, trade unionists and economists, all of which are universally crap looking. At least The Late Late and Kenny Live had occasional Hollywood celebrities to offset the Dante's Inferno vibe emanating from the cheap seats. Maybe a mass refusal to pay the licence fee might change things. Or some nationwide day of action. I think we can learn something from the taxi drivers on this one.
Meanwhile, The People of the Year Awards presented by Fungi The Dolphin was a glittering occasion broadcast live from the Citywest Hotel. There was a certain irony here in the choice of host, as in any popularity vote, Fungi would surely be selected as the most popular person in Ireland. However, he's not a person, but some type of whale. When his species is discounted, we're left with the usual line-up of mere mortals such as John Rocha, Roy Keane, Moya? (woman behind Riverdance) and people who run charities. Fungi, considering he was very much a fish (or something that looked like a fish) out of water, did a splendid job. He was certainly more articulate than any of the questioners on Questions and Answers, and didn't have to resort to self-consciously reading his one-sentence questions off scraps of paper. His light hearted banter with Moya ? (woman behind Riverdance) raised a few genuine belly laughs, not least when he remarked that taxi drivers, like himself, now considered themselves an endangered species! (The only difference being that one would be more likely to get a ride home from a dolphin on a Saturday night than from a taxi, remarked my partner, the nationalist poet Orla Ni Suibh). So successful was the mammal/fish-like tourist attraction that he will be taking over the Joe Duffy radio show for a fortnight next year while Joe is on holiday in Nicaragua. When Ireland next wins the Eurovision Song Contest, he is a firm favourite to host the resulting extravaganza on home turf, and - who knows - could eventually end up as Ireland's first non-human president. Stranger things have happened.
Arthur Mathews is co-writer of Father Ted.