TVReview: Lissom and lovely Avril Murphy Allen has a mission: to dejunk our covertly messy lives. In the new series of Desperate Houses, the poised and ephemeral Murphy Allen delicately picked over a slew of moth-eaten woollies, 20-year-old babygros and forgotten dog licences secreted in the family rooms of Jacqueline O'Shea's seemingly pristine bed and breakfast in Ventry, Co Kerry.
If psyches could talk, they'd ask for Murphy Allen: this isn't just home-makeover TV, the postmodern confessional where absolution comes in the shape of a stud wall and a delicately placed fairy light; no, this is dejunking, a psychological minefield requiring not just a builder (although we got one - Basil) but also, apparently, a life coach to help the skip-filler come to terms with her obsessive need to fill her life with rubbish.
We were introduced to O'Shea blithely vacuuming the windowsills in a bedroom of her dully conventional B&B.
The programme's fascination (if you can call watching people stuff bin-bags full of old sheets fascinating) lay in discovering why, given that you could eat your dinner off the woman's dado rails in her pristine public space, she needed, in the privacy of her own quarters, to lose herself in a dozen broken toasters and hundreds of shabby hand towels.
The curtains of O'Shea's bedroom had remained permanently drawn across the sea view, for fear, one assumes, that she might (metaphorically) reveal herself to one of her guests.
Unfortunately, however, that question was never answered. Ronan the life coach had to dash, and Basil the builder needed some airtime to express how unappreciated he felt when his unsanctioned redesign of Murphy Allen's partition wall met with a frosty response. "You can do some thinking," she told him.
Anyway, there were vertical stripes to be painted, throws to be thrown, jacuzzis to be plumbed and the ubiquitous cushions to be scattered.
Three large skips later and "granny's little secrets" weren't all out of the closet (well, they were actually, as heaps more clothes were littered all over a couple of previously unseen guest bedrooms). But we never did find out why O'Shea couldn't quite "let go".
One suspects that Murphy Allen is going to need more than her nicely brushed hair and her graph paper to get through the rest of the series.
Relinquishing the past is obviously a messy business.
LETTING GO OF the past was also the subject of Meet the Family, which followed three generations of the Brophy family as they moved from their flats in Dublin's Fatima Mansions to the newly constructed homes built as part of the regeneration of the complex.
Margaret Brophy, now in her 60s, had mixed feelings about leaving the old two-bedroom flat where she had reared eight children.
She and her husband had slept on a settee-cum-bed in the living room and she had got up early every day, she told us, rising before the children (four sons who slept in one bedroom and four daughters who slept in the other) to dress and prepare for the day without feeling "embarrassed" by her complete lack of privacy.
Brophy's daughters still live in Fatima and they too, along with her 17 grandchildren, are being rehoused in the new scheme. "A seismic change" and "a dream come true" was how the regeneration was described by residents.
The small miracle includes a leisure centre, a creche and new premises for the homework club which currently caters for more than 150 children.
One in four children in Fatima, we were told, goes no further than primary education, and the homework club was described as a godsend for parents whose own education was severely limited by disadvantage and whose children are now asking for help that they cannot provide.
The shared balconies may be missed by some, but none will lament the concrete stairways, home to discarded syringes, one of which was picked up by Brophy's granddaughter, Michaela, who inadvertently pricked her hand with the needle, necessitating months of outpatient treatment to minimise the possibility of infection.
Meanwhile, council workers boarded up the last of the flats on Brophy's old block.
Brophy stood in her freshly seeded new garden, the first she'd ever had, and watched the new washing-line whirl.
The regeneration of Fatima has not been without pain for the residents: the reconstruction has required a destruction of a way of life, a boarding up of memories.
"It's very sad," Brophy said happily, "very sad". Her bright and articulate grandchildren, meanwhile, luxuriated in rooms of their own and a hopeful future, proud to be children of Fatima.
WELL, THE WARDROBE department has dusted off the leather jackets, props has polished the pates, the agents have agreed the fees, and the boys are back in town. Bald, bad and corpulent, the Mitchell brothers are prowling the streets of Walford again as EastEnders calls in the big guns in an effort to dent the pastoral Emmerdale's ratings.
With the previously resurrected Den now decomposing under the basement floor of the Vic, and the brothers' sister (if you follow) wrongfully languishing in jail for his murder, Phil (Steve McFadden) and Grant (Ross Kemp) are back on Albert Square to throw their not inconsiderable weight around. Peggy's big wig positively tingled with anticipation as Grant, freshly returned from his Antipodean adventure, threw one of nasty Johnny Allen's henchmen into a holly bush.
"Hello mum," said Grant, then to baddie: "This might hurt a bit."
The dialogue became a lot more obtuse as the evening progressed.
"Sorry I tried to shoot you," said Phil to Grant.
"Sorry I tried to drown you," said Grant to Phil.
Now if only they'd clear up their toys. There is, though, despite the appalling dialogue, an undeniable frisson of excitement on the square, and the brothers are having a whale of a time sticking their hands in the pockets of their Levi's and swaggering around the set. Jobs for the boys don't come much sweeter.
"You'll be eating soup through a straw," growled Grant happily to nasty Johnny Allen (Billy Murray), and that was even before he kicked down the door of the Vic and threw the villainous Chrissie (Tracy-Ann Oberman) on to the banquette and scuttled her plans for early retirement.
Fans of the 20-year-old soap are in for a long, cosy and bruising winter.
IT WAS TIME for the Eurovision Song Contest to slap the hormone replacement patch on its bottom and to stuff its now ample decolletage into its tightening frock, as half a century of musical mediocrity met the menopause in Congratulations: 50th Anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest. The television spectacular from Copenhagen invited the public to vote for the top Eurovision song of all time.
"Good evening, Europe," chanted our host, Katrina Leskanich (aka Katrina and the Waves), with rather more optimism than veracity (Britain and France had eschewed the programme, citing lack of audience interest). They didn't know what they were missing, luckily.
Congratulations consisted of a bevy of formerly young and skinny spaghetti-strap starlets, now wearing kaftans, reuniting to rush on to the stage and shout "I love you" before belting out their instantly forgettable Euro-hits (minus the high notes).
The artistes were accompanied by enthusiastic if vaguely inaccurate modern dancers in their underwear, and poignant footage of the former winners' glorious triumphs playing on a huge video screen which swung from the gantry.
From a shortlist that included Abba, Cliff Richard, Serge Gainsbourg and Johnny Logan (twice), there are nul points for guessing whose platform boots came out on top. Yes, Waterloo won the war again.
Logan, his former self a shadow, sporting a large white suit and a determined blow-dry, came third. Biting his quivering bottom lip and waving at the crowd like a demure Elvis, he looked more than a little crushed.
"You've got to remember," said a gleefully irreverent Marty Whelan, "that this guy is a huge star on the Continent."
Ireland, which has won the contest a record seven times, was embarrassingly well-represented at the extravaganza: Linda Martin, Charlie McGettigan and Eimear Quinn were backing vocalists, there were 16 rapid-fire Riverdancers for the interval act and even grainy footage of Dana on her bar-stool.
So, given the last couple of attempts at Eurovision glory have ended in dismal and embarrassing failure, where did it all go wrong?
THE LOSS OF our Eurovision lustre was bemoaned later that same evening in the funny and clever Queer Island by host Brendan Courtney.
Since coming out of the closet in recent times, Ireland has failed to shine in this campest of arenas, he commented.
The heady days are gone when the insistent overhead finger-clicking of the male Riverdancers as they rocked on their tap shoes was, as Courtney observed, just like the staff of a gay bar calling last orders.
