On the airwaves:The politicians came through the bank holiday weekend sounding a little jaded. While the rest of the country was in holiday mode, these people were like a troupe of actors forced to keep the show running for 24 hours a day, regardless of how often they had to repeat the same lines.
During an interview yesterday on RTÉ Radio 1's News At One, Enda Kenny sounded as if he was running on leaky batteries. At one point Seán O'Rourke apologised for "technical difficulties", and perhaps an engineer came in to studio and gave the Fine Gael leader a tap with a spanner because he perked up a bit after that.
Kenny was not the only one in danger of running low on gas. Gerry Adams had appeared on radio on Sunday with his voice half worn away.
It wasn't Bertie Ahern's voice that had disappeared, but the man himself. He was taking a rest yesterday, meaning that we had a full day without sighting the Taoiseach's pinched expression as reporters asked him to run through his story just one more time.
Some energy was provided, though, by the debut of Matt Cooper and Eddie Hobbs with their new show Polls Apart on TV3. We know it's called that because it's written across almost every available inch of space on the set. In case you don't know which presenter is which, they have their names written behind their seats in letters big enough to be seen from space.
Unlike other current affairs shows, Polls Apart doesn't allow politicians talk above each other. It leaves that to the hosts. Their first guest was Green Party leader Trevor Sargent, who sat trapped between the two men, apparently unsure of who to talk to, who was asking the questions, and whether he should just relax and let Hobbs talk until his voice ran dry.
It quickly became clear which host was used to asking questions for a living, and which was used to giving his opinions. This led to the show having a novel format: Cooper would ask Sargent a question, Hobbs would reply.
At times a kind of bad cop/even badder cop pattern emerged, with Cooper especially keen to pummel Sargent with cynicism. They asked him about roads, oil and the whole "hippy, sandal-wearing" thing. But they often asked him about it again before Sargent even had a chance to answer it the first time.
Cooper and Hobbs could perhaps to with a guiding hand. Miriam O'Callaghan would be ideal. On a Prime Time special last night, she corralled the politicians as if they were unruly children at the dinner table. She repeatedly reached out to touch them, at one point pushing down Dermot Ahern's wagging finger with such efficiency that you'd hardly notice how impolite she was being. "Stop fighting with each other," she snapped. "Will you stop talking!" she barked.
To paraphrase mothers everywhere, perhaps she will treat them like grown-ups when they behave like grown-ups.
