"PORTARLINGTON is going to be the seagulls pickin' outta the wan bowl," said one political strategist, his avian metaphorechoing the nuances of an Eric Cantona aphorism. Earlier, another local pundit had insisted that Portlaoise would be "the cockpit" of the constituency. Clearly, politics in Laois/Offaly (like politics in every other constituency) has a robust sense of its own significance and drama. But, if Portlaoise is a cockpit, the undercarriage must be, eh interesting.
It's all a matter of perspective, of course. Candid Candidates, a fly on the wall effort, focused on Laois/Offaly, showing, in the process, that the centre of the universe is always relative to your own location. The programme opened with initial party plans for postering. All agreed that posters were crucial, but in this world of avian analogies, a clear pecking order had to be established. "I didn't get to be a peace commissioner by putting up posters," sniffed a local ego, clearly a man with clout throughout the cockpit and its satellites.
Still, the posters were posted, prompting wistful reminiscences among veteran party activists for the long gone days of "the bucket of whitewash", which now, of course, is dispensed mainly by the spin doctors. Cathy Honan was running for the Pee Dees. Married to a GP in the seagull country of Portarlington, Ms Honan hosted a number of coffee mornings for some of the constituency's more affluent matrons. She was buoyant about her prospects as Mary Harney's helicopter touched down in Tullamore.
On a walkaround, Honan introduced Harney to "Peter, the anaesthetist in the local hospital". Confronted by Harney and Michael McDowell, Peter might have been expected to reach for a phial of ether, but his training stood to him and he didn't panic. Shortly afterwards, Ms Honan's chances were knocked out when it was discovered that somebody had circulated a bogus leaflet in Fianna Fail's name, asking - instructing, really FFers to give the PD woman their second preference votes.
Eschewing coffee mornings, Fianna Fail organised a little Ballroom Of Romance dance, while the party's director of elections for the constituency, Ger Connolly, dictated strategy to the faithful. And did Ger dictate? Whether he was displaying reasonable leadership qualities or objectionable, sure of itself domineering, depended on your perspective. Whatever the case, the cliche about "personal fiefdom" sprang to mind.
As the cameras rolled and polling day loomed closer, the awesome yearning of some of the candidates became clear. "By God, I want to be a TD and nothing is going to stop me until I get that," said FF hopeful, Gerard Killally. In terms of honesty, determination and legitimate ambition, this sentiment could be considered admirable. But its narrowness - like that of the Leaving Cert kid, who wants a million points to become an actuary - was disturbing. Always likely to end in tears, it did.
As a fly on the wall documentary about Irish politics in general and Election 97 specifically, Candid Candidates was revealing. The Pee Dees had, in their corner, a Peter Gibson, who effected a lofty, pseudocerebral attitude towards the whole business. Pressed, as were a number of others, about the origin of the bogus leaflet, which scuppered Ms Honan's chances in a sea of coffee mornings, he blurted some nonsense about the evils of "confessions to journalists".
Though broadly similar in sentiment, this was marginally less cryptic than Eric Cantona's assertion about seagulls following trawlers only because they expect sardines to be thrown into the sea. It was also more humourless, even if it accurately reflected the fact that, in Irish politics, a small number of people are desperately intense about herding the majority.
It was a pity, too, that the captioning was so careless. "Laoise/Offaly" and "Brian Cowan" continued a worsening situation on RTE, where recently, "Armach" played in the Ulster Championship and Dublin, 15 minutes after missing that crucial penalty, were shown as defeating Meath in Leinster Senior football.
Predictably, the programme ended with traditional shots of "yabboya" triumphalism. The winners were hoisted aloft, the losers left to reflect on the fact that the passive public are every bit as skilled as politicians when it comes to telling lies on the doorstep.
REPRESENTING a different kind of cockpit, Gaytime TV returned with Rhona Cameron joined by new presenter, Richard Fairbrass of the pop band Right Said Fred. Invariably, there's a strident tone to gay programmes - not so much a coming out as a coming out with all guns blazing. This one was no different, celebrating gayness as though sexual orientation must always be the most central aspect of all gay people's lives.
It's not that many heterosexual people don't over stress sex, but there does, on average, seem to be less prosleytising, if an equal amount of hypocrisy, about straight rumpo. Anyway, included in this first of seven episodes was a preview of Britain's "first lesbian beauty pageant". Perhaps it was all heavily parodying and ironic but it can hardly claim to be any less sleazy and prurient than the regular Miss World and Miss Universe efforts.
"Ned" was first up for the pageant. Ned's claim to fame is that her internally filmed orgasm has been broadcast on Channel 4. You don't need the details, although Ned did explain why she was uniquely suited for the gig. After Ned, Jo, Elaine, Tom, Maria, Deb and a few others strode on to demonstrate their credentials. It was naff and harmless, old codology really, but it did seem terribly smug in assuming that it was not only brave, but somehow shocking.
"OK, get it up for lesbians," said Ms Cameron, rallying the studio audience. It seemed like a sexually sectarian exhortation - pointless for most - but, whatever rings your bells, I suppose. In fairness, though, there were some less blustering aspects to the show. Gay actor Anthony Sher spoke about his "new HIV movie" Alive And Kicking and it was clear that what he had to say was meaningful and poignant for his audience.
He did recall that at one stage, before he had "come out publicly" he, as a gay man, played a straight man pretending to be gay. It was reminiscent of the anecdotes about bald Hollywood actors having bald pates fitted over their wigs to play bald characters. But Sher's seriousness, though good humoured and not at all poker faced, still seemed out of tune with the rest of the segments.
These included a look at the gay and lesbian scene in Hong Kong, which Amnesty has warned might not be so tolerated after the Chinese takeover. Mind you, they do seem to indulge - as do Oriental heterosexuals, of course - in wicked karaoke. The local lesbians were very sanguine about the future but Amnesty is seldom unduly alarmist. There was also an interview with gay Labour MP, Stephen Twigg, conquerer of Michael Portillo and a look back at a characters on TV down the years.
The first gay peck on the forehead occurred, apparently, in Eastenders in 1987. Now, This Life includes regular and steamy, gay rumpo. Even Fair City has a gay subplot, but Liam has been murdered and Eoghan, at the end of Tuesday's episode, looked mutilated. Whether this is meant to suggest that life is unduly hard for gay people in Ireland or that the righteous wrath of God will inevitably prevail, we'll leave to another day.
IN drama, Police 2020, which comes from the people who made Cracker and Prime Suspect was definitely suspect and certainly no cracker. Set in the future, in which rampant migration from Russia to Britain is being blamed for a tuberculosis epidemic, it is dark, gloomy and introspective. However, all the introspection reveals is the vacuousness within the concept.
Set in the "Little Moscow" estate (pop. 12,000) of Manchester, this pilot episode centred on a nutter (Keith Barron) holding six people hostage in a lift. He blames the immigrants for infecting his wife with TB. Liam Cunningham played the hero, a hardbitten soulful, Irish cop, flawed in traditional mode by drinking and broken relationships. To give Cunningham his due, he did what he had to do very well. But, it's likely that his realistic angst was boosted by his realisation that he was in a load of risible hokum.
Almost two hours long, Police 2020 felt like it would be the year 2020 before it finished. The claustrophobic lift setting - cheap to set so much of the action in such a tiny space became not so much tense as irritating. Perhaps on a cinema size screen, the sense of claustrophobia could be overwhelming. But on TV, it wasn't. It might be possible to salvage something from this drama. A good yarn and less mood would help.
GRASS to the end, Class finished this week by looking at the British middle class. For the most part, it was stuck in the tired, snobbish battleground of napkin v serviette; lavatory v toilet; taking, not buying newspapers. But there was a new one, which demonstrated a genuinely shocking level of effeteness. Rude words, for breaking wind - they don't need repeating - are often unnecessarily coarse. But the programme found a grown woman, for whom the term "breaking wind" was insufferably vulgar and offensive.
"I have my own term for it," she said, "we all used it at boarding school. Then she paused... building up the tension. "Look," she said, "I call it . . . `shooting bunnies'." Well, what can you say? Etiquette and manners, we know, can be used to civilise or to exclude. But, at its extremes, pathological primness is as rude as what it is trying to avoid. Even Brian Sewell, the greatest snob contributor to the series - indeed, the most boring old shooting bunny on TV - wasn't as off the wall as that.
Tucked in between largely parasitical and dispossessed classes, the British middle class, like its Irish counterpart, has grown enormously in recent decades. It is now the class that counts. This series, sadly, wasted the opportunity to explore middle class attitudes to questions of personal v societal responsibility. Instead, it let unanalysed soundbites reinforce class prejudices. It was funny, in spots, but ultimately no more revealing than a single minute's conversation from a Pee Dee coffee morning.