PRESENT TENSE:THERE'S A SCENE at the beginning of The Naked Gun in which OJ Simpson, playing luckless cop Nordberg, gets shot up by criminals. Wounded, he stumbles backwards and bangs his head. Then he burns his hand on a hot stove, gets wet paint on his coat, traps his fingers in a window, falls face first into a wedding cake, has his leg caught in a bear trap and finally trips over a railing into the sea.
And there is it, in a 20-year-old comedy, a neat analogy for the state of Ireland in 2008. We are Nordberg. We got badly wounded by the global economic collapse, since which we've stumbled into a series of increasingly ludicrous predicaments until last weekend the weekly fry-up was yanked from us over fears that it might be only marginally less dangerous than, say, getting into a relationship with OJ Simpson.
The question is, what stage of this Naked Gun scene are we at? Have we only leaned against the wet paint - or have we finally put a foot on the bear trap? Because it's reached a point when, as an Irishman, you hesitate to get out of bed in the morning for fear of what crisis we've stumbled into overnight. Whatever next? Asbestos in the teabags? Brian Cowen's trouser belt snapping during the EU leaders' summit photograph?
It could be worse. The analogy could be with OJ Simpson rather than his character. Although, even here there are certain parallels because, as happened to the American football star turned actor, Ireland has gone from being a sleek economic athlete to playing the accident-prone comic relief. We can only hope, given what's happened to Simpson since, that the paths diverge from here.
As for the story of Ireland's slapstick fall from the dizzy heights, the pork crisis was only the latest to be played out globally. And the world's media is interested, not just because of the scale of this one fiasco, but because journalists the world over love a simple story. And in Ireland they've had two.
They told, and retold, the first of them during the boom years. Ireland, went the tale, had overnight gone from being one of the continent's poorest countries to being an economic powerhouse, a guiding light for the eastern Europeans. There is hardly a major world publication that didn't dispatch a journalist to write a by-the-numbers Celtic Tiger piece, with its cliches about spuds and silicone chips, pints and Poles.
It was, though, accompanied by a warmth towards all things Irish, a curiosity and magnanimity about our success. We were the cousins who'd got over their drink problem and pulled themselves together so that we were no longer the pub bore with a hard-luck story but the nice guys with a tale of success that everyone wanted to hear. But everyone gets bored of the nice guy with the story of success. So now there is a new story and the world's media is trickling back here to write it up. They find us back on the bar stool, penniless, mumbling about how it was fun while it lasted but how we wish we hadn't blown all our cash. Such articles are popping up in the British press, the US papers (John Banville has expounded on it for the New York Times) and, interestingly, in lots of Canadian papers.
The Canadian press is only repeating the narrative that's being spun out in the pages and on the TV stations of the world. The media watched us rise up; they want to trace our fall. In every recession there is a country that epitomises boom and bust. This time around it is us.
However, I think it's western Canada that ran ads on Irish radio encouraging investment there. But by boasting of its strong economy, it has become the arrogant jock of our tale, seeking us out in the bar, asking us how we're getting on just so it can contrast our woe with its achievement. We'll just grimace patiently, until Canada finally goes off and bothers Britain or Iceland or whoever. It should remember that the Irish hate it when their friends become successful.
Which brings us back to the idea of which actor might best represent our nation in this tale. Aptly, it could be Colin Farrell. A decade ago, he was the next big thing, mixing talent and ambition with a rough-edged charm, and indulging in national stereotype whenever it was good for PR. He liked a drink, but produced the goods; he rose in value quickly; he was on every magazine cover going.
Yet, after a few years, he had a big price tag, but delivered fewer returns. He sobered up and admitted to regrets over how he spent the good years. And he made a bit of a show of himself in public, so - stretching this argument somewhat - his sex tape is the equivalent of Dustin the Turkey representing Ireland at the Eurovision. Anyway, his Golden Globe nomination suggests he's making a comeback to the A-list. Let's hope that whatever movies take him there will be more credible, and shorter, than this increasingly confused analogy.
