Ruane let us down with her vulgar college tales

IMUST admit that when I read that Senator Lynn Ruane criticised the controversial Mother and Baby Homes Report in the Seanad, I felt slightly queasy. Not, I hasten to add, because I doubt the insights into single motherhood that the Trinity senator – who, not for the first time, informed her audience that she was ‘a pregnant unmarried minor’ 20 years ago – would bring to the proverbial table.

Anything that sheds light on marginalised young women is welcome in my book. What worried me was what other tales the politician might share with the upper house.

After her performance on Clear History, RTÉ’s new comedy panel show where smart-alec comedians and rotating panellists describe shameful episodes that they wish they could erase from their past, I had good reason to fear.

I’m not so naive as to expect Ms Ruane, who once tweeted her outrage at being asked not to wear her swimsuit in the supermarket, would confess to anything as prosaic as being caught cheating at an exam or two-timing a bloke.

But nothing could have prepared me for the revolting escapade she recounted from her time at Trinity when she was lucky enough to enjoy rooms overlooking the front square.

I’M NOT saying that her yarn about sleeping in the hall outside the door to her flat in a drunken naked heap, only to be woken by the heat generated by her urinating over herself after enjoying too much hospitality at Katherine Zappone’s wedding is a convincing argument against ever allowing her into the hallowed place.

Student life can be notoriously debauched – that’s why it’s called the best years of our lives – but most of us prefer not to share our misadventures with the nation, particularly if, like Lynn, we might have to win its favour in order to realise our ambitions for high office.

I could excuse Lynn’s proudly relaying the nauseating episode on the basis of her having her head turned by appearing in a TV show if she hadn’t volunteered a second lavatorial incident from her past.

At the risk of causing more offence, Lynn’s foul story involved her bowels and getting caught

short while out jogging. Even presenter Kevin McGahern emitted a horrified shriek when Lynn, below, shoulders shaking with laughter, delivered her vile and unspeakable climax.

As politicians exploit social media to appear more relatable to voters, their public behaviour has become more casual than the stiff and selfimportant reserve they often maintained in the past.

LEO gurns for the cameras at concerts and turns up for Cabinet meetings in Lycra. Theresa May dances on stage at the Tory party conference. As London mayor, Boris Johnson was pictured dangling on a zipline with little flags fluttering in his hands.

But no-one, except perhaps someone with designs on a career in ‘blue’ comedy, would risk causing offence with Lynn’s stom

ach-churning monologue.

She let herself down, which is a pity, because she also spoke about how alienated she felt in Trinity. True, straddling two worlds, rich and poor is – like teen motherhood and drug addiction – an all-too-familiar theme of Lynn’s but it’s also one we need to have drummed into us so we can understand how the middle classes perpetrate privilege by running a closed shop.

I’m afraid that Lynn’s performance on Clear History could be interpreted as an argument for the status quo rather than revolution. As she rambled on, unaware of how people across the country would recoil in disgust, she resembled less a gutsy woman from the wrong side of the tracks, who overcame setbacks to become an outspoken class warrior and senator, than a bumptious and self-satisfied aristocrat, deluded about the quality of his jokes and fascinated by the effluence from his every orifice.