Daniel now the Nabob of Nice
Daniel and Majella’s B&B Road Trip (RTE One)
IF there was a Commission to establish whether Daniel O’Donnell was really a nice fella or whether he was just fooling the people, I think I could present some compelling evidence. Because I interviewed Daniel before he was famous, and you know what kind of a fella he was? A really nice one.
I had no idea then, why Hot Press sent me to talk to this man, and I still have no idea, and nor, I imagine, does he. But it happened anyway, and so I found myself in the foyer of the Gresham Hotel, waiting for this Daniel with only a vague idea of what he looked like, let alone of the nature of his oeuvre.
And by chance, as I waited, this rock ‘n’ roll personality well known to me sat down in an armchair near me, and we began to speak.
I told him I was supposed to be interviewing this “showband” type, that I knew nothing about him, and it was all a bit ridiculous — though in fairness to me, nobody in the Dublin 4 media or even beyond that accursed tribe knew much about Daniel at that time, because he had not yet ventured into the territory described by Zero Mostel in Mel Brooks’s The Producers as Little Old Lady Land.
Indeed Daniel was so unknown to me, I did not realise that he was, in fact, seated at a nearby table, and had clearly heard all my disrespectful remarks, and rather than coming over all unnecessary about it, playing the temperamental artist, you know what? He was really nice about it.
He seemed merely amused by it all, pointing out that he knew very little about me either, and asking me to talk a bit about myself — which was not just nice, it was actually quite funny.
So when I am looking at the new series of Daniel and Majella’s B&B Road Trip, I already have the answer to the only question that has ever mattered about Daniel — is he really nice? — and so I am able to relax and wonder why someone so nice, can still seem so strange?
For a start I suppose that niceness on this scale is so unusual, that in itself is strange.
Or is there a paradox here, that the apparent absence of a dark side, can itself seem dark?
The excellent Majella is on board to take Daniel to the outer edge of whatever darkness is in him, which seems to extend no further than “the bit of slagging”, such as him comparing her penalty points to all the points he got on Strictly.
And there is Majella’s loud laugh, which startles the viewer just as Daniel has startled her by inexplicably putting on a Chewbacca mask while she’s trying to drive the car.
There’s also a bit of riding on a beach, and no doubt a good oul’ laugh was had at that.
In the extraordinarily fine Gallan Mor Boutique B&B establishment run by Noel and Lorna Burke in West Cork, there was a special treat for anyone who has ever asked the question: “I wonder what happens to singer Annie Lennox’s stairs when she’s finished with them?”
Now we know that one set of them, at least, has somehow ended up in an Irish B&B, and sure enough as Daniel and Majella are being shown to their room, as they pass the Annie Lennox railings we hear Lorna singing Waiting in Vain by Bob Marley.
Fortified by loads of rashers and beans, Daniel and Majella are oddly enough at the cutting edge of a new wave of TV journeys in the company of much-loved entertainers who have a few miles on the clock, with husband-andwife actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales (Sybil in Fawlty Towers) doing Great Canal Journeys, and Penelope Keith travelling through Hidden Villages, both on Channel 4.
And you get the sense that they are all nice people too, even when we’re not watching them. Except now in the Nice Olympics they’re up against Daniel, and they’re up against Majella, who has a few shots of niceness in her locker, too.
They are the Nabobs of Nice.
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