Sorry, Willie, your chances of a free pint are fairly slim

DÁIL On The Dole, TV3’s new reality series in which four TDs dip a toe into the lives of welfare families, is not exactly experimental.

Programmes showing handsomely paid politicians living among the so-called common people are ten a penny in England and belong to the poverty-as-entertainment TV genre that also includes the controversial Benefits Street.

But the most infamous collision between the haves and havenots occurred in 1984 in a World In Action documentary that showed a thrusting new Tory MP, Matthew Parris, failing to make ends meet for even a week.

The programme opened with Parris informing an audience of Tory women that unemployment ‘should be uncomfortable’ in order to sharpen the appetites of the jobless for work.

Parris received £26.80, the going rate for a single unemployed man. He spent £11 on food, £2.50 on a ticket to a football match, 72p on bus fares and the same on a hot drink.

As writer Julian Barnes noted: ‘With two days to go, he was down to his last 61p and his plan to save £3 out of his £26.80 had collapsed. On his last evening, the gas and electricity ran out and he loitered in a working men’s club, unable to afford a drink.’

If memory serves, a kindly customer bought the MP a pint – but those were more forgiving times. No offence to Labour’s Joanna Tuffy, Willie O’Dea, pictured, or Fine Gael’s Catherine Byrne, who are participating in this new TV wheeze, but I can’t imagine many people lining up to buy them a drink. Not in working-class pubs anyway.