Late Late crisis debate left us feeling deflated
The Late Late Show RTÉ One, Friday
Gogglebox Ireland
Virgin Media One, Wednesday Cheap Irish Homes
RTÉ One, Thursday
Last September, I had a delivery of 1,000 litres of kerosene. I found the bill recently and it cost me €690. That same quantity today would cost €1,335, which is why I had only 300 litres delivered on Friday. Even that cost €435. Rising fuel prices are not the only thing I have noticed. Go to any supermarket and you’ll see the staples have also shot up in price – bread, milk, butter, eggs, and so on.
Unless you have been sleepwalking through the last few months, you will have direct experience of the biggest inflation hike in four decades, a phenomenon previously unknown to all but those of us who lived through the Seventies and Eighties.
On Friday night, I sat down to watch the first episode of this year’s Late Late Show. It would, I hoped, be a distraction from this harsh reality, but no.
Ryan Tubridy looked sombrely into the camera after a segment encouraging children to send in audition tapes.
‘We’re going to need the Toy Show this year,’ he darkly intoned. ‘It will be a very, very welcome distraction from what is looking to be potentially a long, dark winter. We’re going to get serious now as you know all summer, we’ve been hearing about electricity price rises, we’ve been hearing about gas price rises, and there’s a fear of more to come. People are worried.’
Well, yes, I am, but perhaps not in the way he thinks. For two years, the Late Late almost fetishised Covid, and now it seems the cost of living is going to slip in and take over. My overriding worry is that the entertainment factor will play second fiddle to even more misery.
The Late Late Show has always been the nation’s Speaker’s Corner, and the mix of the frivolous and the serious is what makes it unique. I have no issue with it dealing with the main talking point of the day, but on the first show of the new series, it all was a bit much.
When the debates back in the day were about the role of the Church, or women’s rights, or access to contraception, there was the real sense that people were being informed on topics to which they had previously paid scant attention.
When it comes to the cost of living, though, everyone is already acutely aware of the problem.
I saw people on social media saying it was great to see it discussed, but people on the street and in the pub are talking of little else. After entertaining interviews with EkinSu from Love Island and Michael Flatley’s amusing gaffe when he said ‘if it gets tough out there, I’ll just pull out the flute’ to sniggers from the audience, the sudden switch to reality came like a bang of the head against a brick wall.
The best thing the Late Late could do, just one week in every four if need be, is to concentrate on taking us out of ourselves, not reminding us of the grim realities we faced all week before settling down with a glass of wine on a Friday night.
Among the contributors to the inflation debate and its implications were Tracie and Anita from Virgin Media One’s Gogglebox Ireland, and it would be deeply meta if next week’s episode showed them reviewing themselves.
Gogglebox returned on Wednesday, and it was straight out of the traps with another classic episode, reminding us why it is far superior to the original British version.
This week, the families were made watch a show in which an interior designer built a sex room for a young couple whose bedroom tastes were certainly eclectic.
When the woman subjected her-because, self to a mild flogging with a cat of nine tails, it was left to one of the Tully twins to inject a little reality. ‘You could do the same thing with a wet mop,’ he ventured.
He also made a valid point when they watched news of the latest electricity and gas price hikes, saying of the utility companies: ‘They’re just a shower of greedy b ***** ds’, illuminating the issue in one sentence with more insight than the entire Late Late Show debate.
If money really is tight, the best person to turn to is the brilliant Maggie Molloy, who also returned this week on Cheap Irish Homes. The premise of the programme is very simple. A prospective homebuyer asks Maggie for help in finding a place to live, and she offers three alternatives, all of which are on the lower end of the budget scale.
In some instances, they are in move-in condition, in others they need a lot of work, but it is an important public service to show both. It is estimated there are 95,000 vacant houses in Ireland, more than enough to solve the housing crisis.
Many of them are isolated, so they would not suit everyone, and some need just so much work, you’d have a panic attack.
What the show does, gently, is highlight potential. With a small outlay, the houses can be insulated, maybe have solar panels added to the roof, and they come with gardens that offer the space for growyour-own self-sufficiency.
In short, instead of doom-mongering, Cheap Irish Homes focuses on genuine positives that can be exploited, not terrifying an already worried population about rising costs on which they already have a grip. The Late Late could learn a few lessons from that.