Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

It’s no wonder the X Factortwins are so popular: they embody the Celtic Tiger era but do none of the harm, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE

OFTEN, THE most poignant and potent moment of a culture is its dying gasp. Before the end, as a world implodes, there is a last great gathering of its energies. A shaman has a vision in the forest and arrives back with a millennial vision of salvation in which the ancient spirits are revived. A writer emerges to chronicle a way of life with a steely clarity forged from the urgent knowledge that it must be recorded before it dies. A painter evokes its colours and essences with a feverish intensity imbued with the magical hope that, if only it can be captured, it will not fade. A singer sustains a plaintive dying fall on the air and, in that note, a whole world hovers on the edge of extinction.