An Irishman's Diary

I SEE Barack Obama has been accused of borrowing his campaign slogan - "Yes We Can" - from the internationally successful children's TV show, Bob the Builder.

If the allegation is true, I don't blame him. It's a catchy line, and its popularity with toddlers was mirrored in the response to his speech after the New Hampshire primary, when adult supporters chanted the phrase back to him like an excited kindergarten.

The event even inspired a music video, also called Yes We Can, by the Black Eyed Peas.

If you connect with children, you probably have a head start with grown-ups, as Bertie Ahern's career demonstrates.

I have noted before here that Bertie's success as a politician was partly the result of his resemblance to a character from Den TV.

His funny name, big eyes, and cuddly, unthreatening demeanour had a natural appeal to the very young.

And some of this must have worked on adults too, given his extraordinary ability at defusing hostility and negotiating agreements everywhere he went.

Whatever about Obama's slogan, the first part of Bob the Builder's catchphrase - "Can we fix it?" - was surely the keynote to Bertie's career. He could fix almost anything, as we know. But the outgoing Taoiseach didn't just borrow a line from the TV character. He borrowed the whole persona.

At the height of his popularity, Bert the Builder was appearing on more construction sites than Bob. The hard hat seemed to suit him.

In fact, like Bob, he was never happier than when surrounded by machines (except those pesky e-voting ones, which were one of the few things he definitely couldn't fix).

For a time, you could hardly open a newspaper without seeing a picture of him posing with a shovel or a JCB.

As fans of Bob the Builder will know, no project is ever too big for Bob and his friends, who include Dizzy the cement mixer, Lofty the crane, and Muck the bulldozer; not forgetting the formidable Wendy, his business partner and office organiser.

In one feature-length episode, The Knights of Can-A-Lot, the gang even take on the restoration of a castle.

And despite Lofty's characteristic self-doubt (to the question "Can we fix it?", he always replies: "Er, yeah, I think so"), they succeed.

Fans of Bert the Builder may recognise the plot outline. Even hardcore admirers doubted his wisdom in taking on the contract to restore a dilapidated old castle in Belfast back in 1998. But he did. And last year, after a seemingly endless series of project delays, he finally pulled it off. The achievement was all the more remarkable given that the ending - in which Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shared power happily and spent the next year grinning inanely at each other - would have been rejected as too unrealistic for children's television.

It's true that our hero had his limitations. He wasn't especially good at fixing hospitals, for example. And there was a certain short-termism about a lot of his jobs.

But Bert the Builder was a feel-good show in its prime. And twice when he asked the electorate if they could fix it for him to have another five years in power, the answer was a resounding: "Yes We Can".

Just like Bob, however, Bert turned out to have feet of clay (Bob is 100 per cent clay, in fact, as are all the rest of the models used in the TV series).

By 2006, it became clear that the show was in trouble. The appearance of a new character - "Paddy the Plasterer" - seemed to presage a darker twist to the plot, in which Muck would have an increasingly prominent role.

It was perhaps no coincidence that Wendy had left the office by that time, to pursue a solo career in personal brand management.

In the past 12 months, Bert again mimicked Bob with an increasing interest in the environment, incorporating the slogan "reduce, re-use and recycle" into the script.

But not even the inclusion of another new character - the curiously titled "John Gormley" (last seen nodding, in that strange clay-animation style, in the background of Wednesday's resignation speech) - could rescue the series.

It's an old saying that the cobbler's family sometimes goes barefoot. So it was with Bert the Builder, who having supervised hundreds of construction projects for other people, saw his own house collapse on top of him due to a combination of foundation problems and faulty maintenance.

That there were complications with one of Wendy's houses too didn't help.

Even before the final episode, which featured another office organiser, this time called Grainne (the programme was subtitled "Grace Under Pressure"), it was obvious to fans that the writing was on the (Michael) Wall.

Still, we have 11 years of highlights to look back on; although even these will be tinged with regret.

Yes, we all laughed at that great line in which Bert praised Charlie Haughey for turning Temple Bar into Dublin's "West Bank". But now that seems like a lost opportunity.

The transformation of the tourist quarter into a West Bank is certainly an intriguing thought. It is perhaps a pity this is one project Bert the Builder did not take on.