Musical interludes

We Irish love nothing better than a good moan about Our Great Leaders. Still, it could be worse. We could all live in Iran.

Their government is so nasty it makes ours look like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Sorry Willie, it's only an analogy. No need to start throwing your weight around).

For a start, they're not big music fans. Most tuneage is, technically, illegal. Imagine such a ban was imposed here? Granted, it'd mean being spared U2, which would cushion the blow like a 12-foot-thick eiderdown. But still. I'd shrivel up without music. How else could I block out the incessant chatter of chumps that pollutes the cosmos?

Then there's their traffic. Around 40,000 people a year die on Iranian roads. Hundreds of thousands more get injured. But, rather than blame the carnage on the fact that traffic police are as common as rabbis on the streets of Tehran, the government has decided to partly point the finger at music.

Iran's Minister of Culture Mohamed Hosein Sarrar-Harandi was recently interviewed by a Spanish newspaper. Asked about Western music, he said: "I know there are music genres, mostly heavy metal, that can provoke - combined with some hallucinogens - young people to jump out of the windows of cars while driving at high speed."

Eh? It could, I suppose, explain why most heavy metal fans ride motorbikes, but really, is he serious? Anyway, how do you jump out of the window of a car you are driving? Surely it'd crash before you got halfway through? Especially if you were tripping wildly and got distracted for 20 minutes by one of your fingernails on the way out. Methinks he's not thought this through.

Anyway, what evidence has he? Is Iranian Youtube littered with clips of such hi-jinks? I couldn't find any. But then, my Iranian isn't as good as it used to be. "I'm opposed to that kind of music," he continued. At least we agree on something, the minister and I. Anything that will make you hop out of the window while driving is probably worth being opposed to.

Despite it bordering on lunacy, I know where he's coming from. See, I live with the constant fear that Joe Duffy could provoke the same reaction in me as buckets of liquid LSD and Metallica's latest album (allegedly) do in Iranian teenagers.

Granted, Joe's voice is not strictly music. Not unless you find the sound of a flushing toilet melodic, that is.

I can picture it now: Stuck in traffic, I'd switch on the lunchtime news. As there's no clock in my ancient car, I wouldn't realise it had finished and the nation's intellectual dregs were already queuing up to talk to Joe (I know he's very popular. But then, so are tax-dodging and incest. Does that make them right?).

"Neh, dat's terrible, really terrible. Didyenot tell him ye wanted your money back? He said no? Dat's terrible. And you, with yer bad leg, after spending 16 hours queuing?" the Lord of Lowbrow would say.

Something would snap in my brain. I'd hear it like a twig pinging underfoot. Joe's dulcet drone - reverberating around my skull like a Lancaster bomber that had flown through my left nostril - would drive me over the edge.

In a desperate attempt to escape, I'd wrench open the door and fall face-first on to the road. After extricating myself from the seatbelt, I'd crawl on hands and knees to wedge my whole head into the bucket exhaust of the boyracer's Civic in front, hoping to drown out Joe.

Thankfully, a passing punter, sensing what was going on, would pull me away and stick his iPod over my ears, filling my brain with dub reggae, gently soothing me back to the calm, relaxed state that is my norm. I'd thank him effusively before striding purposefully back to my car to rip the radio clean out.

In fact, I may well just do it now, humming an Iranian military march as I work, just to be on the safe side.

You can't be too careful.