RADIO REVIEW:NOT SINCE Pádraig Flynn appeared on The Late Late Show a decade ago has a public official so wilfully dug himself such a big hole, climbed into it and planted a dainty row of daisies on top. In Gay Byrne's 1999 interview, Byrne led his subject to the hole with false flattery and laughter, and an all-important icy glint in his eye that went over Flynn's head, before coyly handing Flynn a shovel to start digging. Watch it on Google Video. It's still a brilliant piece of journalistic wink-and-nodhood after all these years.
Pat Kenny took a more combative stance on Monday's Today With Pat Kenny(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), making Rody Molloy's brazenness that he was "entitled" to these expenses all the more incredible. This was before Molloy resigned his position as director general of Fás. He defended expenses of more than €640,000 over four years on transatlantic travel. Flynn's lifestyle was mostly based on his own income, but Molloy's was based on Fás expenses.
Molloy was An Fear Mór on campus at Fás. He could have powered every radio in the land with his own righteous indignation. One Fás official spent €12,097 on a round-the-world trip. And what was Molloy's response: that individual "at his own expense" spent time travelling back through the US. (Nice work if you can get it.)
On $10 pay-per-view movies in American hotels? "It's chicken feed!" he said, taking Kenny's prompt.
"We do obviously have a very serious checking process," Molloy said. He charged $942.53 to play a three-ball at the Orlando Florida Grand Cyprus Resort. "We are out there developing relationships," he said. He didn't show any fairway panache here.
How about $410 for a salon/nail bar in Cocoa Beach in Florida? "With all due respect," Molloy added, "we're getting into details of the preparation of somebody for a particular event." (We would have to wait for that.) If only there were a tailor or salon in Dublin that sewed mouths shut.
David McCullough stated the obvious, in an amusing sort of way, on Tuesday's Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays): "The Fás thing comes at a really bad time for the Government . . . from a presentational point of view." Who knows, what with Brian Cowen speaking out both sides of his mouth, paying tribute to Molloy in one breath and acknowledging there were questions to be answered in another, it may now force the Government to tie the gastric band around the bloated public sector even tighter than ever before.
Matt Cooper was hopping on Wednesday that Molloy would now skip the Public Accounts Committee of the Dáil. On The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays) Cooper said it was a busy news day and he repeatedly promised a report on Brian Cowen's reform of the public sector. (Spare us, please!) The news also flagged these public reform plans, desperate to make them sexy. Alas, this listener fell asleep. I missed the item and the rest of the show. Suddenly, it was two hours later and Paul McLoone was playing Blur. They're reforming too, apparently.
In search of a higher moral calling and some peace before bedtime, I listened to William Crawley's Sunday Sequence(BBC Northern Ireland, Sundays) online for a dose of faith, ethics and culture. Rev Robert West, from the Apostolic Church in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, was on to talk about his BNP membership. The contact details of 12,000 BNP members were leaked online, including those of police officers, teachers, soldiers and candlestick makers. (No offence to candlestick makers, but I made that last one up.)
Crawley and Jonathan Bartley from the news service Ekklesia asked West whether he agreed with the BNP's reported views on mixed-race relations.
"From a moral point of view I can't see what's wrong with a mixed-race marriage," West replied.
Qualifying his statement like that was just creepy. He said he doesn't deny the Holocaust or support "forced repatriation", but I really wish they'd asked him an open question about what common ground he had with the BNP or, better yet, avoid guests such as West, and look up at the stars instead.
Not since The Late Late Show chairgate in 1997, when a furniture restorer claimed he worked on an antique chair owned by a Donegal housewife, who claimed it as all her own work, have makeovers . . . Okay, let's not go there again. On Thursday, Mary Harney's expensive hair-wash while on a Fás trip to Florida in 2004, which was at least part of that $410, was headline news and featured on Today FM, Newstalk and RTÉ. This from the woman who said consumers should demand cheaper prices. But only if you're paying for it, apparently.
On Morning Ireland, Cathal Mac Coille introduced an item on "shopping and patriotism", which was about shopping north of the Border. David Davin-Power said of hairgate: "It's more toxic to be on the receiving end."
Not if the soap doesn't get in your eyes.
Leo Varadkar said Harney should have come clean - ouch! - and that her Cabinet position was untenable. Enda Kenny said the board of Fás should resign. I've no doubt that the foaming political hydra of Kenny-Varadkar would get a two-heads-for-the- price-of-one discount in any salon of their choice.
qfottrell@irish-times.ie