Before After They Were Famous BBC 1, Friday
After Before They Were Famous ITV, Friday
It seems the public's fascination with celebrity shows little sign of abating. Furthermore, of just as much interest to the man or woman in the street is what a celebrity was up to either before or after they achieved fame. I certainly find it interesting to ponder on the fact that in his pre-celebrity days, the Pope was a goalkeeper with Saint Patrick's Athletic, or that after her involvement with John Profumo, Mandy Rice-Davies became a weather girl on TV3*. It may interest readers to know that before I achieved fame through this column, I was a really hopeless eye surgeon. I didn't take the job very seriously, hated my patients, and was drunk most of the time. However, that's a different story, and has no place in a TV review column such as this one. Back to television programmes: Both the BBC's Before They Were Famous and ITV's After They Were Famous showed celebrities' lives away from the spotlight. The latest programmes in the genre, BBC 1's Before After They Were Famous and ITV's After Before They Were Famous show celebrities at the height of their popularity. Thus, David Beckham is shown playing football, and Alan Titchmarch is featured in his garden planting flowers. It is noticeable that both programmes are strikingly similar, and are not as interesting as their predecessors. It seems that the programme-makers have again run out of ideas and are content to recycle old tried and tested formulas in the hope that the public don't notice.
It has been several days since I wrote the above lines, and I am struck by how ill-tempered and unfair they are. The truth is that I was rather depressed as I wrote them, because I had just split up with my long-time partner, the Northern Ireland nationalist poet, Orla Ni Suibh. We had not been seeing eye to eye for some time, and she was enraged when I revealed in this column my recent affair with TG4 newsreader, Eileen NicMhilloghbrideoghaQuinn. Alas, Orla was jealous of Eileen's youth; her vivacity, her carefree, couldn't-give-a-toss attitude (except when she was reading the news in Irish), her immense beauty and charm, and her expertise and versatility in the bedroom. Orla is a fiercely jealous woman, and on Tuesday afternoon, just after I wrote the above review, she attempted to kill me. I once stated in this column, that with the obvious exception of Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly, Orla is the scariest person in Ireland.
These words came back to me sharply as Orla bore down on me with a hatchet wrapped in a copy of the RTE Guide. Luckily, I managed to dodge her blow at the last moment, and escaped with a minor skull fracture, which I am assured by my doctors will heal itself after several weeks' rest. Luckily, David Norris was in our flat in Howth when Orla launched her attack, and the Trinity professor and Joyce scholar was able to restrain the insensed feminist poet until the gardai arrived. She has since been charged with attempted murder, but has been released on bail and is staying with relatives in Derry. Unfortunately for me, she has many connections with dissident Republican groups in the city, and has "put the word out" that I am now a legitimate target. I think it is very unfair of her to waste the valuable time of dissident Republican groups on a domestic matter involving Orla and myself, and I would urge her to calm down a bit and approach the problem rationally. It has not been all doom and gloom. Orla and I shared many joyous moments over the years, not least the birth of her son, Flann, fathered by convicted INLA man, Larry "Murder" Magee. I also remember a camping holiday in the Burren that was tremendous fun. But sadly, there were bad times too. Her extreme feminism has often caused friction between us, and there have been countless times when I had no option but to bundle her into the car and head off to Prof Anthony Clare's house for some emergency counselling after she had been enraged by some innocent act or remark of mine that she viewed as sexist**.
I only introduce this short glimpse of my private life by way of an apology for the shoddy TV review above, and hopefully, when things settle down a bit domestically I shall again produce columns that are thought-provoking, incisive, hard hitting and great.
* Not true, but used for dramatic purposes to illustrate columnist's point.
** Whistling at attractive, busty women and commenting on Orla's dowdy appearance.
Arthur Mathews is co-writer of Father Ted. His first novel, Well-Remembered Days, will be published by Macmillan in March.