RTE has moved into that curious season when the unicorn does the polar bear's job and the fish swing from trees: all sorts of odd people do work they have never done before. One might reasonably expect Sean Duignan to present a cookery programme and Larry Grogan a series on Etruscan hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone. Almost any variation, any mixture of the improbable, is a possibility - provided, that is, it doesn't include Carrie Crowley. It wasn't so long ago that she was the great hope of RTE. She had, it seemed, everything. She was multilingual, photogenic, absurdly good looking, sexually attractive; she fizzed effervescence and had a good mind to top it all; she seemed certain of stardom. Yet, instead of this star being set on a selective course that would take it shooting across the firmament of Irish popular culture, she was used wantonly in just about every programme going. She did not, to my knowledge anyway, appear on Challenging Times, but that didn't prevent me from looking hard at some of the students, just in the case the powers that be hadn't tried to sneak her in through that guise.
Everywhere
Otherwise, she was everywhere. "And after the news, read by Carrie Crowley, we'll have tomorrow's weather from the Met Eireann studio, presented by Carrie Crowley. That'll be followed by this evening's edition of Neighbours, in which Carrie Crowley appears as a wombat. This evening's look at the Irish countryside visits Carrie Crowley country, and then we visit Coronation Street, where Carrie Crowley seems to be having problems with some of the regulars in the Rovers' Return. "After the news and weather, read again by Carrie Crowley, it'll be the Late Late Show, presented by Carrie Crowley, who'll be talking to star guest Carrie Crowley. The Big Match features Manchester United, with Carrie Crowley in goal and the driving force in the heart of midfield, as well as leading one of the most lethal strike forces in the Premiership. United's opponents this evening are Arsenal, for whom Carrie Crowley has set a club goalscoring record this season. And the Arsenal keeper Carrie Crowley has yet to concede a goal at Highbury this season. The Big Match is presented by Carrie Crowley.
"And then comes tonight's big film, starring Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Michelle Pfieffer and Carrie Crowley in The Carrie Crowley Story. . ."
The poor creature was being both ill-advised and over-exposed; and since she was not a head of programmes of any sort, or controller of RTE 1 or Network 2, somebody or somebodies was or were choosing to give her so much airtime. The temptation to do so was understandable, as indeed was her temptation to be on television a great deal. If anyone had the makings of the new talk show host of the RTE airwaves, it was she, with her vibrancy, her spontaneity, her sheer cleverness.
Lingering trace
And then one day, suddenly, she was gone, as swiftly as a Moscow Politburo member at the end of a purge. Just about all lingering trace or record of her ever having been regarded as the great coming hope of RTE has been expunged from the current airwaves; and though I am told she is to be heard on Sunday morning on radio, most people resist the call of the radio at the time of the day or the week which nature designed for divine worship or sleepy copulation.
So why? What has happened that the great rising hope of RTE presenters is now toiling in the salt mine of Sunday broadcasting, which, though not without its enduring pleasures such as the incomparable Ciaran Mac Mathuna, is hardly the stuff of mass audience appeal. Why has she been banished to the unheard Siberia of the Sabbath, when she seems to have all the requirements for mass appeal in Ireland, yet being simultaneously touched with the wand of intelligence, poise and presence?
Where did she go wrong? Was her problem that she didn't play the political game which is such a powerful factor in RTE? Or was she simply a victim of over-exposure? If that is so, then she has long since been purged of that by an equal exposure-denial, toiling there on the tundra of a Sunday morning.
Talented presenters
Even if RTE were burdened with many genuinely talented presenters - and there's no evidence that it is - she would still deserve to be seen regularly on television. And there's no reason why I should be spending an entire column about her, except this: Carrie Crowley is a typical victim of an Ireland that is vanishing everywhere else, an Ireland in which rewards follow fast not so much for what you can do or how good you are at doing it, but for who you know and how well you play the political game.
In all truth, I have might well have done her television and radio career no favours at all by advocating her cause. RTE managers are not a breed to brook outside interference lightly, and I know one who as a matter of principle would do the very opposite of whatever might be proposed here. But we have seen so many talented Irish television performers - Olivia O'Leary, Dermot Morgan, Graham Norton - find celebrity abroad because they felt their careers could go nowhere at home. Carrie Crowley, I do not doubt, would be a television sensation if she were to cross the Irish Sea; but isn't that day meant to have passed long ago?