'Late Late Show' slot with Paisleys an orgy of cosiness

Ian Paisley rewrote history at a wholesale rate on Friday night and interviewer Pat Kenny let him away with it

REMEMBER WHEN the biggest worry we had was Northern Ireland? That national anxiety took up, oh, whole minutes of our year, mainly when we were talking to concerned foreigners about it. You don’t want to seem uncaring. But even that fitful effort from the citizens of the Republic now seems a long time ago.

So last Friday, despite all the advance publicity, it was a bit of a jolt to see Ian Paisley walk on to the set of the Late Late Show.

Ian Paisley and the Late Lateare a perfect match; looking at the two of them it is hard to believe that the last 30 years ever happened. At the start of their public lives both Ian Paisley and the Late Late Showwere viewed as edgy, radical and a threat to the status quo. Now time and lesser rivals have caught up with the two of them, and they have become museum pieces, occasionally illuminated by flashes of charm.

The Late Late, in any event, is not altogether to blame for its fate.

The RTÉ authorities were first too lazy and then too frightened to alter a format which has not changed since the 1960s. It is a mammoth of a programme: often woolly, occasionally frightening and unwieldy at all times.

Ian Paisley seems similarly determined to deny that he has changed a jot. He was a firebrand preacher. He made a virtue of immovability. His favourite word was always no. But remaining teetotal and refusing to go to the cinema unless the film is about Oliver Cromwell (bless!) is not quite the same thing as not changing. It is rather terrifying to think that the problems of Northern Ireland could have been solved years before they actually were, just by making Ian Paisley top dog. Wasn’t it Albert Reynolds who diagnosed that the promotion of Ian Paisley to glory was going to be one of the key steps on the road to peace? On Friday night it was fascinating to hear Ian Paisley talk about his first encounter with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin: “After the biggies went away. After the prime ministers went away.”

The biggies! For a fundamentalist Protestant Ian Paisley seems to hold very hierarchical views. Could it really be true that all he wanted all along was to be the Main Man? To southerners Ian Paisley was a rather reassuring figure; a cartoon fire- and- brimstone Protestant, of the type the nuns used to warn us about. Add to this his physical beauty (on Friday night a 12-year-old viewer was amazed when she heard he was 80 "I thought he was 56!"), his humour and his charm, and he became the northern Protestant with whom we could, if not deal, at least exchange pleasantries. Actually, he was the only northern Protestant we knew. So it is no wonder that his welcome here has always been warm. At the opening of the Battle of the Boyne centre last May, as he and Bertie Ahern enjoyed their respective political swansongs, a northern reporter told The Irish Times'sMiriam Lord: "Big Ian doesn't even get a reception like this in Ballymena."

Minders had to push back autograph hunters. Baroness Eileen stole the show with an impromptu and generous speech. The orchestra struck up Danny Boyand quite a lot of people cried. Ian Paisley – part of what we are.

Everybody knows that a lot of northern Catholics will never forgive Paisley for his incendiary posturing. But many northern Protestants won’t forgive him either, for his egomania, his 17th-century moralising and the fact that he became the most recognised northern Protestant on the island – not quite the representative they had hoped for. The Paisley telephone has probably stopped ringing since his retirement, so it is no wonder that this charming elderly couple decided to have the big night out in Dublin.

What emerged was an orgy of cosiness, which seemed to satisfy all the parties concerned. History was rewritten at a wholesale rate. Asked how she felt when they first met, Baroness Eileen said, “I just enjoyed his preaching”. This innocuous statement was undermined as soon as it was made by a photograph that flashed on to our screens of the young preacher Paisley, looking drop dead gorgeous. A picture of the young Paisleys, with Eileen sitting on Ian’s knee, showed a lively and sexy couple.

This was a nice thing to know about the Paisleys, just as it was nice to know that he is an attentive husband (“still is” said Baroness Eileen) and father.

Pat Kenny handled all this very well. But it was strange to see him, one of the best current affairs interviewers this country ever produced, showing so little curiosity about Ian Paisley. Asked if he had any regrets, Ian Paisley replied, predictably, in the negative. This seemed extraordinary from a man who had stoked the cauldron of northern Irish politics his whole working life, who had seen children incinerated and innocent people assassinated simply for being Catholic – or Protestant. Pat Kenny let him away with it. Perhaps he was right. We don’t know much about Northern Ireland and its suffering, but we know what we like.