It was with some trepidation that I tuned in to BBC1's Question Time last week. In advance of next week's assembly elections, the production team had decided to temporarily vacate the relative calm of British politics for the maelstrom that passes for political discourse in Northern Ireland, writes David Adams.
In Omagh, Co Tyrone, the unflappable David Dimbleby would, under the full gaze of a national TV audience, put questions from local people to a panel of senior politicians: Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, the DUP's Nigel Dodds, and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin.
Not something I could look forward to with any relish. In Northern Ireland, politicians are our equivalent of the embarrassing relatives: best kept at a safe distance from those outside the immediate family circle.
On local television, their juvenile bickering around the same narrow subjects can, in a mildly masochistic way, sometimes be quite amusing, but not to the extent that we feel comfortable sharing the joke with a wider audience.
Failing to spot any of the usual suspects in the audience, as the cameras panned around during the opening title sequence, I began to relax a little. In fact, the locals looked reassuringly normal in comparison to the glazed eyes and permanently angry faces of many of those who regularly take part in similar homegrown productions.
And, from that promising beginning, things continued to improve.
There were a few little spats around predictable issues, but - no doubt conscious of the national spotlight themselves - both the audience and the politicians were remarkably well behaved throughout the programme.
In dealing with questions on Iraq, stem-cell research and the possible introduction of identity cards into the UK, our politicians even gave a passable impression of being aware that a world exists beyond Northern Ireland.
However, that impression wasn't strong enough to pass muster with the full range of UK viewers. Apparently, throughout the programme and into the following day, the BBC received numerous phone calls and text messages from people in Britain complaining about the boorish behaviour of our political leaders and their unwillingness to move forward.
(God alone knows what the reaction would have been if they had been forced to sit through a run-of-the-mill edition of Hearts and Minds or Let's Talk.)
And it's not as though the BBC phone lines were swamped by hordes of people who had tuned in expecting to see Eastenders or Casualty. Question Time is a long-standing programme whose loyal viewers are, by definition, keenly interested in politics and political debate.
But, as they made clear, their interest doesn't quite extend to sitting through yet another Northern Ireland version of political Groundhog Day.
But what of our Southern neighbours? Where do they stand on Northern Ireland?
For a few years now, my sister, brother-in-law and elderly mother have taken holidays in various parts of the Republic. Casual conversations with any number of people there have left them in no doubt that Northern Ireland and its politics is a definite turn-off.
Gerry Adams - only half-jokingly I think - remarked recently that in a bar in the Republic you could always tell who the Northerners are. They're the people who glance round every time the door opens. He might just have added that the door opens and closes quite a lot when a crowd of Northerners settles down in a Southern bar because most of the locals quickly finish their drinks and beat a hasty retreat.
The last thing in the world they want is to be dragged into a religious and political time warp by the alcohol-induced ravings of their troublesome Northern neighbours.
Obviously, these observations on attitudes within Britain and the Republic are neither scientific nor, on the face of it, particularly revealing. There has always been a high level of apathy where Northern Ireland is concerned.
But, and I think this is where the difference lies, in the past there was a large degree of sympathy as well. Sympathy for people who seemed forever trapped by their own history with no obvious means of escape.
Since the Good Friday agreement, when hopes were raised and interest was rekindled, that sympathy has all but disappeared.
An escape route is readily identifiable now, but we are seen to be stubbornly refusing to take it. As the hope and goodwill have evaporated, apathy has been replaced by antipathy.
The people of Britain and the Republic still wish only the best for us, but are now far from convinced that we wish only the best for ourselves.
Those who still believe the Republic is patiently waiting to pounce on loyal Ulster, or that Britain is determined to stubbornly hang on to its last colonial outpost, flatter themselves.
If Northern Ireland was abandoned to its fate, the reactions of the respective populations would be sheer relief on the one hand and blind panic on the other.
If a falling tree in Brazil supposedly results in a breeze over the American continent, can you imagine the cumulative impact on global weather of a collective sigh of relief throughout Britain and a sharp intake of breath in the Republic?
