Bulletproof Bernard gets the scoop for the new home boys

TV View: Maybe, after the week that was in it, we need to get the laughs back in to Irish football. To that end, if we're all agreed, then maybe we should campaign for Jack Charlton to be hired as a Bryan Hamilton-type consultant to advise the Football Association of Ireland on who should succeed Brian Kerr. He certainly had very definite ideas on the matter when he turned up on Friday's Late Late Show.

"I hope he's not French or German or Portuguese or Spanish," he said to Pat Kenny.

At this point Pat interjected, perhaps sensing that Jack was about to go on and list every nationality under the sun, other than "English". Or perhaps we've got Jack all wrong, maybe he was about to narrow the field down to a Brazilian and a Dutch man.

Perhaps, like Johnny Giles, Jack thinks Guus Hiddink, currently employed by PSV Eindhoven, could be our man. And once he informed the FAI of his choice, and once they realised that Goose Hickeydink from PVC was, in fact, Guus, they could decide between him and Jack's second choice, Wandering Luxemburger of Real Milan.

Jack, though, was keeping these cards close to his chest on Friday, only mentioning Bobby Robson as a possible successor. That's the same Bobby Robson who spent much of his Newcastle managerial career calling Shola Ameobi "Carl Cort". So, in lots of ways, Bobby would be Jack: The Sequel.

But what about Roy Keane, Pat wondered. Jack ruled him out as a short-term option, but we took it from his response - "never in a million years" - that he might consider him in the longer term, once he gets a bit of managerial experience under his belt.

Oddly enough, earlier in the week, Eamon Dunphy addressed the issue of current/former Republic of Ireland managers appearing on the Late Late Show and receiving warm welcomes from the audience, as Kerr had done the Friday before.

"If Saddam Hussein went on the Late Late he'd get a standing ovation," he said.

This seemed harsh; we didn't recall the most recently ousted Irish boss declaring from the Late Late dock:

"I am Brian Kerr, the manager of the Republic of Ireland. This is all a theatre, the real criminals are the FAI board of management."

But come Tuesday night that might have been how he felt.

Hats off to Setanta, they had the news first. "Is your information bullet-proof," Daire O'Brien, presenter of The Hub, asked his guest Bernard O'Byrne, the former chief executive of the FAI, when O'Byrne received a text message from an FAI insider telling him Kerr's contract would not be renewed.

"Yes," said O'Byrne, it was bulletproof.

"We have it exclusively: Brian Kerr is gone," said O'Brien.

"We put our reputation on it: Brian Kerr is out of a job," he said soon after. He then chaired what seemed like a 19-hour debate on the rights and wrongs of the decision.

And all the time you kept thinking, "Jaysus, I hope someone wasn't winding Bernard up".

But, as it proved, the exclusive was spot on, and Bernard was none too happy about it. "I'm trying to think of a phrase without being vulgar or abusive to anyone, the phrase I have come up with is this is the pygmies' revenge - the pygmy people of football have got their own back on Brian Kerr," he said.

O'Brien asked Dunphy, who popped up on the phone, if he agreed with this analysis. "No."

O'Brien asked Dunphy if he had any sympathy for Kerr. "No."

O'Brien sort of figured from this that there was "no love lost between Dunphy and Kerr".

O'Byrne suggested there was no love lost between "Eamon and the majority of the population".

It all went grand for Setanta until the moment FAI chief executive John Delaney emerged to address the nation at his press conference. No sound. "A bit of a bummer," said O'Brien of the technical hitch, before asking O'Byrne "err, what do you think John is saying?"

Luckily enough for Setanta, if not for the manager, when the sound problems were fixed Delaney didn't tell the world: "We are delighted to announce that we are renewing Brian Kerr's contract".

Sadly for O'Byrne, then, Kerr is yesterday's man, just as George Hook sort of suggested about Reggie Corrigan during RTÉ's coverage of the European Cup meeting of Leinster and Bath.

"If Reggie Corrigan's sell-by-date was on my yoghurt there'd be trees growing in it," he said to Tom McGurk.

If Reggie comes good this season he should send George a lifetime's supply of yoghurt. Flavour?

Fruits of the Forest.