Too much of Miriam and errant weather forecasting

Date Published: 27-Jun-2011

Replacing a chat show with another chat show during the summer months is probably the cheapest option available to RTÉ but the least palatable from a viewer’s perspective – simply because Miriam O’Callaghan is soooo boring and her guests are equally less interesting.

It really is a case of Miriam here, there and everywhere at the moment. Apart from her Prime Time gig, she pops up on a Saturday morning with rather tedious and overly long interviews and then does much the same that night in her Saturday Night With Miriam slot which is all rather pointless.

Her guests are weak, her interviewing technique revolves around asking them relatively innocuous questions and it is not surprising that after her guests leave, you are left wondering what did they have to say during their 20 minute appearance. It is completely forgettable.

But even the setting looks awkward. There are three couches; she sits uncomfortably on one of them continually fixing her frock while her guests try to wrestle with the rather large arms of another couch while the third invariably is redundant. It looks an extremely cluttered place.

Anyway, her first guests were two Irish rugby players. Enter Jamie Heaslip and Rob Kearney and for a long while I was wondering what exactly was the purpose of them being there. Maybe it was to compare accents, I don’t know.

Gosh, the lads spoke really well without saying anything apart from recalling some high jinks a while back when they decorated someone’s car and they both laughed as they recalled these cutting edge antics. Miriam laughed as well, so it must have been humorous.

Oh yes, they spent a few days with children in third world countries and had pictures of themselves for effect. They spoke of the plight of these children as if it was something that we hadn’t heard of before but at least we hope that the kids in these countries appreciated their visits and are still probably wondering who the hell they were.

This was roughly followed by an interview with the comedian Pat Shortt who just kept laughing for the sake of laughing. I ended up laughing for the simple reason that he was laughing when there was nothing to laugh at. Miriam was laughing away as well but only to appease her guest who was still laughing as he left the studio. But this was no laughing matter.

In fact it would make you cry the fact that RTÉ has to resort to such innocuous rubbish in order to fill an hour of a Saturday night. But it is obviously cheap and harmless and sure doesn’t everyone love Miriam. I take back every bad thing I ever said about Brendan O’Connor . . . well, almost.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.