Kevin Bacon, Des Bishop and that poet guy

Left: Des Bishop learning Irish in a field, looking broody before he’s funny and then turns into a large yellow arrow. 

I went from here to here in one jump and thanks to JL Pagano, I was time travelling. Back in time, back to a time when Sharon Ní Bheoláin was just a woman on television, not a post-consumerist sexual cypher for Heineken drinking, Brazilian-travelling twentysomething Celtic cubs. What other great things did the link to the Turas Teanga website tell us apart from RTE’s attempt to piggyback on Des’s series by clearing a space in some Montrose office? 

Why, the site tells us that Sharon graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with an honours degree in early and modern Irish. Grand stuff. Also that Sharon is passionate (I always had hoped so) and actively involved in animal welfare. Turas Teanga was RTE’s mid-1990s attempt to help people overcome a complex with Peig and employing a cailin deas seemed like a good idea at the time. It was Sharon’s big break and ensured that the workplace secret Santa for the next four Christmases was fairly predictable, DVD-wise. 

The series had a number of guests over the episodes: Sharon’s shopping buddy Aoife Ní Thuairisg turns up and we learn that she wasn’t always a blond or a raging homophobe. Cian Ó Cíobháin is Sharon’s week three guest but he’s just a HTTP/1.1 500 Server Error. The weeks go on and we get Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, Cathal Ó Searcaigh and Louis de Paor. Hold on hold on, Cathal Ó Searcaigh?! The poet? The guy who likes to ‘holiday in Nepal’ (euphemism copyright, 73man 2008)? The man who believes there’s nothing remotely naive about going to a poor country and distribute money exclusively to beautiful and vulnerable young men in order to ‘spend time with them’? Surely not. Does Mary Hanafin know? Does Joe Duffy know?

Strange where this internet takes you…..

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