Hickie is a common sight should you be a regular gig-goer around Dublin and he appears to have impeccable taste . . . an inevitable conclusion, admittedly, when you see him nodding his head to the same popular beat combos as yourself. With Jenny Huston on holidays, he's filling in on The Waiting Room between eight and 10 on a Friday.

For those Leinster fans worried that vital mental energies were being frittered away on choosing which Beta Band tune to open his show with, it didn't appear to be live, but it was certainly recorded in the past week, as Hickie referenced the Bud Rising gigs he attended (all of them, apparently). And there was no texting-in-from-the-listeners option, which would have inevitably turned the thing into local radio.

Opening with the lugubrious admission that he was indeed Denis Hickie, before lashing on the new Fall Out Boy single (did we say impeccable taste? ) there was nary a mention of rugby for the remainder. Even when he played The Blizzards, a band which has Niall Breslin, a former player of promise, as lead singer, Hickie coyly referred to previously ?working" with the guy before Breslin chose a ?real job".

Then he was gone, halfway through a song by The Marshals the 10pm news kicked in without even a 'cheers' or 'good luck'. An unusually poor finish from Hickie, you'd have to say. He's worth tuning into this Friday, not for any sporting reason but if you're averse to inane patter by radio folk and partial to some Massive Attack with a bit of Elbow and perhaps the odd 'Cannonball' thrown in, you could do a lot worse.

There was another unexpected presenter the previous evening, as RTE Two debuted Leagues Apart, with Ardal O'Hanlon. The premise is to send O'Hanlon around Europe to attend games with the fiercest rivalries and find out why everyone gets so het up about a football match. On Thursday, he was in Athens for the Olympiacos v Panathinaikos match.

O'Hanlon is well known to be an aficionado of the game, but this is his first foray into presenting, and that wasn't hard to spot. He lacked the necessary charm and easy-going nature for what was effectively a travel documentary.

He was a little stilted, and despite a couple of good gags, he never really seemed comfortable.

A couple of random facts were delivered direct from a guide book, which were then offered as a tortuously tenuous link to the rivalry itself. Apparently the winner of the marathon at the 1896 Olympics declined all prize money but only accepted a horse cart from which he could sell his water to the people of Athens. ?If only football in Greece today could be as innocent, " said O'Hanlon gravely. And pointlessly. It was like a Leaving Cert student desperately trying to squeeze in a Robert Frost quotation to get a few extra points for their essay. There seemed to be a need for O'Hanlon to display to his audience that he is actually quite a clever guy.

Whether this is just a personality trait or because of a certain acting role that most people would remember him from, it's hard to say.

The match resulted in a 3-2 win for Olympiacos in a spectacularly partisan setting but there was never any sense of excitement. It was mentioned in passing that the result was quite important but there was no tension, no reason to hope it went one way or the other. The cameras only focused on the build-up from the Olympiacos point of view.

Olympiacos are the dominant force of the Greek domestic game, winners of eight of the last nine championships, with state-of-the-art training facilities and stadium. Surely Panathinaikos, their embittered and impoverished rivals who might as well be sponsored by McCain's for all the chips on their shoulders, would have provided the better story. Or at least a story. But they were ignored, apart from O'Hanlon downing a couple of beers with two of their fans. Maybe it was a question of access, but it was unfortunate that we only got up close to one of the teams.

This wasn't a terrible show, and it's no harm to have it there as a wind-down from The Sopranos, which precedes it.

There were some historical titbits and interesting contributions from author Sofka Zinovieff and Ronnie Whelan, who managed in Greece and witnessed some of its corruption at first hand.

Unfortunately though, like so many 'classic rivalries' that fail to live up to reputation, the overall package was pretty dull.