Really, what is Mooney's show about? What is it for? Who is Derek Mooney? Is he another Marty Whelan, broadcasting to a merry, fragrant demographic of little old ladies who haven't a clue what's going on but whose hearts are in the right place? Is he, in fact, Daniel O'Donnell?

A couple of weeks ago Mooney compared himself to the protagonist of the film Dave, about an affable nobody who becomes president of the US and solves that country's social problems by means of salt-of-theearth, bumper-sticker politics. The comparison was well made. Derek Mooney is Dave.

Last Wednesday's show included a special on the Galway water problem, in which Mooney spoke to Fiona Monaghan of Failte Ireland and Gary Walsh, manager of the Galway Bay Hotel. These interviews were almost violent in their cheerfulness. They could have all abruptly burst into 'You can sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh' and not broken the mood.

Walsh described how, "in the absence of any solution being offered by any of the relevant bodies", the hotel has installed its own filtration system to blow cryptosporidium out of the water. Mooney was delighted with that.

"This is bang-on, " he raved. "This is exactly what people should be doing . . . getting on with it, solving the problem for themselves, instead of bitching and moaning about it. Well done Gary."

He even began to devise ways to fund the system for Galway, just like Dave . . . trim the military budget here, shorten the oil pipeline there, and hey presto, world peace.

"I am sure any government can bring in emergency legislation, " Mooney surmised. "If you go ahead and put in the filtration system, and then in your returns at the end of the year, you just deduct the cost from your returns. It's surely a simple way to do it, so they don't have to give out any money, they just collect that little bit less."

Walsh listened quietly and laughedf He laughed kindly now, but he laughed all the same.

RTE's other afternoon stalwart, of course, is Liveline, otherwise known as 'Repeat Yourself to Joe'. On Tuesday Jeananne Crowley (the actress, remember?

Where's she been? ) rang in to express her concern for Galway councillor Michael 'The Stroke' Fahy, who was taken to hospital the night before he was due to go to jail. Crowley said the court should have considered the fact that Fahy was the sole carer of his 97-yearold mother, who has now ended up in respite care. His sentence should have been deferred, she said, until after his mother had died.

It was a small but reasonable point, and she made it succinctly. But was that all? No, this was Liveline, so Crowley had to be kept on the phone half the day in case anyone with nothing better to do wanted to enter into a three-way conversation about the cruel and unusual punishment of Michael Fahy. Pink fluffy clouds.

Pink fluffy clouds.