Sightings of exotic creatures in Kildare caused tremendous excitement on Tuesday. One was a supposedly deadly spider which was grappled with and thrown to the mat by Leixlip's answer to Crocodile Dundee. The other was Chris Eubank.

The spider was found nesting in a pillar by landscape gardener Mike Carter, who, being Australian, was surely more disposed than the rest of us to imagine it was something interesting like an Australian redback.

Anyone else finding an unusual spider – say, in the shower cubicle – would set about that tricky operation that involves a piece of cardboard and a drinking glass and as little eye contact as possible. (There are also people, such as Barack Obama, who would kill it first and ask questions later, but the less said about that the better.)

Anyway Carter was on Morning Ireland to tell Cathal Mac Coille all about it. He was taking it to Dublin Zoo that morning to get it identified. In the meantime, Mac Coille tried to build up the horror. How big was it? Could it be fabulously dangerous? Where was it at that moment? He also asked, with great delicacy, what were the chances that "it could have left any progeny anywhere".

This was where it became clear that Carter was no less than a cork-hatted, lantern-jawed, shark-on-the-barbie folk hero. Eggs had been laid, he said, but he killed them all, and he also dispatched two other redbacks that were living in the pillar with their ladyfriend.

Later it emerged that it wasn't actually a redback, it was a common European spider. What a pity. Poor Carter is probably needlessly embarrassed now, though anyone can see he's just the kind of man you want around the next time you spot something the size of an infant's hand in the bath.

Meanwhile, on i105FM, which broadcasts into the bowels of Leinster, Chris Greene was also trying to verify the identity of an uninvited guest. Chris Eubank had been visiting the dentist in Clane and listening to Greene's Thirdi programme, as you do. The dentist's waiting room is always a sort of audio hell, where you can't get through that inflammatory six-month-old Economist article what with all the daytime radio prattle. However, Eubank was actually enjoying it, so he thought to phone in afterwards.

Chris Greene described himself as "kind of starstruck", but really, starstruck wasn't in it with him. He might have begun by being starstruck at talking to Chris Eubank, but he quickly entered into a beautiful, magical world of the imagination, a world in which Chris Eubank would be starstruck at talking to Chris Greene.

You could sum up everything he said as follows: "Oh my God, I am so blown away, Sir. This is incredible, Sir. I cannot believe Chris Eubank phoned my programme. Oh my god oh my god oh my god... Chris Eubank, Sir, what do you think of me?"

He begged to be allowed to phone Eubank the next time he was in Ireland. He even offered to put him up in a hotel so he might visit the radio station. "If I put you in the nicest hotel you've ever seen, would you be able to come here or not?" he asked. "If not that's totally okay. It's just you're such a cool guy. And I can't believe this. This is unbelievable."

Eubank offered him some advice about his show. "If you're charming and well-mannered and you can speak from the heart, then you're always gonna be charismatic," he said.

Greene was overjoyed. "That's, you know, that's exactly what I try and develop here. I'm not even joking with you. I mean, people don't like me because of how honest I am."

He claimed to have "thousands of haters", which was news to those of us who had never heard of him before. "I don't care if you don't like me. Chris Eubank likes me, so screw you," he said.

Eubank reassured him that they were not "haters", they were people "who love to hate you... and that's why you have a show". Greene was forced to agree. "That's it exactly," he said. "Oh my God I can't believe I'm being complimented by Chris Eubank. This is unbelievable. This is... obscene. This is uh, this is crazy."

Another man who prides himself on having thousands of haters is right-wing pundit Michael Graham, who filled in for George Hook on Newstalk last week. Everything about this was predictable.

The only aspect of this sort of radio gimmickry that continues to surprise – and it is the same with Cal Thomas on The Last Word – is that it is so gleefully seized on by people who persist in the belief that the media in this country is left-wing.

etynan@tribune.ie