Television Heroes - Cheryl Cole

How Cheryl Cole went from being a cloakroom attendant-battering-diva (check your tabloid history) to being the people's princess, smiling benignly from the X Factor judging panel, healing the sick and blessing the harvest, is arguably one of the public relations coups of the decade. On the other hand, that assault case could be the source of her power. Not to constantly be bringing things back to prison-logic, but it's often a good idea for a celebrity to begin their career with a brutal act of violence in order to show us all that they're not to be messed with (Dermot O'Leary threw a guy from a train; Glenda Gilson stabbed a waiter in the eye with a fork).

After that they can carry on with any persona they wish (in Cole's case it's a Geordie manifestation of the Earth Goddess). Indeed, the aura of serenity and calm Cheryl brings to our telly screens could, in fact, be the calm before the storm. Maybe the whole lip-synching controversy (she was due to lip-synch her new single on last night's programme) will trigger a Tarantino-esque outburst from England's Rose?

Television Fatigue - The Bertie Ahern Show

I arrived back from holidays to find Ryan Tubridy interviewing the man who ran this country into the ground. Although Tubridy asked some hard questions, it was like watching someone wearily wrestle a large, vague sponge. The sponge discussed how boring the tribunals were, how he's a workaholic compared to Brian Cowen (as self-criticism goes, calling yourself a workaholic is like saying "I'm too good-looking"); he teased us with the prospect of an Ahern presidency, and heavily implied that everything would be absolutely fine now if he hadn't been hounded from office by the sick freaks in the media.

Furthermore, almost every banal thing he said was greeted with hilarity (and at one point whooping) by the lunatics and Fianna Fáil supporters who packed out the audience. It's nice to see that, a few years on, the stench of government corruption is absolutely hilarious ("I didn't even think they were nice shirts," he quipped, of Charles Haughey's penchant for spending the blank cheques Bertie signed on designer haberdashery). Anyway, it made me vomit up a chunk of my own soul, and I needed to tell you all about it.