Television Heroes - Brendan Gleeson and Dearbhla Walsh

Let us revel in the success of our gene-pool! The People's Republic of Hibernia has won not one but two Emmys which citizens Brendan Gleeson and Dearbhla Walsh will soon be turning over to the emissaries of the party when they return from America. Gleeson won for his performance as Winston Churchill in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's mini-series A Gathering Storm, while Walsh won for directing a 14-part adaptation of Dickens's Little Dorrit. Art Commissar Cullen said, "Brendan is one of our finest actors and Dearbhla one of our most accomplished directors... and should they chose not to defect, we will put them to work on a series of turgid realist cinematic vignettes in praise of the struggles of the developer class." (Minister Cullen may not actually have said that last part). Seriously though – kudos to Brendan and Dearbhla.

Television Heroes - The English Stations

When I was young in [COUNTY REMOVED], my father, having to go to Dublin for work occasionally, would return to find my mother standing in the hall. She would grab his arm urgently and say: "Did you see BBC?" His eyes would light up and the whole housing estate would gather round as he recounted the things he'd seen on The English Stations, which at that stage didn't seem to transmit beyond the Pale. We would sit in wonder as he recounted stories of This Is Your Life, Hi-de-hi and All Creatures Great and Small. 'What is 'Parking-Song'?' the Mayor once asked. My father laughed gently and explained that Parkinson was a chat show, much like The Late Late Show except a bit shitter and with fewer priests. Incidentally, my wife feels a childhood without Bagpuss is hardly a childhood at all and that I may as well have been down a coal mine.