Croke Park isn't as interesting as it's cracked up to be – official. Ronan Kelly's Curious Ear piece for RTE Radio 1, flagged a few weeks ago on Morning Ireland, was broadcast yesterday, and revealed that nothing much is going on there. I knew it.

Kelly went to Croke Park during the Meath vs Kerry football semi-final on what he described as "a tip-off". He'd been told he would find fans under the stands, praying. Instead he found a great many people with nothing much to say.

I suppose it would have been too much to expect Kelly to root out Lord Lucan, or Ambrose Bierce, or three or four of the Romanovs, but still. All Kelly found were people standing around outside Croke Park chit-chatting.

He did try to draw them out – perhaps hoping they might have deserted from the US army and hitch-hiked up from Shannon; or secretly had two sets of wives and children, one set from Meath and one from Kerry, both at the match; or had at least organised a mass escape from the local mental hospital – but to no avail. On the evidence of this programme, he found Middle Ireland. In fact, he found the very seat of Middle Ireland. He found Middle Ireland's answer to Tara. Well, at least now we know where it is.

He asked one smoker how long she could last without a cigarette. "About 15 or 20 minutes," she said. So – a heavy smoker, by gum. He also met a dedicated drinker. "Some lad gave me a pint on the way in there," said the man, and he wasn't going to give it up.

Kelly observed that he was walking and drinking at the same time, at which the man paused for a moment to dredge up an idea. "You can walk and drink but you can't drive and drink," said the man, and both he and Kelly then shouted with laughter at this wit.

He met several parents with children who had to be taken out of the stadium because they were acting the ass, a few people looking for hotdogs, some more going to the toilet, numerous drinkers...

An American wearing a Meath hat was drinking at "the cheapest bar in town". He had met a couple of girls the previous night "and they were like, you've got to go to this match today".

In the First Aid room, he found a young woman called Anna on duty. She was reading Anne Tyler's 'Back When We Were Grownups' and is still at secondary school – a pillar of society already, and at such a tender age.

Another pillar of society was on gate duty and had refused a bribe. He'd had to turn away two people whose tickets were already used and they offered him €20 to let them in. Cheapskates. It was "not worth my job," he said.

Finally Kelly found a woman praying but she tried to run away from him thinking he was from television. "Come here!" shouted Kelly. "It's not television, it's radio." Yes, radio, where you can still be as ordinary as you like.

Speaking of chit-chatting, platitude queen Cecelia Ahern was on Tuesday's Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4) promoting her new novel, The Book of Tomorrow, her seventh in six years.

Presenter Jane Garvey did her best to draw Ahern out, with the same result as Ronan Kelly. You might as well look for the hidden meaning in a bumper sticker. However, while Cecelia Ahern is inclined to bring out the worst in people (and it's OK, forgive yourself; sour grapes are only human), Garvey was all warm and supportive.

Ahern's new book is about somebody who loses everything in the recession. "Some people got swept away and thought that the things that they had made them who they are," she said. "This book is about getting back to basics and looking at who we are without all these things."

She had the idea for the book before recession hit, she said. "I thought, this is all well and good, these great things are happening, but what if this bubble burst?"

"Why didn't you tell someone?" asked Garvey.

She also asked her about the "snipers" who claimed her father was the reason for her book's success. Both she and Garvey were too good-natured to damn the critics for their snobbery, but they concluded wrongly that the success of her first book had been enough to prove the begrudgers wrong.

Now, it isn't that anyone would suggest that Bertie Ahern asked any of his whip-round friends to buy boxloads of PS I Love You or anything like that. No, no, not at all. But I wonder how many ordinary authors of beach fiction get that kind of publicity.

etynan@tribune.ie