The Late Late Show is a perfect forum for Bertie Ahern. On Friday night, he was his usual, affable self, if a little nervous around the edges. He is not too sure how people regard him anymore, but he knows what he wants to project from Planet Bertie.

He's just a nice man, who worked hard, and brought the country to new heights of affluence, but some people simply don't appreciate all he's done.

Welcome to Planet Bertie. It is, as John Gormley once noted, a very strange place.

Ryan Tubridy tried hard to poke a light into that strange planet. The new presenter of the show is growing in stature by the week, dismissing any fears that he wasn't up to engaging on serious issues. But he was unlikely to succeed in getting answers where trained lawyers in the brutal forum of a tribunal had failed. All he ultimately got was the most public admission yet that Ahern is interested in the presidency.

Ahern was on the show promoting his book, I Won It On A Horse (Sorry, couldn't resist that).

He had advice for Brian Cowen. "Sometimes he doesn't mix as much as he could or should. Just meet the people." Indeed, just meeting the people worked wonders for Ahern, his easy manner allied to his mastery of detail convinced the electorate he was brimming with leadership.

At a time when the country is on its knees, a former taoiseach, who landed us in the mess, has a pop at the incumbent for not being nice enough.

Elsewhere, Planet Bertie came alive. The Galway tent? You thought it was a forum for builders to cosy up to politicians? Nonsense. "The tent was full of shopkeepers and postmen," says Bertie. See, there you go again. You had been led to believe the worst of Bertie, sorting out builders, when all he was doing was shooting the breeze with postmen.

Lehman Brothers, an American investment bank that went kaput, is entirely to blame for the huge deficit in the exchequer in this country. The mess has nothing to do with the man who presided over a bubble economy for a decade.

Tubridy pressed him on responsibility, emphasising that could his answer "Please, if you can, avoid the global situation".

All Bertie could offer up was that he wished some of the infrastructural projects had been done quicker. Nothing on blowing the property bubble, nothing on a doomed taxation policy. And certainly no question of apologising.

On Planet Bertie, the caped crusader did not resign because he and his former secretary had both given false evidence. No, he decided to go in the national interest.

"I was tired of the constant story every day," he told Tubridy. "It was really affecting my colleagues."

The future holds a crack at the presidency, unless the Mahon report puts the kibosh in his plans. He didn't say as much, but Tubridy did extract from him enough humming and hawing to confirm it.

Irrespective of Mahon, the chances of Planet Bertie relocating to the Phoenix Park are not good. Back when he was taoiseach, many gave him the benefit of the doubt over the money that flowed through his accounts. He was the nice man who had done wonders with the economy, and weren't we all the better for it.

Now that the bubble has burst, the public can see more clearly how exactly the country was run.

The way things are looking, Ozzy Osborne has a better chance of being president, judging by the greater welcome he received from the Late Late Show's audience.