Irish pond life hits new low as TV3 plumbs the depths

It is every parent’s worst nightmare – and just in case you were clinging to any faint hopes that your teenage sons or daughters were enjoying the sun and sand alone when they go on that ‘right of passage’ trip to the Canaries or Crete, here comes Boozed Up Irish Abroad to shatter your final illusions.

TV3’s short series of the antics of the Irish in the sunspots is as appalling a piece of television as you’re likely to see – which is saying something, given the rubbish that they show normally.

The kindest you can say about Boozed Up Irish Abroad is that the title isn’t the least bit misleading – they lined up three of the lowest of low life groups you could ever hope to find to ensure that this painted the worst possible picture.

And in an effort to make this appear like some sort of social study, they add the fig leaf of such trivia as ‘almost every day one Irish person is arrested whilst abroad’ according to the Sunday Tribune – or ‘Irish adults have one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption ... and binge drinking within the European Union’ according to what they call alcohol statistics in Europe.

The stars of this series are the kind of holidaymakers you’d cross oceans to avoid – constantly drunk, pouring shots down their neck like water into a large bucket, taking off their clothes, simulating acts with passing females and generally making complete idiots of themselves in the name of Ireland.

Not that they have to search that hard for diversion – the two holiday destinations chosen by our intrepid documentary makers, Hersonissos on Crete and the Majorcan hot spot of Santa Ponza, could make a nun turn to sin.

The real action only begins when the sun goes down in bars like the Shamrock, Shenanigans, Boston O’Brady’s, Sean’s Place, Muldoons, Dublin Sports Bar, Paddy’s, the U2 Place and a million others carving up the drunken Paddy business between them.First up are the pretend rock stars who make up the fictitious band Methadone – Terry who loves the older ladies, Mark, Keith or Brocko who’s a Liam Gallagher fanatic, and Ger.

They can’t sing but they pass themselves off as a band from Dubbalin with a fictitious album that includes such self-penned classics as Drinking is Thinking and the Ballad of a Drunken Generation.After one night in Santa Ponza and they’ve been sick all over the apartment at the end of a night that climaxed with Terry in the bar with his trousers down and Keith in bed by 11pm because he spent the afternoon drinking eight pints at a time.

A hop and skip away on Crete and in the town of Hersonissos, a group of College students from Meath and Limerick are having the time of their life – if only they could remember a minute of it.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.