Miriam returns but anything is better than Late Late

Whether it is to prove that she is a flexible presenter or an opportunity to showcase her substantial cleavage, it looks like we are stuck with Miriam O’Callaghan on Saturday nights for the next couple of months. Knowing our luck, it will probably continue raining for the duration.

But it could be worse. At least we don’t have to endure the worst Late Late Show presenter – yes, Tubridy is steadily proving to be much worse than Pat Kenny ever was – and it is no harm that he is far removed from our screens for an extended period. It is a pity that it couldn’t become a permanent arrangement but we live in hope.

Anyway, Miriam returned to our screens for another season of her comfy couch interviews but it was very unfortunate that her first guest was another RTE presenter. Everyone in RTE seems infatuated with each other because they just seem to interview one another at every available opportunity.

It’s almost as if they are stuck for a guest and then they go searching the offices in Montrose to see who they stumble across, put them in a suit and bring them on as their first guest to talk about nothing in particular.

This was true of Bill O’Herlihy who was her first guest and apart from telling us about millions having watched the Euro 2012 soccer, he had little more to offer. If the truth be told, a large number of viewers watched the coverage for the Après Match sketches, some of which were quite funny although there were those that were less than imaginative.

So she knocked in nearly a quarter of an hour talking to Bill who articulated the qualities of being from Cork and apart from that there was not a lot happening with this early section of the programme. Oh yeah, Bill told us about him being involved in current affairs at one point and then being dropped from it. Edge of the seat stuff.

Then she brought on Sonya O’Sullivan and Caitriona McKiernan to talk about Ireland’s chances of winning an athletics medal at this month’s Olympics. They spoke about their own careers, the fact that they had rarely crossed paths and then mentioned a couple of names that had the potential of doing well. Like in the previous interview, they had very little of interest to say. A TV reviewer’s lot is often not a happy one.

Next up was Leo Sayer, who was one of the most monotonous singers of the 1970s, who was only on the show because he was trying to promote a concert he was having in Dublin. He sang one of those forgettable songs that he is famous for and then it was on to the final guest of the night, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein.

In fairness to Miriam, she went on the attack every so often – something that Tubridy would never even contemplate because he would be just thankful to have a guest – and McGuinness fought back in typical Sinn Fein fashion by blaming everyone else but themselves. It had that predictable vein to it.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.