Norton shows Tubridy how to do light entertainment

Lengthy discussions about suicide, rural crime and people contracting life threatening diseases are normally reserved for current affairs or other similar discussion-type programmes but certainly not on a Friday night when a little bit of levity is required.

Having picked out every bit of horse meat out of my burgers during the week and come to the conclusion that all is not well within the Labour Party, it would only be safe to expect that Friday night television would take one away from the issues of the day.

At one stage I switched over to the BBC where Graham Norton was treating his audience to belly laughs such was the fun he was extracting from his guests which included a normally staid Denzel Washington, comedian Bill Bailey and actor Nicholas Hoult of X-Men fame, who was the young lad in About A Boy starring Hugh Grant.

While they were having a great time, Ryan Tubridy was chatting to a chap who went on his honeymoon, didn’t feel particularly well and when he came back he was diagnosed with having multiple sclerosis. He spoke about how he was dealing with his condition and one’s heart went out to him.

The audience and viewers were then treated to around a half and hour’s discussion on rural break-ins. A woman from Castlebar spoke about having been attacked in her own home while a couple of do-gooders outlined a number of crime prevention methods they were enforcing in their communities.

Again, one had to feel sympathy for the victim of crime but this is a discussion that should be taking place elsewhere and not on The Late Late Show on a Friday night. The contentious issue of rural crime has already been debated on nearly every local newspaper and radio station at this stage.

But suddenly it occupies a major chunk of a TV chat show which is supposed to provide light entertainment to its audience. There is a time and a place but this was neither the time nor the place for this type of discussion.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.