RTEÕs big fish find life more palatable in smaller pond
Date Published: {J}
They were the Crockett and Tubbs of the RTE newsroom, the Starksy and Hutch of banking exposés – and then Charlie Bird and George Lee flew the Donnybrook nest for bigger and better things.
We were bereft, robbed of the Batman and Robin who gallantly saved this Gotham City from the bad boys of the banking world.
One set sail across the Atlantic to a lonely apartment and a TV dinner for one; the other had looked his children in the eye and told them that he had to save the western world so that they’d have an Ireland to be proud of when they grew up.
But now, in what seems like the blink of an eye since they flew the coop, both of them are coming home; Charlie on foot of a very public confession of loneliness and isolation and George after he realised that you cannot change the world in nine months after all.
It only seems a wet week ago that the duo were on radio for ‘Miriam Meets....’ with Miriam O’Callaghan of a Sunday morning – a programme where two guests united by ‘love, life or family ties’ come on talk about their relationship.
Once can only presume that life was their shared bond – but both of them seemed happy to have moved on with both their work and their lives, reflecting almost wistfully on the National Irish Bank scandal and other such affairs.
How little we knew as we listened – because a short few weeks later, both are doing their impression of homing pigeons (ironic given that one is a Bird by birth) and heading back to the place they know best.But in doing so, they have presented RTE management with a job of work to do before restoring their campaigning correspondents to the frontline.
George Lee clearly cannot slot back into his role as an economic analyst because anything he says will be tainted by his raison d’etre for entering politics in the first place – to help get the current Coalition out of Government.
No doubt one of the daily or Sunday papers will come bearing a large and open cheque book to secure his services if he decides against taking up his option on re-employment in the corridors of RTE.Charlie, on the other hand, looks likely to get his old chair as Chief News Correspondent back...unless he decides to stand for George’s old seat in Dublin South.
Perhaps a straight switch would work best for both; Fine Gael would have another bird on the frontbench and George ‘Washington’ Lee has a nice ring to it as well.
The biggest problem for the dynamic duo was that they enjoyed being big fish in a small pond more than they realised.
George’s pronouncements on the economy carried a lot more weight as a reporter than they do coming from an opposition backbencher. As Willie O’Dea opined, George was like a bidet - lovely to have one but untimately leaving you puzzled as to quite what to do with it.
And back home, Charlie liked when they chanted his name during protest marches. He was the man with the mobile that was never switched off, the man who had a divine right to shout up the first question at every visiting dignitary.
But in the US – if his documentary series was correct – he had been forced to leap on passing strangers asking them for a kiss in order to get attention.
George and Charlie were treated with a degree of reverence and respect within the corridors of RTE that could never be replicated in the outside world.
Without that almost infallible standing, they turned out to have the same feet of clay as the rest of us – and they didn’t like it.
Just how much damage their volte face has inflicted remains to be seen; but clearly, Enda Kenny has taken a body-blow at a time when the polls are beginning to just edge back a fraction towards Fianna Fail anyway.
And RTE is left with egg on its face after Charlie found out that he’s really a home-bird after all.
For more, read page 15 of this week's Connacht Tribune.