The More You’re Praised, the More Anxious You Should Become

We are always giving out about RTE, the State of Us was dire, Fair City risible, and Killinascully is a vacuous black hole of comedy which has all the laughter sucked out.

But what about RTE’s election coverage? It was supposed to be the most extensive coverage ever and sure enough the RTE TV studio was a thoroughly modern looking giant bauble of navy blue plastic. And everyone, even addicts like Cian had to be satisfied with the up-to-minute news from the count centres.

Last night, however, RTE Radio 1 aired a great documentary, which I think provided one of the most insightful views of the recent election.

You may have heard of ‘Patricia, Mary and Mary-Lou Too’, as it was mentioned on Morning Ireland yesterday. It’s got a lot of attention because it reveals just how pissed off Mary Fitzpatrick, the Fianna Fail candidate who failed to get in Dublin North Central is with Bertie and Cyprian Brady, the candidate who got only 939 first preference votes compared to Mary’s 1725. Yet Cyprian was elected after the ninth count.

‘Bertie shafted her’, said those in Mary’s camp, on the day of the count. The reason they said, was the 4am letter sent from St. Luke’s, Bertie’s constituency office, on the morning of the count.

The canvasser for Mary reads out the letter, which was sent to 30,000 houses between 4 am and 7am on the morning of the election as a reaction to Mary Fitzpatrick’s flyer asking for a first preference vote. Mary bitterly complains that there is a big difference between a flyer, which she only sent around houses in her area and which is the same as her other campaign material, and a letter from the Taoiseach sent to the entire constituency. Cyprian said that when she sent out the flyer she had set in motion a train that she couldn’t stop.

But there is a lot more to the documentary. Following around Mary-Lou McDonald provides an interesting view of the Sinn Fein campaign.

At one point when talking about the three female candidates vying for votes in his old constituency, Nicky Keogh - who lost out to Mary Fitzgerald’s father by 90 votes in 2002 - says Mary-Lou was the best looking of the lot. What a charmer. This, by the way, was to avoid the question about why he decided not to stand in the constituency despite being so close last time.

Patricia McKenna, on the perils of canvassing in an area with lots of non-national residents says: “Some of the non-nationals look very Irish and I’ve noticed that when you come up to them, you can see it in their eyes, their eyes look very confused. So when I say ‘are you voting in the election?’ (in a loud voice_ they go ‘shdshdsdsdh’, they start speaking in Polish!’.

At a Fianna Fail election rally, the narrator describes the smell as everyone pushes to get close to Bertie: “there was a mixture of last nights booze and expensive aftershave”.

Towards the end of the documentary Mary Fitzgerald said: “I never thought they were the legion of Mary….but I never expected them to shaft me.”

But perhaps the most evocative part was at the end. Earlier in the count, the documentary maker is not allowed to talk to Mary Lou when its obvious that her votes are well down on what they’d expected.

However, at 12:25 am, Nicky and the rest of the Cabra men disappear. Gerry Adams, who came into the count with Mary Lou and brace of photographers is long gone.

Mary Lou is standing alone and the documentary maker approaches her asks, “what will you do now?”

Mary -Lou says simply, “I haven’t made up my mind. I’ll probably head off….”

To download the podcast of the show click this link to listen to it in your newsreader or get it from iTunes.

Alternatively you can listen to the whole thing on Dublin Opinion.