Late Late

By AM Saturday, February 13, 2010

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Arriving home from Dublin late in the day and tired to boot my idea of a relaxing end to the evening was hardly one of watching the Late Late Show which had earlier been billing an appearance by Gerry Adams as a significant feature. Watching Northern politicians waffle about the peace process might have some uses but as a means to keep awake it is pretty much redundant.

Listening to any of my former military leaders from the days when I was an IRA volunteer holding court on television is not something I have a penchant for. They never seem to say anything that would halt me in my tracks and cause me to think, ‘didn’t expect that.’ Nor are they ever able to announce the securing of anything remotely resembling the aims which the IRA promised to deliver while I was a member. So, as time passes, what leaders from my IRA days say does not send me scrambling for the paper or a TV remote control in the way that it once did. It makes absolutely no difference to anything whether I hear them or not.

I felt in advance of last evening’s chat show that there was nothing the Sinn Fein president would say that would shock or startle viewers. He was hardly going to reveal that he was the Provisional IRA’s chief of staff in 1977-78 or its Belfast commander in 1972-73. Secrets best left buried I suppose. Nor was he likely to announce a united Ireland for 2016. His colleague Martin McGuinness tried moving that ‘certain day’ forward to 2014 a year ago only to be scorned and sniggered at by the unionists. Try spinning that bollix to the electorate in the South and you are certain to be laughed back across the border. What it amounts to is simple: the Promised Land has been sent packing and in its place a greater public consideration of Brian Cowen’s more sober assessment that the country might be free from its economic woes by 2016. That is what taxes most people’s minds, not the endless peace process and nonsense about a united Ireland in 6 years time.

Still, tired as I was, I lay down on the settee wondering how Ryan Tubridy might handle the interview. He had demonstrated from the first Late Late show he hosted that while Brian Cowen might be Taoiseach of the country the Taoiseach of Late Late was Mr Tubridy and no other. He was hardly going to prove susceptible to the Adams ploy of bullying and hectoring. Nor would he allow his interviewee to drone on endlessly about the peace process. RTE can’t have the whole country sleeping during its big Friday night special.

All things considered, it had all the potential for no contest. Tubridy has always looked sharp and quick on his feet. Adams in recent years has seemed cumbersome and jaded, repeating the same old mantras, searching out some scapegoat onto whom his woes can be pinned. Moreover, I was of the view that his major Irish News interview alongside his slot on the Tubridy wheel was not coincidental. Both may have been timed to draw the sting from the upcoming book on IRA matters by the distinguished journalist Ed Moloney. What has filtered out from the book thus far seems to have frightened the Sinn Fein horses. If so, Adams rushed his fences and shot his wad too soon. The much anticipated book has not been released to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Brendan Hughes, the late Provisional IRA leader, whose testimony is said to form a crucial part of the Moloney story. When the book does come Adams will not have the same opportunities to defang it.

In all then the Late Late promised to be something to stay up for, no contest or otherwise. Yet the willpower deserted me. Not long after Samuel L Jackson appeared I drifted off. My wife, maybe not expecting a handsome enough Valentine’s treat, shook me from my slumber to tell me ‘it’ was on. ‘It’ indeed; through bleary peepers what ambled across the screen in front of me seemed like something from a Stephen King novel. Was it really Harold Shipman back from the grave beaming out from our screen? While relieved to realise that my eyes were focussing in on Gerry I could hardly feign joyousness at the knowledge that here was someone with even more accomplishments than Harold.

So how did it go? It was not one of the Sinn Fein president’s worst performances. He keeps them for election time down here. Yet he will get no bounce whatsoever out of it. Tubridy gave him little space to promote himself. Rapid fire questions which produced only banal responses prevented Adams taking control of the interview. His one attempt, when he made reference to the republican anti-Treaty credentials of Tubridy’s grandfather, quickly saw the initiative snatched away from him by the Late Late host’s fleetness of foot. The moment had passed and the opportunity was lost. Where other interviewers have let go off the reins when confronted by Adams ‘whataboutery’ Tubridy tightened his grip and cleared the fence.

Most things, even his evasions on the issue of his brother Liam’s inexcusable behaviour, might not have caused Adams any credibility problems. Tubridy for whatever reason chose not to press him hard enough. It was the silly old prevarication on the question of IRA membership that has disembowelled him time after time, which saw him limp out of the studio. If Tubridy failed to experience a Paxman moment when Adams denied ever having been a member of the organisation he once led as chief of staff, then many others registered it for him. Urban myth or not, Paxman is reported to have famously said that a thought that often crosses his mind when interviewing politicians is ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me.’

The answer is in the question.