This week a TV soap opera presented a clear case of art imitating life. Down on Coronation Street the level of PMPA (PreMillennium Party Apathy) could be measured by hardly anyone having turned up for poor Roy's meeting to discuss how the Weatherfield residents would celebrate the event.
Not to be outdone, Fair City also has a millennium storyline, and this week one of its characters held forth on the concept surrounding a new kind of PMT, or Pre-Millennium Tension.
But the best 2000 acronym is known simply as MS which, of course, stands for Millennium Shmillennium. A bit of a tongue-twister, but really effective for use by shopkeepers who, come January 1st, have not managed to shift all the tacky produce emblazoned with 2000 logos (champagne holders, napkins, candles etc) and already paid for in gleeful anticipation of all that FMF (Fin de Millennium Fever).
As we hurtle towards this momentous, historic, etc occasion, the hype is fading faster than the digits on The Time in the Slime. It started a couple of months ago with the news that travel agents were lowering their prices on millennium holiday packages because nobody wanted to go skiing in the Himalayas for New Year's Eve.
It has emerged that another group who thought they would make a financial killing, that once-benign baby-sitting sector, has discovered that people are not willing to fork out a figure equivalent to the debt of a small Third World country to get sloshed without a guilty conscience.
Susan Dunne of the Belgrave Agency in Dun Laoghaire admitted that the rush for millennium babysitters had not quite been what was expected. "It has quietened down. A lot of people seem not to be going out, or bringing their children to friend's houses . . . We were charging £50 an hour, but the rate is more like £35 now," she said.
The most profitable booking the agency has received is from a well-known actor in London who is paying one lucky woman £700 to mind his two children for the evening of December 31st.
Vivienne Ledder, administrator of the National Childminding Association, said the organisation had printed leaflets for their members advertising millennium babysitting packages. "They were expecting a free-for-all, which hasn't happened," she said.
Millennium myth-shattering is happening everywhere. This week the Master of Holles Street Hospital revealed shocking news which suggested that women all over the country had not, in fact, spent from mid-March onward attempting to conceive millennium babies to hawk around as some kind of walking, talking, turn-of-the-century souvenir.
The average number of babies expected to be born at the hospital over the New Year period is down from 20 per day to about 14. Mr Keane said he knows of at least two women who are desperately hoping their babies are not born on December 31st. "Who wants to be in hospital on New Year's Eve?" he sensibly asked.
Some airlines have been hit by this welcome outbreak of millenniumitis. A spokeswoman for Aer Lingus said a flight scheduled to leave New York on the evening of the 31st, arriving in Dublin on the morning of the 1st, had been cancelled due to lack of interest. Only 16 people wanted to be airborne for the occasion, even if the aircraft are Y2K-compatible.
In New York, one of the most prestigious parties failed to attract enough punters to make it financially viable. Celebration 2000, to be held in Manhattan's Javits Centre, promised Andrea Bocelli, Sting, Enrique Iglesias and Tom Jones, with tickets costing between $1,000 and $2,500. Those who bought tickets will get a refund, and the organisers are hoping to hold a scaled-down version, a ticket for which can be had for a mere $75.
At home, many hotels, night-clubs and restaurants are not even bothering to hold celebrations. The Conrad International Hotel usually hosts a black-tie ball on New Year's Eve, but the cost put the general manager, Michael Governey, off.
"The hire price of the band would normally be £1,500, but this year they managed to get £5,000 from someone to perform on the night. This would have put a massive increase on the price of the ticket for essentially the same product," he said.
Anecdotal evidence suggests more people than the numbers anticipated by those with pound signs in their eyes will party at home on December 31st. And perhaps the only sector that may live up to millennium hype is the family planning centres.
The Irish Family Planning Association centre in Cathal Brugha Street is expecting the celebrations to increase the need for its services, and will have a doctor on duty to administer emergency contraceptives on January 1st. So there is absolutely no need to PLIN (Panic Like It's 1999).
