WEDNESDAY'S massacre in Scotland changed the context completely. That night, BBC's Modern Times series screened a much hyped and controversial fly on the wall documentary, sarcastically titled Quality Time. It was about the relationships (or lack of them) between working mothers and their young children. But the day's news bulletins made it all seem, somehow, superfluous and true peripheral, really.
It wasn't, of course. (By some accounts, Thomas Hamilton's relationship with his mother wasn't, perhaps crucially, all it should have been.) But, because of the slaughter in Dunblane the otherwise valid sarcasm of producer Lynn Alleway's film was reduced to seeming like little more than self indulgent smugness. It is a stark day indeed when just to have children not murdered seems like a bonus.
Anyway, the middle class mammies featured - Janis, Caroline and Dominique - were, surely, working mothers from hell. They can't possibly have been representative of normal working women. Janis was captioned a "Beauty PR Consultant", which was puzzling. Did it mean (even without a comma between Beauty and PR)
that she was a beautiful PR consultant, or a consultant for beauty PR (unhyphenated), whatever beauty PR might be? Janis was separated and had a daughter, Blair (18 months), and a nanny, Carrie, who really was given every excuse to live up to the film of the same name.
Caroline, married to Geoffrey was captioned "Fashion and Beauty PR". They have two daughters and employed a temporary, backpacking, Australian nanny. It was clear that Caroline a dry sort, though that Geoffrey was Kensington's answer to Oscar Wilde. What's the classic thing that Geoffrey said? Oh yeah, "the worst thing about nannies is that you need them". That's marvellous, Geoff. Great. What wit, eh? "The worst thing about nannies is that you need them." Classic, indeed.
Then there was Dominique, the evening's star turn. Dominique, married to Tony, is seriously rich. Their house is about the size of Busaras, its garages capable, at a pinch, of housing Dublin Bus's fleet. Dominique and Tony have two daughters, Steffie and Natasha, and four nannies: two for weekdays and two for weekends. In spite of all her money, Dominique could do with the services of a fashion and beauty PR. She wore the minutest of mini dresses and power suit skirts and, in all fairness, she looked like she's getting a bit hardy for these outfits.
Dominique works as much as 85 hours a week. When she, her husband, children, a nanny and a cook went to Barbados on holidays, she spent most of her time topless on the beach, braying into a mobile phone. "I'm lying here topless". It was easy to dislike these women. In fact, it was almost impossible not to. But the day's news made them seem more pathetic than contemptible.
Janis, Caroline and Dominique did not like their children's nannies. In one scene in an expensive London restaurant, they griped about the extortionate £140 a week they have to pay for 24 hour a day care. The meal they were eating probably cost more. Janis freaked about Carrie "using too much Dettox and not washing the cuddly toys once a week". It sounded like the script for Absolutely Fabulous being played for horror instead of for laughs.
The nannies, labouring away in dreadful designer nurseries straight from the Sunday supplements, didn't care much for their employers either. But, fearing for their jobs, they understandably felt much more restrained. Still, Carrie, sick of Janis, finally broke. "I'm not taking her crap any more," she said. You couldn't blame her. The children had little to say in all of this. The little girls, dressed in hideous, expensive flouncy frocks (Dominique, clothes manufacturer, extended her own acute taste in dress to her children) cried quite a bit.
And that was it, really. Working women and their children is a prickly subject at the best of times. But these three vixens were not representative. After all, this trio (who agreed to make prats of themselves on TV) consisted of two pushy PR types and a very wealthy exhibitionist. It was never said, but it was hard not to suspect that at least Janis and Dominique were more than a little put out by their nannies youth.
BACK on RTE, it was hard not to be reminded of Brendan O'Brien's youth or, at least, of O'Brien 13 years younger than he is today. In 1983, he made a couple of well received programmes on drugs in Dublin. It was during the first "heroin epidemic", when the inner city, Dublin 8 and parts of Dun Laoghaire started mainlining.
Many of the poorer parts of Dublin are suffering as badly as ever from heroin abuse. But the real growth areas appear to be in cannabis and Ecstasy. Judging by the bales of dope shown in Prime Time's gratingly titled The Land Of Milk And Hash, almost every man, woman, child, beast of burden and domestic pet must be skinning up in Ireland these days. When pets are named "Rizla", you know something's up.
Cannabis, once spoken of in grammes and ounces, was being talked about in tonnes. It could have been cement, or barley wheat. If I got the maths right, it seems that a tonne of cannabis can be had for about £10 million. Even though a lot of hash just passes through Ireland, there's got to be a huge number of people smoking it in this country too. Certainly, on the evidence of this programme, it seemed that quite a few Cork pubs were dealing more drugs than drink.
It was in Cork that Brendan got to do his filmed confrontations. This too rolled back the years. Who could forget Brendan trailing after the anoraked figure of a man said to be The General? Well, he was at it with the anoraked figure of a man said to be "a member of a leading Cork criminal family". (The man was fishing by the Lee which, bizarrely perhaps, prompted thoughts of "Help! Help! My son, John, the leading criminal, has fallen in the river.")
In fairness, there was some fine reporting in this extended special. Prime Time had spent three months investigating drugs in Ireland and did manage to dig up home videos and interviews which were valuable. But, at times, a morass of detail on specific incidents and individuals obscured the big picture and left the programme unbalanced. Of course, in investigative journalism, you go with what you've got.
But there were too many unanswered questions, principal among which are. (1) Why are so many Irish people smoking cannabis? (2) What problems is it causing or exacerbating? (3) What is the most sensible - as opposed to the most political or hysterical thing to do about it? Law and law enforcement can only do so much Education can do much more, but it is clear that, in the case of the "softer" drugs, tens of thousands of people find their experience at odds with the official advice preferred. They must, or they wouldn't be smoking dope by the tonne.
LIKE Prime Time, Nationwide screened a special this week. It marked the anniversary of the release of the Birmingham Six, and though it gained access to just four of the six, it had a tale to tell. Not surprisingly, life on the outside has been quite tough for them. Perhaps the most telling remark came from Richard McIlkenny, the only one of the six whose marriage survived his imprisonment and release.
"You have to totally forget about the Birmingham Six and all that rubbish," he said. Undoubtedly, you do, for a label is never quite the same as an identity. Even The Beatles have spoken about needing to see themselves as people rather than as Beatles. But it takes time. The families of the released men had very different ideas about connections, responsibilities and suffering than had the men themselves.
Johnny Walker, 61 now, is living in Donegal with a young Finnish wife. He's a father again too but doesn't see his first family, on, he said, their wishes. Paddy Hill continues to vibrate with anger. Even if he's justified, it can't be good for him. After screaming rows, he too has split with his family. He has a partner, Alison. He admits that great patience is demanded of her.
Gerry Hunter, though he has separated from his wife, maintains a close relationship with his family. Neither Billy Power nor Hugh Callaghan, at 66, the oldest of the men, agreed to be interviewed. None of the six have received full compensation vet.
Updates like Nationwide's risk becoming a cross between Hello journalism and a polemic a sort of fluff n politics mix. My suspicion is that the lives of most of the Birmingham Six are even bleaker than this programme indicated. Still, it was well worth doing in an Ireland often embarrassed by stories that don't fit the "thriving country" propaganda.
BLEAK lives have long been considered a virtue for young males. A Man's World screened an episode titled Rites Of Passage. It focused on the tyrannical harshness of life for working class males during the first half of this century. The better off were subjected to an almost equally cruel designer version in their public schools. "They were building the leaders of empire," said one old, gay bloke, his eyes drifting to heaven with more than a hint of disdain.
Initiation rites designed to mark the passage from boyhood to adulthood have always been a bit grim. In different cultures, young blokes have to kill wild animals or recite their bar mitzvah or have their heads stuck down toilets in a ceremony known as "bogging". There's something not quite romantic about that toilet rite. But, apparently, it was widespread and possibly still is.
Not that it ended there either. Not likely. After having your head flushed in a toilet, there was sex to be considered. Not immediately afterwards, of course, but in the same few years, like. Oh, it was rough going all right toilet duckings, handing up wage packets and chasing sex. But men were men then. They had serious sperm counts and tackle befitting the mechanical age none of the micro chip nonsense of young lads today.
A Man's World is described as "an oral history", a form which can work well (People's Century, for instance) but probably needs more contributors than have been used so far in this series. Still, it was (along with Cursai's discerning reporting from New York during Seachtainna Gaeilge) one of the highlights in a profoundly depressing and barbarous week.