'Gift Grub' radio team mark 10-year anniversary of dishing out the satire

TEN YEARS ago this week, the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM tried out a new comedy sketch called Gift Grub.

It was supposed to be a light-hearted take on a populist taoiseach Bertie Ahern cooking up a few of his own recipes.

"I thought we'd run out of ideas after three months," recalls the show's ever-present writer and performer Mario Rosenstock.

Gift Grub did its bit in cementing Bertie's reputation as a self-styled man-of-the-people with his pints of Bass, his love of "Man U" and his fruity choice of language, mostly notably his repeated use of the words "spanner" and "Jaysus".

Yesterday morning, the real former taoiseach rang up the show to congratulate the Gift Grub team on their 10th anniversary. He had not heard the programme in the early days, but "never got further than the corridor" of Government Buildings before somebody appraised him of its contents.

"It has been terrific fun. It was never vindictive. Not since Dermot Morgan and Scrap Saturday has there been a programme that has had such good satire," he said. The real Bertie confessed to using "Jaysus" once or twice, "but I shouldn't be taking the Lord's name", he said.

He attributed the comedy's success to the versatility of the sketches. "There was something in it for everybody. It was not just about politics."

Rosenstock said he was particularly proud that Gift Grub listeners picked 160 different sketches as their favourite. "I was just saying to Ian [ Dempsey] that it really lights up your day when you hear these stories of people laughing in cars and looking across to each other and they are both laughing at the same time."

Rosenstock singles out his encounter with the real Roy Keane and José Mourinho as two of his favourite highlights.

Mourinho was so impressed with Rosenstock's note-perfect mimicry, particularly on the single José Mourinho and his Amazing Technicolour Overcoat, that he invited Rosenstock to Chelsea. Rosenstock's Mourinho lives on as a puppet on Setanta Sports.

The Best of Gift Grub has become a perennial bestselling CD. Catchphrases such as Bertie Ahern's "spanner" and "all credit to" (as attributed to Roy Keane), along with Enda Kenny's "love of Lilt" are as well-known as anything the characters themselves do in real life. And Rosenstock conceded that he could be criticised for not being harder on the former taoiseach when he was in office.