There is a catsuit clad woman wandering around a television set in RTE. She wears what used to be known as kinky boots and has strips of velcro attached to her slender limbs. Ask her what she does besides blow kisses at the camera during crucial parts of a TV programme called 2Phat and she says; "Nothing - being Velcro Girl is a full-time job".
She has a point. With just the second season of 2Phat (also featuring Ray D'Arcy and Zig and Zag) recently underway, Velcro Girl has caught the imagination of every Irish male with a pulse. When she walks into pubs these days her signature tune is sung at her. Sometimes the Doo, Doo, Doo, Doo, Doo, Doo won't stop until she blows the entire pub a kiss.
Velcro Girl ("she's a lady in black, she has a sticky back") is the woman Zig and Zag would have as a girlfriend if they weren't furry aliens. Like the taxi driver Tom Zogly, Uncle Fred, Reverend Groove and the pot bellied pig she is also one of a plethora of comic creations invented by Ray and the boys from Zog. All of them elevate 2Phat from the mundanity of just another half hour slot aimed at an audience, the tricky 15-24 group, whom RTE are more used to alienating than attracting.
The concept of 2Phat is simple: 15 like-minded school-friends make up the studio audience all of whom are attempting to win the impressively shiny scooter that is up for grabs during each programme. Essentially they are there to answer pop trivia, dance, often very, very badly it must be said, and to be wholly slagged by the three presenters. When they walk onto the 2Phat set D'Arcy - who you will remember from such programmes as The Den and Blackboard Jungle - puts them immediately at their ease. The Phat Family dance, which involves the pelvis gyrating in one direction and the upper torso moving in the other, is practised. Ray asks the group from Dromard, Co Longford, to make sure their mobile phones are switched off during taping. "We don't have mobile phones," one of them points out, "we're from Longford.".
There is an ooer reference to the soundgirl Louise, who Ray says has a pole that she can make bigger. Ray slags one audience member for giving another one love bites. Red faces all round. It's time for the show.
Today's programme is something of a career revival for the Zig and Zag of yesteryear. The Judge from Wanderley Wagon has gone all hip and is barking on about how he is now into something called Belgian ambient house music. There is even a rendition of the Green Cross Code by a particularly giggly member of the Phat Family.
In between all this, pop music questions are posed, Velcro Girl does her thing, DJ Lee spins disks and nobody wins the scooter. Again. Last season, 15 of them were won but so far this season nobody has managed to answer the hard music question that will see them zooming away on a pile of yellow chrome. So, callous cries of "Get Off The Bike" greet another scooterless contestant as the programme comes to an end.
Ray D'Arcy, refreshingly egoless and on television as long as any of the teenage Phat family can remember, is a large part of the reason why 200,000 people tune in to 2Phat. In addition to it's main target audience it's fans come from all groups - mothers ("why can't you meet a nice guy like that Ray?"), students ("it's cool roysh?) and thirtysomething males ("Velcro Girl, phwooargh!"). D'arcy also edits the programme and is responsible for much of the content.
One of the biggest laughs to be had from Irish television came a couple of weeks ago on 2Phat when D'Arcy donned leather trousers and revealed a surprisingly hairy chest to do a salsa dancing routine. Another programme saw him dress up as Austin Powers and parade around a shopping centre saying "Yeah, baby, Yeah".
Entering what for him is the rather uncharted territory of solo comedy routines, he leaves himself open to accusations that, having left small kids TV behind, he is now trying too hard to mix it with the big kids. But that could be missing the irony - part of D'arcy's appeal in the superficial land of TV presenters is that what you see is what you get. Even better, the man could laugh at himself for Ireland.
After the show is taped he chats for a while about the future and admits that he has been thinking of getting out of television. And into? "Business," is all he will say.
2Phat is likely to go ahead for another season and after that he is vague about what is ahead. So, you try again. "What kind of business?" He just smiles and doesn't answer. Time to Get Off the Bike.
2Phat is on Network 2 on Monday and Friday 7pm