TV VIEW:We'll have to wait until Stamford Bridge to be enthralled by Barca's beautiful game, writes MARY HANNIGAN

WHAT EXACTLY is beauty? The strict dictionary definition is a “combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses”. But is beauty, as they never stop repeating, merely in the eye of the beholder? Can it be judged objectively? Can one person see something exquisite, while another sees the back of a bus?

And is beauty necessarily a good thing? As former Accrington Stanley boss Leo Tolstoy once put it, after a particularly heavy defeat to Dagenham and Redbridge, “it is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness”.

“Well, it takes all sorts, Bill,” said John Giles, shifting a bit uncomfortably in his seat as this highly philosophical, but delightfully beautiful, debate filled RTÉ’s build-up to the clash of Barcelona and Chelsea last night.

It’s not that Gilesie is averse to beauty – he, after all, observes a Paul Scholes’ through ball and his heart beats a little faster – but he’s never entirely at ease when Bill (of the O’Herlihy parish) introduces these fluffy themes to a pre-match chat.

Bill kicked it off by telling Gilesie that Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola had said: “This game is our best chance to show the world our style, we will be trying to seduce people with our type of play.”

“Ah Jaysus,” said Gilesie’s face, because much as he might admire Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi and Samuel Eto’o, he’s not seduced by any or all of them. Not now, not ever.

“Well it sounds very good, Bill, it’s very romantic,” he sighed, before Eamon (the Dunphy man) threw a dozen roses in to the mix. Eamon, it should be known, takes one look at Barcelona and purrs: “Last night I looked up into the stars and matched each one with a reason why I love you – I was doing great until I ran out of stars.”

A victory for Barca, said Eamon, “would reassert the value of the beautiful game”. Gilesie scratched his head, by now beginning to wonder if he’d taken a wrong turn and ended up with Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show in a discussion about Byron and the like. All he really wanted to talk about was flat back fours, holding midfielders and the deficiencies of zonal marking.

“Beautiful is nice, but it needs to be effective,” he said, a declaration supported by Graeme Souness, tanned to the point of looking like a Crunchie bar. “Beautiful counts for nothing if Barcelona can’t defend properly,” he said, a statement that left Eamon in despair. Beautiful football, he said, “inspires people to play the game”. Even people like, say, Robbie Savage and Gilesie thought of the Spanish Baroque prose writer Baltasar Gracian y Morales (January 8th, 1601-December 6th, 1658) – God bless Wikipedia and those ‘search for handy quotes’ websites – and sort of suggested that “beauty and folly are generally companions”.

“There’s a difference between being attractive and beautiful, Bill, and being effective – and it’s all about effect, you have to defend well. And sometimes you’ve got to win ugly,” he said.

It was Bill’s turn to sigh, he didn’t want any ugliness last night, he wanted to be swept off his feet by Guardiola’s boys, as he had been promised.

Half-time. “It’s disappointing, isn’t it,” he said, remaining thoroughly unseduced. Gilesie tried to comfort him, telling him that Barca were “trying to do the right things”. “But if they did everything right, Bill, they’d be 6-0 at half-time.” Which is what Bill had been banking on. “You have to live with them, Bill, and believe in them.”

Okey doke, Bill was prepared to give them another 45 minutes to melt his heart.

Full-time. Bill saw no beauty in a scoreless draw. None. At all. “Guardiola didn’t seduce me with his beautiful game tonight. Did he seduce you,” he asked Gilesie. The answer was in the negative, Gilesie resisting the temptation to place a rose between his teeth as he launched into his analysis, but he insisted that he was “still quite confident” that beauty of Barca would slay the beast that is Chelsea in the second leg at Stamford Bridge.

Bill wasn’t so sure anymore.

“They’re nice on the eye, Bill,” said Souness, tenderly.

“They are,” he sighed.

“But you have to live with them, Bill,” added Gilesie, sensing Bill’s dejection. Not in the sense that Bill should share a villa with Thierry and Lionel, rather that once he’d exchanged vows with Barcelona he had to take the rough with the smooth, tolerate their shortcomings and revel in their loveliness. And trust that they’ll seduce him at Stamford Bridge.