'Late Late' guest list leaves the fifth cousin fuming

TV VIEW:PITY THE folk who had the task of choosing who to invite to the Late Late Show's celebration of the GAA's 125th anniversary, a minefield of a job akin to deciding who to summon - and not to summon — to a family wedding.

You know yourself, the fifth cousin (twice removed) from Drumshanbo is accidentally omitted from the list and so starts a savage feud with the entire Leitrim wing of the family, the rest of whom snub the nuptials in protest at the fifth cousin (twice removed) not being invited.

Barack Obama is, doubtless, going through a similar ordeal as he finalises his inauguration invitation list. If he forgets his Moneygall relations, for example, he'll have Offaly boycotting the White House for the next four years.

Apart, maybe, from the Taoiseach and his bowl of Shamrock on St Patrick's Day.

For that reason we studied the faces in the Late Late audience on Friday night in an attempt to spot the notable absentees and anticipate the ensuing uproar that would inevitably roar up, but the mix seemed, to us at least, to be reasonable enough.

But then you talk to your sixth cousin, Charlie from Crossmaglen, and he asks: "DO RTÉ THINK ONLY DUBLIN AND KERRY PLAYED GAELIC FOOTBALL FOR THE LAST 125 YEARS, THAT ARMAGH (and the minor counties) WERE FLOWER-ARRANGING ALL THAT TIME?!?!"

Well, that's harsh. Barely any Dublin/Kerry people were spoken to - apart from Pat Spillane, Mick O'Dwyer, Jack O'Shea, Páidí Ó Sé, Kevin Moran, Kevin Heffernan, Jimmy Keaveney and a few others - and any GAA celebration that didn't include chats with, say, Pat Spillane, Mick O'Dwyer, Jack O'Shea, Páidí Ó Sé, Kevin Moran, Kevin Heffernan, Jimmy Keaveney and a few others, would have been silly.

And then you have a chat with your seventh cousin, Christy from Cloyne, and he asks: "DO RTÉ THINK KILKENNY WON 125 ALL-IRELAND HURLING TITLES, THAT CORK (and the minor counties) WERE CROCHETING ALL THAT TIME?!?!"

But, you ask Christy, have Kilkenny not won 125 All-Ireland hurling titles?

"NO," he says, "it just feels that bloody way."

That's the thing; RTÉ, bless them, can't really win on occasions like this, short of staging the show in Croke Park, thus allowing them to issue 82,300 invitations, allowing room for three or four non-Dublin/Kerry/Kilkenny GAA legends. As Abraham Lincoln almost said, "you can please all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can't please all the people all the time".

It was, though, lovely to see women's Gaelic football and camogie get one mention in the show in the form of a rib-tickler about all those who participate in the codes being lesbians. Cutting edge comedy! Well done.

But apart from all that, what can be bad about a stream of video snippets of the very loveliest moments of GAA history and interviews with some of the people who helped create them? Nothing at all.

Heffernan, who looks younger now than he did in the 1970s, recalled asking the then Manchester United manager Dave Sexton for permission to play Kevin Moran in the 1978 All-Ireland final. He agreed.

"And first of all Kevin pulled a hamstring the Thursday before the final, then he had a collision during the match and had about six stitches across his forehead. We sent him back to Man United in bits with a note to tell them: 'this is the way real men play'." Sweet.

Henry Shefflin, meanwhile, played down Eamon Dunphy's attempt to compare him with Cristiano Ronaldo, pointing out that he didn't own a Ferrari.

Ronaldo, of course, didn't own a functioning Ferrari after last week's mishap in a Manchester tunnel, which reduced him to having to drive a Bentley to work next day.

"Last season I did brilliant, Cristiano is coming better and better," he told Sky Sports yesterday - Ronaldo that is, not Henry Shefflin - ahead of the game against Chelsea.

We couldn't but think of the Scottish cyclist Chris Hoy.

"Chris Hoy thinks that the day Chris Hoy refers to Chris Hoy in the third person is the day that Chris Hoy disappears up his own arse," he said after winning his Olympic gold medals. Little wonder he was knighted, top man.

Any way, United beat Chelsea 5-0, if you include - which, morally, you should - the two good goals that were ruled out, a result that put Alex Ferguson in a magnanimous mood after the game. Rafa Benitez? No hard feelings.

"I think you've got to cut through the venom of it and hopefully he will reflect and understand that what he was saying was absolooly, well, it was ridiculous," he told Sky.

"But I think he was an angry man, I think he was disturbed for some reason or another, that's all I've got to say about it."

That was nice. Best of friends again. Football's "Respect" campaign is, evidently, thriving.