2 October 1997 Edition
Television: Ar an taobh eile - The Far Side
By Sean O'Donaile
"In days of old when men were bold and mortgages weren't invented, we went far beyond our gardens!"
Or more accurately to the other side of the world - has your father ever told you he regretted never travelling and you promised not to do the same and took to the road, picking grapes in Spain, falling in love in Tokyo and hanging out with (getting in the way of) the Sandinistas.
Then as they say in "Trainspotting" you "choose a job, choose a career, choose a great big bloody washing machine and electrical tin openers..."
Your hair raising adventures living and drinking out of sweaty socks are over and you have to content yourself with "The National Geographic" or Michael Palin's Full Circle, BBC1, Sunday 8.00pm.
I was somewhat hesitant to watch Palin after his exploits in that dirge "A Fish Called Wanda" but he does present an interesting alternative to Union Jack boxer shorts spending two weeks on the beer in Majorca.
He is now three months into his year-long-round-the-Pacific Rim-jaunt and had just arrived in the Vietnamese City of Hanoi when he joined us, where American POWs were kept in the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' interrogation centre, which may soon revert to its original role as a pampering centre for Yankee tourists.
The Vietnamese have spent much of the last 50 years ejecting the French, Americans and Chinese, all successfully. The French, who departed in 1954, left the legacy of the guillotine which was in use until 1960 and a railway network since aptly renamed "The Re-Unification Express", which takes Palin from Hanoi to Saigon (Ho-Chi Minh City) via the South China Sea.
Palin takes us to 'The Purple City, where the Royal Family have long been given the boot as they were deemed to be Kings of the Past (take note Buckingham Palace!); up the Perfume river where women still wash their hair with old war helmets; down the River Meekong to the delta which increases the size of the country by 200ft every year; and to a Buddhist Monastery which houses the Austin car featured in the world famous photo of 1963 when a Buddhist monk burned himself to death in protest at their treatment by the authorities. Who remembers 1963?!
Reared on a diet of movies such as "Deerhunter" and "Platoon" I was all the while expecting to see some lunatic with a head band, bottle of whiskey and Yankee twang, jump from the bushes looking for "gooks", but I forget they got their asses kicked by the Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese are presented as a friendly but well informed people.
Their feats include the famous Coo-Chi tunnels, a 100 mile long maze of underground tunnels which housed hospitals and towns and up to 5,000 guerrilla fighters, and were used to such deadly effect against the Americans and could not be destroyed during 35 years of war.
The Vietnamese show "little resentment towards the war but maybe that's because they won it," Palin tells us.
Finally we're taken on to The Phillipines where we witness hand surgery, cock fighting (Monaghan style!), beauty contests and the horrible sight of Filipino women preparing to emigrate to Arab Oil states, where they will literally become slaves to fat sheikhs. Some of them will be abused and raped. Palin does not direct enough focus on the political angle or the glaring inequalities of this country and throughout there is no feeling of travelling 'on the edge' - help is always a phone call away from the Embassy. Still, a welcome change from 'Ibiza Uncovered'.
If one is looking for brain-dead TV, look no further than The Locksmith, BBC1, Wednesdays, with Warren Clarke and Irving Teetlybum. Roly. The middle aged locksmith spends his time taking life too seriously and fixing locks (obviously), which are broken by a 'smack head' in what looked like a Dublin jersey. Very predictably the two cross paths when the addict beats Roly's wife over the head with a crowbar leaving her in a coma. Roly spends the rest of his time crying, by which stage you've lost all sympathy and you can't see a thing because the baby has covered the TV screen in yoghurt.
There was more enlightened information to be gleaned by the brief Home Delivery on RTE Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany, where a doctor told us of delivering two babies for a woman and her daughter in a house in 1940's Dublin with no electricity, lit up only by passing traffic while the loyal hubby sits down the pub playing his 'role'.
Breast Cancer Awareness Week begins on 1 October on BBC Radio Ulster, and the line up includes Dee Kee whom many viewers may remember from her courageous appearance in the TV documentary 'A Woman In Twelve'.
Despite the frightening statistics which show Ireland with one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the world - 300 women die from it every year in the Six Counties alone - it is an issue which has never been properly grappled with.
Finally, it's good to see my journalistic colleague Eoghan Harris defending his old friends in the 'Official IRA' from slander on Peter Taylor's Provos. It's good to see Eoghan hasn't gone full circle, though that's not to say he hasn't gone round the twist!
If your ideal Irishman is Henry Mountcharles and you enjoy Enid Blyton written fantasies about MI5 then The Sunday Times is 'yer only man'.
"In days of old when men were bold and mortgages weren't invented, we went far beyond our gardens!"
Or more accurately to the other side of the world - has your father ever told you he regretted never travelling and you promised not to do the same and took to the road, picking grapes in Spain, falling in love in Tokyo and hanging out with (getting in the way of) the Sandinistas.
Then as they say in "Trainspotting" you "choose a job, choose a career, choose a great big bloody washing machine and electrical tin openers..."
Your hair raising adventures living and drinking out of sweaty socks are over and you have to content yourself with "The National Geographic" or Michael Palin's Full Circle, BBC1, Sunday 8.00pm.
I was somewhat hesitant to watch Palin after his exploits in that dirge "A Fish Called Wanda" but he does present an interesting alternative to Union Jack boxer shorts spending two weeks on the beer in Majorca.
He is now three months into his year-long-round-the-Pacific Rim-jaunt and had just arrived in the Vietnamese City of Hanoi when he joined us, where American POWs were kept in the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' interrogation centre, which may soon revert to its original role as a pampering centre for Yankee tourists.
The Vietnamese have spent much of the last 50 years ejecting the French, Americans and Chinese, all successfully. The French, who departed in 1954, left the legacy of the guillotine which was in use until 1960 and a railway network since aptly renamed "The Re-Unification Express", which takes Palin from Hanoi to Saigon (Ho-Chi Minh City) via the South China Sea.
Palin takes us to 'The Purple City, where the Royal Family have long been given the boot as they were deemed to be Kings of the Past (take note Buckingham Palace!); up the Perfume river where women still wash their hair with old war helmets; down the River Meekong to the delta which increases the size of the country by 200ft every year; and to a Buddhist Monastery which houses the Austin car featured in the world famous photo of 1963 when a Buddhist monk burned himself to death in protest at their treatment by the authorities. Who remembers 1963?!
Reared on a diet of movies such as "Deerhunter" and "Platoon" I was all the while expecting to see some lunatic with a head band, bottle of whiskey and Yankee twang, jump from the bushes looking for "gooks", but I forget they got their asses kicked by the Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese are presented as a friendly but well informed people.
Their feats include the famous Coo-Chi tunnels, a 100 mile long maze of underground tunnels which housed hospitals and towns and up to 5,000 guerrilla fighters, and were used to such deadly effect against the Americans and could not be destroyed during 35 years of war.
The Vietnamese show "little resentment towards the war but maybe that's because they won it," Palin tells us.
Finally we're taken on to The Phillipines where we witness hand surgery, cock fighting (Monaghan style!), beauty contests and the horrible sight of Filipino women preparing to emigrate to Arab Oil states, where they will literally become slaves to fat sheikhs. Some of them will be abused and raped. Palin does not direct enough focus on the political angle or the glaring inequalities of this country and throughout there is no feeling of travelling 'on the edge' - help is always a phone call away from the Embassy. Still, a welcome change from 'Ibiza Uncovered'.
If one is looking for brain-dead TV, look no further than The Locksmith, BBC1, Wednesdays, with Warren Clarke and Irving Teetlybum. Roly. The middle aged locksmith spends his time taking life too seriously and fixing locks (obviously), which are broken by a 'smack head' in what looked like a Dublin jersey. Very predictably the two cross paths when the addict beats Roly's wife over the head with a crowbar leaving her in a coma. Roly spends the rest of his time crying, by which stage you've lost all sympathy and you can't see a thing because the baby has covered the TV screen in yoghurt.
There was more enlightened information to be gleaned by the brief Home Delivery on RTE Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany, where a doctor told us of delivering two babies for a woman and her daughter in a house in 1940's Dublin with no electricity, lit up only by passing traffic while the loyal hubby sits down the pub playing his 'role'.
Breast Cancer Awareness Week begins on 1 October on BBC Radio Ulster, and the line up includes Dee Kee whom many viewers may remember from her courageous appearance in the TV documentary 'A Woman In Twelve'.
Despite the frightening statistics which show Ireland with one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the world - 300 women die from it every year in the Six Counties alone - it is an issue which has never been properly grappled with.
Finally, it's good to see my journalistic colleague Eoghan Harris defending his old friends in the 'Official IRA' from slander on Peter Taylor's Provos. It's good to see Eoghan hasn't gone full circle, though that's not to say he hasn't gone round the twist!
If your ideal Irishman is Henry Mountcharles and you enjoy Enid Blyton written fantasies about MI5 then The Sunday Times is 'yer only man'.