“You should be in Make-Up about an hour ahead”

Visits to RTE tend to be rare occurances for me. The last time I was there, Pat Kenny tripped over the mat in the front door and went in to a paroxym of rage. A few minutes later an assistant came down with a doleful looking man with a toolbelt and had him move the circular mat 90 degrees.

No such flooring excitement today. For one thing the front door is still bashed in from when your man made his protest for road safety by crashing his car into it.

Instead I was invited to appear, with Sinead Gleeson and Una Mullally, on Seoige and O’Shea.

A thankfully imperfect copy can be seen here courtesy of RedMum.

Feedback afterwards was generally good, and I feel it was a fine performance by all. Drawbacks centre around the text messages asking if I had been tangoed, and the unhappy discovery that the camera angle might have been perfectly chosen to highlight my lack of a well defined jaw-line. Checking my stats at the end of the night, I see there was a spike of some 20 extra visitors to tuppenceworth after the show. I’d like to welcome you all and invite you to take a good look around.

The site with the videos I was talking about is VoteTube.org.

13 Comments

  • Good stuff Simon, you were very articulate and I could TOTALLY see your jaw-line, no worries.

  • fústar says:

    I’ve never been to RTÉ (being a “culchie”) but would dearly love to have witnessed the mat-tripping, Pat Kenny incident. I’d have offered to buy said mat on the spot. If it makes a habit of upsetting Mr. Kenny it probably has a lot going for it.

  • Simon McGarr says:

    I hadn’t considered that his fury might have been caused by tripping on the mat every day. I imagine it being rotated by 90 degrees every time, either as an arcane punishment or an attempt to rearrange the offending seams into a safer alignment. It would explain the fatalism of the handyman.

  • redmum says:

    Imperfect! Well really

    🙂

  • Simon McGarr says:

    The homespun charm of the taped telly is the saving of me. Nobody wishes to have a perfect replica of themselves available to posterity. So I thank you for not having some kind of digital gubbins that would snatch the signal straight from the telly and press me like a flower between its mighty processing leaves.

  • chekov says:

    Can’t resist commenting on this. Three things.

    * I’ve never seen a you-tube that was videod off the telly before – brilliant. Hand-held too; holding it that steady for 10 minutes must have taken some dedication.

    * All three of you did a very good job of explaining the blog thing. For all the hard time that they get, I thought the presenters also showed a pretty good awareness and asked intelligent questions.

    * Finally, Simon looks completely different to the mental image I had of him (whatever that was – I just know I didn’t expect him to look like that!) That’s one of the things I like about blogs – they challenge your pre-conceptions.

  • Simon McGarr says:

    Don’t worry Chekov, your original mental image was correct. Like Wurzel Gummidge, I have a number of different heads for different circumstances.

    Sadly my ‘TV’ head had fallen down the back of my desk at work and I had to make do with my ‘Eating Pies’ head.

  • Celtictigger says:

    Nicely done. You danced around the Paperround without actually mentioning it – I smelled a potential teddy-bear ambush (remember when Seoige did real news?)… and you look exactly as I pictured you – right down to the distressed tie.

    Well done to REdmum for capturing this in a refreshing “blue peter meets magyver” homespun way.

  • Simon McGarr says:

    Damn that tie. I had it on perfectly when I left make-up. Then I had a moment when I thought the open necked look would be more suitable.

    Rejecting this quickly, I put it back on without the elaborate knot balancing that must go on for it not to end up in the state you saw it there.

    This is what happens when you put a head best suited to the consumption of baked goods in charge.

  • copernicus says:

    La Seoige and I were Soc & Pol contemporaries at UCG, although she wasn’t quite as well coiffed back then and her wardrobe advisors were rocking the typical early to mid-90s baggy jumper and jeans vibe.

    I’ve gone in the opposite direction.

  • Sinéad says:

    Simon, great to meet you, I wished I’d had a Worzel Gummidge head for staying awake, there must be hemlock in the industrial strength make-up. 🙂

    Best of luck with all the baby stuff.

  • Simon McGarr says:

    Copernicus
    Any photos of you then in a twin set and heels?

  • […] RTE afternoon show on Irish blogging. Sinead Gleeson, Simon McGarr and Una Mullally joined Grainne Seoige and Joe O’Shea in the national broadcaster’s […]

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