Labour stumbling around like the characters in ‘Lost’

MUSCLING in on popular culture is all the political rage in Britain at the moment with even deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg hosting his own radio phone-in.

This follows Conservative and Labour members of parliament appearing in such down-market efforts as I’m A Celebrity....Get Me Out Of Here! and Dancing On Ice.

But what if our own politicians tried to ape their British cousins? The results would probably be even less flattering.

A re-imagining of Love/Hate would be the perfect set-up for an overall drama about the Coalition, because while Labour Love the trappings of power, Fine Gael Hate to give them anything worthwhile to show for their presence in Government.

The Blueshirt gang also guard their turf with a ruthlessness seldom seen outside the most furtive inner cities, and Kenny’s boys are not above the odd ambush, as exemplified in the blood-stained budget ultimatum when they just rolled over Labour at will.

But while casting Enda as some kind of Nidge figure, may be stretching credibility a tad far, what about Eamon Gilmore taking the lead role in a remake of Lost?

The concept would seem to fit the Tánaiste and his Labour buddies perfectly — stumbling around like plane-crash survivors in a weird kind of limbo they cannot control or understand — just like being in the Coalition government in fact.

This initially intriguing situation then drags on for far too long and results a few years down the line in even the most ardent fans becoming bored and angry that they ever wasted so much time on such rubbish — in other words, fast forward to Labour’s smashing apart at the next general election.

The other Big Beast characters of the Government could also wander onto our screens without too much trouble, after those opposition claims Dr James Reilly deliberately misled the Dáil over the out-of-control health budget, he could start with a bit-on part in TV3’s Deception.

But then given all the controversy over how exactly those two primary care centre sites that just so happened to be in his own constituency, appeared, as if my magic, on the final short list at the very last minute, what better role for him than an update of 1980s classic Different Strokes.

But accusations of “stroke politics” directed against him by Roisín Shortall would put pay to any pre-production of much anticipated gag-fest sit-com Gilmore’s Golden Girls which she could have starred in along with Joan Burton and Kathleen Lynch, before the junior health minister resigned in disgust and ran-off to the opposition benches with Colm Keaveney.

One ground-breaking show that would get everyone talking could centre around Fine Gael’s strictly moral TD Michelle Mulhern, who briefly flickered across international attention last year when she made the startling Dáil revelation: “Fornication, I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

To get her stern message over, Ms Mulhern could take the lead in No Sex And It’s Not A Pity in which she and her sassy gal-pals hang out in groovy, downtown Mayo and chat about why it’s so important for women to save themselves for their husbands on their wedding nights.

Tax cheat TD Mick Wallace would be perfect casting for Fraud Of The Stings — a veritable three ring circus of an event in which he deliberately defrauds the State of VAT returns, thus ending up with a bill of €2.1m he initially insists is nothing to do with him, but is then forced to offer to pay half his Dáil salary back in the face of public outrage.

Thus the tragi-farce unfolds as Wallace uses some of the money taxpayers give him so he can pay off a bit of the money he defrauded from taxpayers.

As self-affacing as shabby scrounger Frank Gallagher in Shameless, Wallace then keeps insisting he only did the fraud to buy time to keep his company afloat — conveniently forgetting to explain, if that was the case why he doubled the salary he paid himself and his son to €290,000 at the same time.

In fact, Wallace is so self-pitying about the whole wretched affair, he would be the perfect guest on Come Whine With Me where he could sit down with warring Socialists — and fellow professional moaners — Clare Daly and Joe Higgins.

Gerry Adams’ attempt at a new touchy-feely “Army Council? What Army Council?” rebranding may prove too much of a make-over even for Gok Wang, but the Shinner could relaunch a fairytale version of children’s cartoon: Give Up Yer Aul’ Sins.

And who better to take on Bear Grylls in “Survivor” than Micheál Martin?

Despite being a member of the most useless Government in history for 14 years — during whichhe failed to build a children’s hospital as health minister, but managed to surrender national sovereignty to foreigners as foreign minister — Mr Martin still has pretensions of power and has even dragged Fianna Fáil back to being the second biggest party in opinion polls.

But these cross-cultural forays are fraught with danger as Mr Clegg has found out.

His show on London’s LBC station is officially known as Call Clegg, but has been popularly renamed in wider society as:Call Clegg A Wanker.

The deputy PM, and all round national punch bag, is so loathed in Britain that there have even been accusations he planted the only question that actually got any media attention — namely: does he own a onesie?

In that smarmy, having-it-all-ways type of answer politicians so love, Clegg said he did own such a novelty garment, but had never taken it out of its packaging — thus attempting to pretend he’s just a “regular” guy, while maintaining acceptable standards of dignity by not actually wearing the all-in-one attire.

But then politicians like nothing better than to attack the dumbing down of media coverage, while at the same time whoring upon it — as exemplified best by then British PM Gordon Brown who in virtually the same breath denounced the “trivialisation” of politics then declared: “I’m an X Factor fan — Peter Mandelson looks after Strictly Come Dancing.”

Does Enda lounge around in a onesie? I can happily do without knowing.

And if that mental image disturbs you, let’s all hope Enda is never desperate enough to latch onto another iconic item of popular culture and start sporting a Borat-style mankini.