Reilly and Kenny must face the media and deal with questions

OH GOD.

Bury my head in shame. I couldn’t remember Colin Farrell’s name. If I’d lost by a point I’d never be allowed to live it down.

Celebrity Mastermind I’m talking about. I took time out from writing this to watch (from behind the couch, peeping through my fingers) this week’s episode of the programme. It had, of course, been pre-recorded. Otherwise how could I have watched it, right? Try to keep up! So I knew the result in advance.

But I still found it hard to believe I couldn’t remember the name of the Irish actor who starred in such movies as Phone Booth and In Bruges. I’ve even met said famous actor a few times, because he is a great supporter of Special Olympics and in the past it was my job occasionally to thank him for things he’s done. Still, I’m pretty sure that if he were ever asked a question about me he’d have difficulty remembering my name.

It’s not that unusual, of course, to go blank every now and again. Not that edifying, I suppose, when it happens on television. Mind you, the format of that Mastermind programme would unnerve anyone. I was up against Derek Burke of Crystal Swing; the comedian (and son of John Bowman) Abie Philbin Bowman; and Clare Kambamettu, who won the Rose of Tralee a couple of years ago and is now busy completing a doctorate in psychology.

Derek had a particularly hard time on the day of the recording, but was really brave about it. He could have opted out, but wanted to do something for MS Ireland (everyone was playing for their favourite charity). He actually knew an awful lot more than came out, and I know from talking to him that he’s a perfectly bright young man. But the black chair froze his brain.

You have to be there to know the effect. I can still remember sitting in the famous black chair, feeling pretty cool, until the lights went down. The first thing quizmaster Norah Owen said to me was “Your name?”. And the first thing that popped into my head was “God, I wasn’t expecting that!”

Anyway, in case you didn’t see it, Abie Philbin Bowman won the round with a brilliant disquisition on Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He tweeted afterwards that I had told him after the show that a braver man would have picked the whole of Monty Python. I’m sure it wasn’t me — I couldn’t be capable of that many sour grapes. (Yeah, right!) Anyway, enough of all that. The scars will heal in time. My Colin Farrell moment will fade into memory. Just like that American golfer Doug Sanders, who in 1970 missed a three-foot putt on the 18th hole in St. Andrews. If he’d got the putt, he’d have won the British Open and attained sporting immortality. Because he missed it he found himself in a play-off with, of all people, Jack Nicklaus.

Years later Sanders was asked if he ever thought about that missed putt. “No,” he said. “Sometimes a whole 15 minutes go by without thinking about it!”

There is, of course, a serious point to all this. Television is scary, and in some settings it can be really scary. For instance, I’m sure Norah Owen won’t mind me saying this, but as tough as she is, she’s a pussycat when compared to Miriam O’Callaghan or Vincent Browne.

Miriam in her own way is the toughest of them all. She’s disarmingly (and genuinely) gracious off air, but when she’s doing her job she has the gift of piercing the interviewee with the frequent disbelief in her eyes. She does fearsome research, and really listens to the answers she’s getting. So she knows when her subject is chancing his or her arm, and she’s not afraid to go for the jugular when necessary.

Vincent Browne, on the other hand, goes for the jugular for fun. No-one could ever accuse him of being charming, on or off-air, and he researches constantly — often still reading as the guests are settling themselves uneasily in their chairs. And he takes no prisoners (well, maybe he has made an exception for Mick Wallace, for whom he seems to have a soft spot).

But as fearsome as they are, in their own different ways, James Reilly should have been in front of them last week. He had questions to answer about the unpaid debt that had landed him in Stubbs Gazette, and no doubt whatever had answers to give.

But he didn’t give them. Instead his colleagues took a battering on his behalf on Browne’s show two nights in a row, while Vincent’s indignation about the impropriety of it all went into overdrive.

I imagine that if the Minister for Health was asking his lawyers whether he should do interviews on the subject, they would probably advise him not to, because there are clearly legal issues in which other people are involved, and they’d be worried about a bad situation being made worse. But the sooner he can confront Browne the better. He will want to talk to the media about other aspects of his portfolio, and they won’t be ready to move on until he has dealt with the Stubbs Gazette issue.

And if that applies to James Reilly, it applies to the Taoiseach in spades. I simply don’t understand why he doesn’t get it over with.

He’s developing a reputation of being afraid of the media. That doesn’t make sense. He debated better than well in the general election, and he holds his own with vigour at Dáil question time.

But he’s a year and a half as head of government now, and in all that time he hasn’t done a single substantial one-to-one interview that I can recall. No Pat Kenny, no Brian Dobson, no Miriam and no Vincent Browne.

Because I have a sad old life, I spent an hour or two recently re-reading the Programme for Government. It’s an impressive document, and there’s been a reasonable amount of progress in getting it implemented.

But I was particularly taken with the language of the preface, the “statement of common purpose” with which the programme begins.

It talks about a democratic revolution, leading by example, the repairing of trust. It says that the new Government has to show that it has learned from the past. Politics and government can, and must, change, it says. The new Government is determined to make each day count as we begin a slow but deliberate renewal of our country.

And why? Because “our country deserves a fresh start from the failed politics of the years past”.

No doubt the Government means every word of that (although it wouldn’t do them any harm to re-read it for themselves now and again). But the failed politics of the past included a failure to trust the people with open and straightforward communication.

So it’s time, I reckon, for the Taoiseach to face the music. It won’t be Mastermind, after all, just Vincent or Miriam. And I’m the living proof that you can forget a few things you really ought to know, and still survive the experience.