Six Nations TV View: Love for Paris in the springtime wavering

Paris in the spring. Formidable. (Try saying it with a French accent.) Oooh, and look which monsieur has popped up in the BBC studio at the Stade de France. Mais oui, it’s Paul O’Connell. Ireland’s loss is the Beeb’s gain.

He comes across exactly as you’d imagine him to. Simple, sensible, straightforward. No flights of fancy or rhetorical meanderings or tortuous metaphors. If George Hook was Dunphy, O’Connell is Giles. Perhaps it’s an existential thing. Perhaps doing it on the field of play relieves one of the inclination to play to the gallery. He who can, has.

Kick-off. Ireland dominate the first half, which proves to be less notable for scores than it is for a simmering undercurrent of malice. There’s more snideness than a general election campaign and it’s all coming from the hosts, clearly determined to compensate for their lack of talent with an overdose of low-level nastiness, most of it directed at Johnny Sexton. “Cheap shots,” the RTÉ panel rightly declare at half-time.