This blog first appeared as a TV review in The Andersonstown News
OK – first, a confession of disinterest: unlike hundreds, maybe thousands of others, I have never found Patrick Kielty funny. However, in ‘Patrick Kielty: One Hundred Years of Union’ (BBC ONE), most of the time he wasn’t trying to be funny, and it helped a lot.
Granted, he occasionally lapsed into jokey style. Climbing on top of some pallets, he told his accompanying loyalists “A paddy on top of a bonfire! The jokes make themselves!” But generally he was serious. As most of us know, his father was shot dead because he refused to pay protection money to loyalists. So when we saw Patrick talking to a young loyalist, and even helping him build the bonfire, and when he spoke to former loyalist leader Jackie McDonald, there was an instinctive admiration, that he could talk so naturally and warmly to people like Jackie McDonald and the young loyalist bonfire lad.
The ignition of the bonfire, complete with Irish tricolour, was a dramatic moment in the programme, with Patrick oohing and aahing alongside the rest. He even seemed to feel it was a pity Catholics couldn’t be part of the fun, like him. Although the burning of the Irish flag, he admitted, still made him uneasy.
Then he got onto the possibility that the trauma of the Troubles was ‘trans-generational’–you didn’t have to have endured the Troubles to feel damaged by tales from that time. So he sought out Jean McConville’s grand-daughter and they talked about how her grandmother’s death had affected her. He also had a chat with the woman who wrote ‘Derry Girls’. The message from both and Patrick himself was that we really did need to wise up and start being nice to each other. If Paddy could join in the fun of an Eleventh Night bonfire, then why couldn’t Catholics generally feel able to share in the fun and games?
The programme was beautifully shot (you have to do that when you’re feeding it to people in Britain). We saw the big constituency of young people who just want to sit outdoors and have a drink and talk and laugh. We even saw where Boris talked about building a bridge to Scotland. Talk of a border poll? Nah, too contentious. All we need is love, love love – all we really need as love.
Final worrying note: this programme appears to be feeding into some course in the Open University. If so, it’s irresponsible and misleading to suggest that all we need is to learn to be nice to each other and don’t upset unionists with talk of border polls, otherwise we could slump into conflict again. Instead, let’s polish up the status quo. Good Friday Agreement? That’s fighting talk. Wash out your mouth with Dettol.
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