News Hounded

I’m absolutely knackered at the time of writing this. Anyone who’s seen my act lately will know of my obsession with Sky News. I’ve watched it for years now; indeed the reason I moved to Dublin in the first place was because we couldn’t receive it in Louth.

I’m well aware that it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch, the nasty right wing media mogul who could probably have me killed this minute and is probably spying on me from my telly, but I’ve just always loved the excitement, the unpredictability and the devil-may-care attitude that are the hallmarks of my favourite channel. It’s many’s the night I used to come in from a hard day’s gigging and unwind by savouring the banter between the “Skycasters” as they moved on from the report about bowel cancer to the business report.
In the early days I used to only watch it in the mornings, just before Countdown at 4.25 and then after gigs as a bit of a treat but now, unfortunately, I’d say I watch it for anywhere between ten and 16 hours a day. I wish I could just switch off but I can’t. I’m afraid I’ll miss something important, something big, some world exclusive, and my biggest worry of all is that one day I’ll be out somewhere, like the local Esso shop or mass, and someone will text me saying “Watching Sky News?” and it turns out there’s a meteor heading for Earth and I’ll miss the destruction of the planet live and exclusive just before the sports update. I can’t cope with that threat. And it’s ruining my life.
Ten months ago I became a father for the first time and I said to myself as the nurse was wiping down my son that enough was enough and that I’d stop watching it when he came home and just take my chances in a newsless wilderness. I’d have more time to concentrate on my career and I’d become a hands-on dad, not like my father who was holding a radio to his ear listening for news throughout my entire childhood.
But when my son came home I wasn’t prepared for the fact that babies, like Skycasters, don’t sleep, and the best way to break the monotony of a sleepless night was to watch a quick item on the crisis in the British health service, mourn the tragic defeat of Wigan in some Rugby League cup, and on one long night, watch an extended debate on the ethics of synthetic honey.
I recently saw Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling For Columbine in which he attributed much of the gun crime in America to the paranoia created by the rolling news channels there. The combination of sleep deprivation and addiction to news must be doing awful things to my poor mind; I’m probably technically a psychopath by now or a sociopath or whatever. I’ll probably end up driving a taxi and stalking Bertie Ahern.
Every couple of nights or so I drag myself away from the telly and go and talk about what I’ve just seen on it at various venues. On November 5 I’ll be performing with Joe Rooney and Anne Gildea at the Temple Bar Music Centre in aid of the charity Headway. Please come along, support a good cause and see a tired man talk shite.