Mairead Ronan strides across a field surrounded by comely lads and lassies wearing our nation’s traditional costume – fluorescent jerseys, shorts and helmets fitted with GoPro cameras – the very uniform worn by the Irish Volunteers in 1916.
Yes, heavily pregnant Ronan is once more hunting the most dangerous prey of all: sports-obsessed Irish families with an unquenchable thirst for glory.
Okay, she's not hunting them (maybe next year). Instead, with the only-slightly-fascistically-titled Ireland's Fittest Family (Sunday, RTÉ1) we get to see the best gene pools of our nation compete in gruelling feats of strength as we slouch on the couch eating the mini-Fudges technically meant for gluttonous children in fancy dress.
Why do they do such things? Well, for at least one of the following reasons:
a) Because Ronan is collecting these people and breeding them out in the RTÉ lot and will unleash her army of super soldiers when the time is right (I wouldn’t put it past her).
b) Because people like watching fit people compete for stuff. This is the basis of a popular set of activities that my colleagues tell me is called “sport”.
c) To make me feel bad about myself.
Ha! Well “c” hasn’t worked because I have a remarkably positive self image for a man who often works in his underpants. In fact, as I dig my arm elbow-deep into a bag of mini-Fudges, I even consider entering the competition.
But who among my family would enter with me? (This is where, if you were watching me on television, the screen would go all swimmy and you would hear wind chimes indicating a dream sequence).
Definitely my cat. My cat is very fit, though she might fall down on what veteran coach Davy Fitzgerald calls “strategy”, seeing as how she’s easily distracted by toy mice and miscellaneous noises.
And not my wife, because she refuses to enter Ireland's Fittest Family even in my daydreams. "Do not include me in this," she says firmly, so instead I'll have to get an actor to play my wife, probably Meryl Streep because she's the best actor.
And so I picture the first challenge (for me, this is the walk from the dressing room), during which the cat is distracted by a toy mouse, Meryl demands to know her motivation, and I break down crying and insist that the pregnant Mairead Ronan carry me. She does. Then I suggest she carry me by the shops so I can get a HB Feast. We have an argument about me taking her for granted and then another argument about the seasonal appropriateness of eating a HB Feast.
Meryl, of course, takes Mairead's side because she has no loyalty. I tell Meryl from Mairead's back (I'm still on her back) that her singing in Mama Mia was mediocre at best and ask her why she never supports my dreams (in this instance, my dream of having a HB Feast). Meryl is deeply upset. I know I have gone too far. Mairead drops me on the ground in disgust. The cat stops playing with the toy mouse and just shakes her head. "Stop judging me, cat!" I shout.
To sum up: I'm really bad at keeping even my aspirational fantasies on track and so, on reflection, I may not have what it takes to compete in Ireland's Fittest Family.
No similar emotional breakdowns happen for any of the families who are actually competing and who seem perfectly content to climb walls for no reason, clamber over rectangular pond-based obstacles and to haul each other up improbably steep man-made slopes, the big loons.
Not one of them is distracted by a toy mouse or needs to be piggybacked to the finish line by a Feast-hating Mairead Ronan. Indeed, if these earthbound gods are to be believed, this is the sort of thing they do for fun and not, as I assumed, as part of their community service.
A liberal media conspiracy
Each warm and friendly family is introduced with statistics and crazy stories about building gyms in their garages or playing semi-professional sport. Then there's plenty of footage of them leaping over fences or ascending climbing walls or doing pull-ups or running for a minute uninterrupted, all of which I can only believe were achieved by the Crooked-Hillary-loving-media with camera trickery.
Every introductory segment ends with the families standing back-to-back with their arms folded like Pixar characters in a film poster, because these people are also sassy. And then they’re off sludging their way through a long mud pit (representing, presumably, the past 10 years of Irish public life) and competing for the affection of celebrity coaches who speak about themselves in the third person like Mr T.
I was particularly taken with the Maritz family, whose sole male member drags his mother bodily around the obstacle course because that’s the best way to transport a mother. And also the Bailys and their world-weary child manager (their youngest sibling) who entered them into the competition and is clearly searching for ways his exercise-obsessed, muscle-bound kinsfolk can earn their keep.
Ultimately, I find such terrifyingly Nietzschean family values compelling. I am also conscious, as I watch, that tomorrow belongs to them, and not to people like me, who are more likely to appear in programmes with titles like Ireland's Most Sedentary Television Reviewer or A Nice Sit Down or just *the sound of a middle aged man groaning*.
Master-race leader
But who can lead this master race into the bright future? This week my colleague Pat Leahy presents two programmes (Enda: Last Man Standing and Enda: Staying Power, Monday and Tuesday, RTÉ 1) about Enda Kenny, who is a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a blue shirt, wrapped in a twinkly smile on a big Frank Sidebottom head.
Leahy and a host of commentators and politicians expertly and comprehensively trace Kenny’s political career from his unpromising beginnings as a bashful Little Lord Fauntleroy- lookalike to the surprisingly ruthless, middle-management survivor and crypto-Fianna Fáiler he is today. And what did I learn? I learned that ascending to taoiseach-hood is probably easier for people who have no great plans once they get there. Is that the worst thing in the world? No. Nowadays, in a world of Brexiteers and bewigged racist plutocrats, that’s just moderately depressing. In conclusion, *the sound of a middle aged man groaning*.
