Oh no, not these guys again! Every year Ireland’s fittest family torment the nation as they march solidly into the future with their straight backs and open hearts. They make you cast a resentful glance at your own inferior family. I mean, the absolute state of them.
Look at that one there, slumped slack-jawed over her iPhone. Or that small one pushing whole fistfuls of Haribo Supermix into his sullen head. And what about that bigger one who’s groaning face down in a bowl of ice cream? He hasn’t moved in an hour.
What a shower. Sometimes a hungry bear comes down from the hills and grabs a lethargic family member from in front of the television before running up a tree. The one with the iPhone searches “How to retrieve family member from bear” on YouTube instead of taking up pursuit. The small one doesn’t even stop gargling Haribo.
And you can’t do anything, of course, because you’re busy watching Ireland’s fittest families compete in bizarre feats of strength and endurance. What golden specimens they are, you think, as they propel themselves across God’s good earth like magnificent starlings or salmon or Accenture employees here to rationalise a business.
I am now very fit. I am ready for Ireland’s fittest family to adopt me
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Of course I’m using “you” here and not “me”, because I harbour no such resentments about Ireland’s fitsos. For I am a buffin now (a buff boffin). I’ve recently started going to a gym, and I am pretty sure that means I’m a professional athlete. Lately I have been known to lift things for no reason. I sometimes cycle a bike that doesn’t go anywhere and I don’t even get annoyed. I can even imagine running for reasons other than being chased by local youths or because the cake shop is closing soon. (Still both good reasons to run, in fairness.) I mean, I haven’t actually done any of this running yet, but I believe that in theory it could be done. I read a book.
[ Patrick Freyne: I joined a gym this year. Here’s how working out is working outOpens in new window ]
I am now very fit. Basically, I feel that I have much in common with the contestants of Ireland’s Fittest Family (RTÉ One, Saturday) now and that one of them should adopt me. Here are some of the things I definitely have in common with them. 1: I am frequently filthy; 2: I often fall into bodies of water; 3: I am out of breath; 4: Sometimes when I’m out of the house family members have to carry me – on Ireland’s Fittest Family this is usually while in the midst of a gruelling semi-aquatic obstacle course, while in my case it’s because I don’t like walking; and 5: People in tracksuits often shout at me.
In Ireland’s Fittest Family the people in tracksuits shouting at the fit families are their coaches. Telling people to keep doing what they’re doing while they’re doing it is classic middle-management graft, and it’s why I want to ultimately get an MBA. The coaches are pretty skilled at this task. They are well-known sportsfolk who you may have heard of. I might get the sports wrong, but I believe they are Anna Geary (celebrity stick waving), Donncha O’Callaghan (violent man hugs), Sonia O’Sullivan (Legs & Co) and Davy Fitzgerald (men’s celebrity stick waving).
Ireland’s Fittest Family contestants are of a fine, upstanding and wholesome type. Unlike you, in their civilian lives they wear GAA jerseys and sportswear, not those plastic pelican bibs that babies wear and a pair of long johns with an arse flap. They have motivational posters on their walls that say things such as “Believe in yourself” and not “Meh” or “My dreams are ashes”.
They also seem to enjoy spending time with each other, and at no point does one of the fit children attempt to trick their fit parent into signing over their farm to them in the will while the other fit siblings are distracted. Admittedly this would be difficult to do while leaping over a large wall or wading through a swamp, but I’ve known people who could manage it.
None of the fit families in this episode are interviewed while smoking rollies outside an off-licence. None of the fit families left a good job in the Civil Service to take up DJing in their mid-40s. None of the fit families are wearing a fake neck brace because they drunkenly fell from a slide in the playground and are now taking a claim against the council. (More fool them, says you.)
Ireland’s Fittest Family is a kind, well-meaning, slightly ridiculous television show about nice people. By the end of this week’s episode, after trudging through trenches of water, rowing little rafts and running up ramps for no good reason, the triumphant winners at the end of the most recent episode are the Ferns (who are, in reality, humans, not ferns) from Co Clare. If they wish to carry a “statuesque” 49-year-old journalist while doing an obstacle course I will happily join their team.
There is a whole genre of screen drama set in the glory days of journalism that is, basically, a form of erotica for journalists hot for the past. Films such as Frost/Nixon, The Post or Spotlight and TV shows such as this week’s Channel 4 offering Brian and Maggie recall an era when mainstream newspapers and broadcasters operating according to certain codes were at the centre of the cultural conversation.
As a member of the fourth estate it’s hard not to watch dramas such as this without rubbing my trilby and erupting, from time to time, with “Phwoar, check that source, my son!” or “Hubba-hubba, that fact is certainly in the public interest!” or “Awooga, I’d love to give that text a good subbing!”
Brian and Maggie is the story of the occasionally compromising friendship between the broadcaster Brian Walden (Steve Coogan) and Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter), the UK prime minister. So good is Coogan at portraying real-life figures that I’m a little surprised he’s not playing Thatcher, but, in fairness, Walter is very good as well.
The drama focuses on Thatcher’s sacking of her chancellor Nigel Lawson, in 1989, and the combative interview Walden did with the PM afterwards. It’s a fascinating examination of political complicity turning to hard-edged journalism, but as political moments go it might be a little too obscure.
Yes, journalists will like it, weird fetishists that we are, but it feels like the bigger story of Thatcher’s rise and downfall is probably to be found in other details. It also turns Thatcher into a cuddlier figure than the facts bear out, given that she’s the ultimate architect of Britain’s social Darwinism. She’d probably have liked Ireland’s Fittest Family, actually, but only if she could first weed out unfit families and take away their benefits.
