{"id":659032,"date":"2026-08-27T10:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659032\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T10:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:08:22","slug":"fortycoats-felt-jesus-and-the-time-aonghus-mcanally-said-bum-instead-of-bottom-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659032\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortycoats, \u2018Felt Jesus\u2019 and the time Aonghus McAnally said bum instead of bottom \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have taken to watching episodes<\/a> of Bellie and Whizz at Big School (RT\u00c9<\/a> One, Tuesday) before going into The Irish Times<\/a> (the epitome of \u201cbig school\u201d). <\/p>\n

This programme is very soothing and very sweet, at least when you get over the fact that in real life a badger (Bellie) and a bunny (Whizz) would not be friends at all and probably wouldn\u2019t go to school. <\/p>\n

In real life Bellie might, in fact, eat Whizz if hungry enough. (I believe this was the direction they went in the original pilot; it did not test well with audiences.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad he didn\u2019t. Watching this duo\u2019s endearing antics has helped me make friends (by assisting people and taking an interest), calm my nervous system (by taking deep breaths) and listen to teacher (the editor of The Irish Times, Ruadh\u00e1n Mac Cormaic).<\/p>\n

All in all I feel very becalmed watching Bellie and Whizz at Big School and feel much better now about going into the office here on Tara Street in Dublin<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It did take me a while to realise this was a show for children and wasn\u2019t actually produced by RT\u00c9\u2019s business desk at the behest of a productivity-hungry State. <\/p>\n

And then I got angry. Why do children get charming programmes like this, with cool fluffy puppets and real children to help them self-regulate, when adults just get the stupid news with boring old humans and Microsoft Excel and mortgages, things which don\u2019t help us self-regulate at all? <\/p>\n

It also made me think of other children\u2019s TV shows that I think about a lot. Like \u2026<\/p>\n

Play School<\/p>\n

This magazine show for small humans dominated British TV when I was a child. There were human characters on this show \u2013 the best being Floella Benjamin \u2013 but the main stars weren\u2019t even puppets or cartoons. They were five inanimate toys who sat silently judging us, like a mini Politburo: Humpty (Lenin), Big Ted (Stalin), Little Ted (Trotsky), Hamble (Zinoviev) and Jemima (Kamenev). <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Glenroe, Bosco, Mrs Brown\u2019s Boys: The best and worst Irish TV shows ever madeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

They stared at us with their dead eyes \u2013 doll\u2019s eyes \u2013 coldly mapping out the parameters of their completely centralised economy and how we each individually fit within it. Kids today know nothing with their animated TV shows and ever-streaming phones. True pleasure is knowing that you might be subject to a toy-show trial at any moment for the good of the state. And, like all true believers, if that happens we will be thankful. For we have won the victory over ourselves. We love Big Ted. <\/p>\n

Paw Patrol <\/b>\"PawPaw Patrol: Is this the future Simon Harris wants? <\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s appropriate to privatise emergency services so that they\u2019re run by puppies in customised vehicles. Where is the democratic oversight? How is it regulated? How do the puppies drive these little cars without opposable thumbs? Is their boss an actual child? I can\u2019t believe that this is the future Simon Harris wants!<\/p>\n

Bosco\"Bosco:Bosco: An ideologue at heart. Photograph: RT\u00c9 <\/p>\n

Any time I see this little legend\u2019s name trending on social media I fear they have either died or been cancelled. Bosco is only a centrist when it comes to gender. Temperamentally this drama monarch swings wildly from go hiontach to uaf\u00e1sach. Politically, I can see them going either way. I can see them discovering the power of healing crystals and autocracy on the one hand or joining the flotilla to Palestine on the other. <\/p>\n

An ideologue at heart, Bosco loves most of all to wonder at the mechanisation of a bottle factory on the other side of the Magic Door (they microdose) or to evoke the beauty of rural life via tales of that idealised peasant and hero of the revolution Gregory Gr\u00e1inneog. They also live in a perfect minimalist cube. Say what you like about Bosco; that puppet had a vision and charisma, unlike \u2026 <\/p>\n

The uncanny freaks of Cocomelon\"Cocomelon:Cocomelon: JJ and his friends in Cocomelon Lane. Photograph: Netflix <\/p>\n

The garish Cocomelon engagement farm is designed to subsume unformed minds with frictionless gobbledook and turn them to overstimulated mush. On the other hand, you have a work Zoom to attend, and their granny isn\u2019t picking them up for another hour. <\/p>\n

Anything Goes\"AonghusAonghus McAnally co-presented Anything Goes on Saturday mornings on RT\u00c9 <\/p>\n

This is what passed for preteen anarchy in my heady youth. For some reason my strongest memory of this children\u2019s magazine show, apart from the fact that I loved it, is an episode in which Aonghus McAnally, one of its presenters, apologised for saying \u201cbum\u201d instead of \u201cbottom\u201d. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am a polite young man of 51 and my nephews, who know computers, are monsters. In 1980s Ireland, anything did not go.<\/p>\n

Fortycoats<\/p>\n

All I know is that one day you think of yourself as the teenage misfit Slightly Bonkers and the next you look in the mirror and the sartorially maximalist beard aficionado Fortycoats stares back at you. It\u2019s enough to make me crash-land my flying sweet shop and retire altogether. Also, the Whirligig Witch? More like the Whirligig Wise Woman. It was, of course, a different time.<\/p>\n

Press Gang <\/p>\n

Bill and Steven Moffat\u2019s drama about a school newspaper is probably at the root of my desire to get into journalism. Sadly, Press Gang also gave me unreasonable expectations about the type of resources I would have at my disposal. I know it was technically the late 1980s when the show started, but this children\u2019s newspaper had an investigative-journalism budget that would put The Irish Times to shame. It\u2019s probably no coincidence that it ran on ITV, far from the chilling, censorious gaze of Humpty and Big Ted.<\/p>\n

Sesame Street = the New Deal <\/b>\"SesameSesame Street: Oscar the Grouch and friend, circa 1985. Photograph: Children’s Television Workshop\/Getty <\/p>\n

In this dissertation I will explore why Sesame Street\u2019s depiction of a functioning social contract for an autodidactic, musical, multicultural community of both men and muppets has its roots in President Franklin D Roosevelt\u2019s work programmes in \u2026 (Editor\u2019s note: Patrick, I\u2019m cutting about 10,000 words here for space reasons.)<\/p>\n

Peppa Pig <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve little to add to Peppa Pig discourse except to say that since the divorce Daddy Pig has become quite a big figure in the manosphere. <\/p>\n

Bob the Builder versus Fireman Sam<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the can-do-it-ive entrepreneur (Bob) versus the bloated lackey of the nanny state (Sam), the former creating wealth and economic growth with his sentient talking machines, the latter stopping the accident-prone drones of Pontypandy from immolating themselves instead of letting nature take its course. (If that infant terrorist Norman Price wants to cause another fire, I say just leave him to it.) People wonder about the roots of political polarisation in modern life, but it\u2019s clearly because of this duo. Yes, Bob the Builder or Fireman Sam, that\u2019s the choice facing us all.<\/p>\n

In the Night Garden<\/p>\n

Your baby is tripping balls on being a baby (possibly the most potent drug there is), so what do you do? You stick it in front of the dreamy, twinkly In the Night Garden because we can\u2019t give children sedatives or alcohol any more thanks to \u201claws\u201d. In the Night Garden your unhinged sprog will encounter the adventures of a novelty-seeking being called Igglepiggle. He\u2019s clearly meant to be Felt Jesus. It\u2019s so soothing. So tasteful. So dreamlike. I watch it on my phone when I\u2019m on work Zooms. Tell nobody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have taken to watching episodes of Bellie and Whizz at Big School (RT\u00c9 One, Tuesday) before going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,12474,1181],"class_list":["post-659032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-patrick-freyne","tag-rte"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117166927232758624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}