Telly Review: The tale of King Puck's Liveline incursion is an amusing one

Or at least that’s the way it’s portrayed on Scannal: For Puc’s Sake (RTÉ One and RTÉ Player). It should have been called Talk to Joe, judging by the number of times his show was mentioned in 28 minutes.

But Joe Duffy is good value whatever you might think of him. He doesn’t sit on the fence here, telling one caller to cop themselves on and stop playing the victim, that the real victim here was the goat.

Joe mightn’t be welcome in Killorglin any time soon if you are to believe festival organiser Declan Falvey, who almost had his own slot on Liveline last August.

Meanwhile, on what you might call the pro-goat side, you had a queue of people with cut-glass, maybe city accents, lining up to denounce the savagery of rural Ireland.

“They are going to roast a live animal in a steel cage while people watch this travesty”, said one man, capturing the mood, if not the truth.

The Department of Agriculture and the Marine were given the job of impartial observers, seeing as Joe was firmly on the side of the goat. We heard a lot about ‘the vet’, who was constantly checking on the goat, assuring people that he was grand. But when the temperatures stayed hot, the organisers bowed to pressure and took the goat down.

Then there’s a twist! Joe Duffy takes up the story at this point, and he’s not happy. As he put, the goat was taken down “before Liveline”, only for him to be hoisted up again later that evening. The Department brought an end to proceedings at that stage, ordering the goat to be taken down for good.

It’s a good story, well told, with extra juice because it touches on the urban-rural divide. Younger city types suggested some type of mechanical goat; a sculptor got in touch to say a statue of a goat was the solution, but then he would say that.

But when it comes to television, you can’t compete with Michael Healy-Rae. He appears throughout the show, in full suit and cap despite the temperatures, with pithy digs at tree-hugger types who feel for the goat. His highlight was telling them they could eat carrots all their lives as far as he was concerned, but they should stop twisting things to suit their agenda. 

It doesn’t make loads of sense, but now I can’t shake the image of vegetarians crunching carrots on Liveline, so that’s a victory for Michael and people who eat their dinner in the middle of the day.

The final word here was a woman saying, gan gabhar, gan aonach. No goat, no festival. Maybe  — but try and tell that to the carrot-crunchers on Liveline.