Celebtrity Bainisteoir- Still Keeping It Real!

A new season of Celebrity Bainisteoir has begun in earnest containing a load of people I either don't know or dislike and a few old guys that are occasionally on the telly (No Ray D'Arcy, you are not in this latter category). Even so the programme is sure to be a success. It's popularity I think, lies not with the "celebrities" but the teams themselves. The television viewing public appear to have an insatiable appetite for reality shows which double up as competitions as the success of You're a Star and Ireland's Got Talent have proven.

The only thing better than watching people perform under pressure is watching them prepare for battle. The celebrities are a useful conduit through which the audience can get to know the protagonists and when they get to know them, their success means just as much to the viewer. The audience are made to feel part of the action. The programme is put together very well with a steady build up of tension leading up to the game as the players begin to feel the nerves and even the ineptness of the managers is a source of schadenfreude.

The show works because there is so much riding on it for the players involved. I think the prize money last year was in the region of €10,000.00 which would go a long in any rural provincial club. When that sort of cash is put on the table, it quickly focuses the mind. The show would be an absolute disaster if it wasn't for the money because the players wouldn't take it seriously. The celebrity Bainisteoir's don't need to motivate the players with their personalities because motivation is already provided courtesy of the cash prize.

Most of all, whatever the motivation I admire the show because it is successful. It more or less makes money across the board and everyone's a winner (except perhaps the losers but at least they got the chance). Keith Duggan writing in the Irish Times last Saturday is less convinced. I usually more of a Tom Humphries man but I was on the toilet and had nothing else to read.

According to Duggan, Celebrity Bainisteoir "boils down to yet another exercise in Paddy-Vanity and one cannot help being somewhat dubious about the motives of the celebrities involved". It is probably that the real reason the celebrities choose to embarrass themselves by appearing on the show is because of the need of recognition and self-promotion but then all of them do make a living out of being "personalities" in some form or another so I think it is perfectly understandable that they would want to make themselves better known and more popular to further their careers. That is the nature of the industry.


Who needs celebrity when you've got politics.

Mary O'Rourke was the only celebrity (I'm going to dispense with the inverted commas now, I think you get the message) to decide she didn't need the hassle but then she was an unelected Senator suckling away on that very fat cash cow which pays our policitians so she hardly needed either the cash or the publicity. Unless she felt she could do more going around filling all of Westmeath's letterboxes full of spam and junk mail from the last election.

The rest of them needed the press and Celebrity Bainisteoir is a great way of getting it. The winning manager gets something like €10,000.00 as well to give to a charity of their choice but I don't think anyone really cares about that. Keith Duggan thinks it's unbecoming to raise money in such a way but that is how society works. How many charity balls were held during the boom? Loads and how many poor people did you ever see at them? None.

The donation to charity is a happy side effect to everyone else winning. It makes the exposure more palatable otherwise it might be seen that all the managers were getting free publicity. By using charity in this way, it makes the show less likely to be ridiculed by all the journo's and media whores who didn't get the gig (initially at least).

If the show didn't have the ratings to pay for itself, it wouldn't exist and that is the real reason it is beyond criticism. The barometer for bad television is that no one will watch it. If Keith Duggan had his way there would be no shows about anything. We would probably still be watching re-runs of the 1932 Eucharistic Counsel. Celebrity is an economy and an industry in itself. People promote themselves, magazines sell and everyone is happy. It's an industry which should be encouraged because it is not in any way state funded (the RTE question aside but that's for another day) and it is entirely self sufficient. There aren't too many industries that can say now are there?

If you don't like it, you can always switch it off. The great thing about Celebrity Bainisteoir is that it is not just a bit of fun. It's a serious competition, played by serious teams for an excellent cash prize. That's at the heart of it's success but the celebrities shouldn't be ridiculed in all of this, they are just trying to make an honest buck. I wish we had a few more people like that in this country.