It will come as no surprise to most of you that Ireland is a very small place. I say “most of you” because I have to accept that that Ireland is a very small place would come as an almighty, earth-shattering shock to a depressingly substantial amount of people.

(How do you feel about the “double that” in the sentence above? I think it looks awful, but I’ve written it now and I couldn’t be arsed changing it. Besides, it’s a tool for launching my newest word at you folks – flummoxment. Do you like it? Good. Let’s move on.)

There are people for whom the fact that Ireland is a very small place would cause utter flummoxment, you see. People like Hollywood researchers, for example, who are unaware that it takes just three hours to drive from West to East Ireland. But for the majority of us, Ireland is accepted as being fairly compact, a depressing state of affairs, but one not even the mighty Bill Cullen could remedy. We’re a fucking island. Outside of placing decking on the Atlantic Shelf, there really isn’t a whole lot we can do about being a droplet in the Ocean of The Scheme Of Things. Sometimes we forget just how insignificant we are – I cringe to remember all the howling we did this year about not having as much clout in Europe as Germany – but even that, in a roundabout way, is a symptom of our size; Ireland’s so small, we can’t even envisage Scope and Relativity and Might and David Attenborough’s Life On Earth.

And the best place to get a true grasp on this unfortunate aspect of Paddyosity is RTE.

RTE, Ireland’s National Broadcaster, seems to have the philosophy that it doesn’t take 3 hours to drive between Galway and Dublin, because it’s almost unthinkable that Ireland stretches out past the M50. If there ever was an institution that housed more dinosaurs than RTE, I’d imagine it got swept away by an ice-age glacier.

Ah now. Here I have to admonish myself. RTE isn’t all that bad. It’s not as if you can’t get a job there if you haven’t already had a job there, despite what first impressions tell you. I’m sure there’s a lot of talented bodies in RTE who’ve come up through the ranks with only their tenacity keeping them company. But we do, especially in terms of pop culture, have an Irish habit of giving all high-profile entertainment positions to people who have already had high-profile entertainment positions, or people whose mammy lunches with Ann Doyle, or people whose political connections somehow entitle them to spread over the Irish airwaves like a pox-ridden blanket over a sick ass.

In an Irish interview, Who are you? is a much more prudent question than What can you do? In a small country with a history of yokels bending under a scant privileged class, I suppose it’s no real surprise. What I most object to is that scant privileged class double-jobbing in the creative arts to such an extent that there are fuck all new opportunities for the genuinely talented – in Ireland, we won’t just saturate The Arts with proven luvvies, we’ll divvy up all the available roles between them. No room for specialities with these meeja dahlings. You’ll make less money from a culchie nobody concentrating on what he’s born to do than you will from a maleable socialite who’ll do five things – badly – at once. I want a publishing contract, Daddy! I want one to go with my chronically unfunny spot on The Panel! I want one NOW!

Besides, what with us being all recessionified all over the gaff, with the scant privileged class in the Dail readying up to bounce a punishing budget over our heads very shortly now, I thin double-jobbing is so completely socially irresponsible these days. What I’d give for an Irish ’sleb to giggle, “My chosen charity is the Irish Commeners, so this year, I’m only going to start a girl band, instead of my original plan, which was to start a girl band, usurp Ryan Tubridy, write a racy holiday read, and become the face of Kleeneze”.

I feel I’m rambling. Let me think of an example.

In Ireland, it would not be unusual to see a bland, blonde model awarded a leading role in a dramatic production, despite having even less experience than she does charisma. It wouldnt feel off to see a local actress suddenly publishing a novel, even though the writing paints her the stupidest shade of Inoffensive Ivory. It would shock no one to see a rugby star become a newspaper columnist. And on top of that, you then get them wheeling in talentless brothers, cousins, hawt sisters, and serial fiancés, all of whom are then hired into exciting, creative positions that they have no flair for, by virtue of name and name-dropping, not by deeds chalked onto CV.

And once you get them in there, like embarrassing stains on the arse of your boyfriend’s boxers, you just can’t get them out again. Ireland’s celebrities do the rounds endlessly; like all horrific bogeymen, decapitation is the only halt to their gallop. From a small pool of game gombeens, we draw all inspiration, all creative representation. From photoshoot to supermarket opening to red carpet to poetry workshop to lecture in the performing arts at Carlow IT to discovering a cure for cancer; Irish faces can do no wrong – the problem is that they can do nothing particularly right, either.

It’s not only a problem in Ireland, although we can’t quite deny all involvement in the creation of careers for those hideous Geldof husks. And, taking into account that the public gets what the public wants possibly more than the public wants what the public gets, I have to wonder if we only have ourselves to blame for the lack of new faces in the creative arts, and the widening of the Middle Ground. Are you less likely to watch a new chatshow if you’ve never heard of the talented, charismatic host? Yes. Will you find it difficult to give your attention to an opinion piece written by someone who may as well have called themselves Ann Onymuss? Yes, yes.

I’d still be happier if the vapid could be contractually restrained from meddling in more than one speciality, though. Just think, we might have saved ourselves the hassle of Amanda Brunker, and all the flummoxment therein…