Charlie Bird on the case with Lynnide England

A bird brained documentary from RTE’s legendary chief news reporter simply doesn’t fly, but it’s the best comedy the station has done since Hall’s Pictorial Weekly.

Who says RTE can’t do comedy? While Montrose may have allocated every stand-up in the country their own TV programme and pinned great hopes on ‘Your Bad Self’, all with dubious results, the best laughs for years on the box came the last two Monday nights, courtesy of their chief news reporter. Whatever about being premature ‘Charlie Bird’s American Year’ certainly was immature and thanks to a comedy of errors and Charlie’s cry-baby carry-on, this ill judged two-part saga proved a comic masterpiece. So much so that it has repeatedly been the butt of Oliver Callan’s hilarious Nob Nation sketches.

Albeit unwittingly, Charlie pouring his heart out about being so lonely, wanting to come home and knowing nobody had an endearing side to it, a sort of first day at school, Lá brea cois farraige a bhí ann, quality and feeling ever so sorry for himself Charlie cut the look of a hound dog with a big bottom lip and sulky puss more so than the dash of an experienced news hound.

RTE have treated us  before to a Bird’s eye view of the world in the equally self centred and self-indulgent, Charlie goes down the Ganges, the Amazon or does the North Pole, but this time it’s more like Charlie’s Up Shit’s Creek without a paddle as he feels the chill winds of anonymity in Washington. The show is wrongly categorised as documentary as it’s really reality TV with Charlie taking the opportunity to pour his heart out about how unhappy he is in his new job, knocking back a bottle of Corona at the bar and laying it on good and thick lonely hearts style, about how isolated he feels. RTE should bill this series as reality TV and it might just single-handedly save the flagging genre. A sort of Big Brother, where Charlie is the only one in the house, talking about himself and talking to himself.  Or better yet, a mocumentary like ‘Path’s to Freedom’ and ‘Fergus’ Wedding’, I can already see Charlie closing out each episode with, “I need some soup luv.”

It could be properly billed like those two fat bikers cooking up stuff as they roam around, or Billy Connolly Does Oz, Debbie Does Dallas and Charlie Does America. For certain, Charlie’s old pal, Deputy George Lee TD has got to give him a call and tell him straight up that this is not a documentary. Earlier in the evening the excellent Scannal series did a programme on the blowing up of Nelson’s pillar in 1966, now that was a documentary.

Charlie Bird being interviewed by FOX

No, ‘Charlie Bird’s American Year’ is all about me, me, me and the Bird man of Washington constantly comes out with classics like:  ”There are hundreds of thousands of people here I could just talk to, it’s just amazing there’s so many people…The hardest thing to get used to as Washington correspondent is the time difference…Enjoy the day, give me a kiss,” as he lands a smacker on this blonde and then again on another black woman. It wasn’t just me but they too were taken aback with touchy-feely Charlie who looked like a giant school boy in awe of himself as he set up base in “Ben’s Chili Bowl one of Washington’s legendary landmarks.”

Then the immortal line and Charlie’s take on the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20^th, 2009: “This is probably one of the biggest days of my broadcasting career…It’s just amazing, this time next year, who knows where this journey will have taken him, who knows, and indeed who knows where it will have taken me”? Who knows? Who cares? Jesus Christ get a grip man!

Birdwatchers don’t despair as it’s not that this series is without some redeeming features, moments of pure comic genius. Like when four gun-touting good old boys from West Virginia turn the tables and get Charlie to admit that he too would shoot someone to protect his family; the trip to Guantanamo where Charlie magnificently manages to come away without a picture of a single prisoner in an orange boiler suit and after chasing the new American Ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney, the 77 year old owner of the Super Bowl winning Pittsburgh Steelers, around Washington all St Patrick’s Day the intrepid Charlie fails to get the interview requested by his news desk. He even tries to enlist the aid of the Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Michael Martin who can hardly contain their mirth at his misery as he admits to camera, “The problem was I had no idea what Dan Rooney actually looked like.” One word for you Charlie - GOOGLE!

Ace reporter Bird bungles through this so called documentary more like Mr Bean as he keens to camera about his computer, the printer ,the alarm in his apartment (which he is unable to switch off) and oh yeah, did we mention how lonely he is in DC compared to back home in Dublin where “everyone knows me.”

“I didn’t know a soul here and was facing into a whole new life away from family and friends. It’s taken me a lifetime back home to build up solid political contacts and here in DC I was starting from scratch,” moans the Birdman. Perhaps if he wasn’t a proper Charlie, Bird could have asked his predecessors in the Washington bureau, Mark Little, Carole Coleman and Robert Shortt for their little black books so as to help keep the RTE flag flying stateside. Only when the credits roll on this opus that we discover that it’s an independent Crossing the Line production commissioned by RTE, so the entire gig is actually another nixer for the already well paid Charlie.

There is, however, one pertinent and poignant segment in this otherwise drivel of a documentary. For once Bird allows the camera to focus for a second on someone else - disgraced American army reservist, Lynndie England ,leaves her trailer-park home to meet the journalist in a diner, which they are asked to leave, as the former military police private has become a pariah, an outcast in her own community. The infamous face of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prison torture scandal made for compelling television. Convicted of a felony, she is no longer permitted to possess or use a firearm.

Charlie Bird in Detroit with Limerick Boxer Andy Lee

“I was so heartbroken when I found that out. I would (like to be a soldier today). I miss it actually, miss wearing the uniform and I miss the weapons. I miss it, I miss it, I miss being able to fire a weapon even if it’s just a firing range target practice, I miss it so much.”

But generally, Charlie fails to get the money shot. It would be like doing a documentary on the humpback whale and not getting any pictures of the whale. All Charlie seems to get is the hump.

Part deaux continued in the same vein.

As middle America coped with the worst ravages of the recession Charlie Bird cut straight to the nub of the matter: “I miss Ireland, I miss my family. This year I turn 60 and I want to be at home with them, whatever that says about me, I’ve decided that really I’m a home bird (no pun intended)…In many ways the year felt very long for me. I found life in Washington very lonely. I can honestly say in the twelve months that I have been here that I’ve met nobody…As for me I was beginning to feel a little worn out. I don’t know what madness possessed me to take this job…I miss my kids, my kids are 33 and 30 years of age, but I do. It’s meant to be a four year posting, but there’s absolutely no way that I’m going to stick it here, I just couldn’t do it.”

The end of an era.

This morning, (February 2^nd) RTE confirmed on its website that Charlie Bird will be replaced in Washington later this year by an internal candidate as he is to resume his previous role as Chief News Correspondent. The announcement, appropriately enough was made not in the news or current affairs section but was posted under entertainment.

As the Home Bird faded from the screen last night Pat Kenny flashed up to announce: “Old, alone and living in fear,” and for one dreadful moment it looked as if Bird might be back, but PK was merely flagging the latest instalment of The Frontline.

I have just got a final warning and legal notice in the post to pay my TV licence, but it seems to me that the €160 is going towards subsidising Charlie Bird’s midlife crisis. For so long Charlie was a big fish in a small pond, but across the pond, he’s small fry and out of his depth.

In Washington, Charlie don’t surf. Send in the lifeboats as this legend needs rescuing and watch this space for the sequel: ‘I’m Charlie the Celebrity - Get me out of here’.

• The programme was the theme of the sketch on Nob Nation on Monday &Wednesday January 25^th&27^th and again on Monday, February 1^st.