Here's a fine 'Hatchet Job' on Charlie Bird

irishindependent.ie

Darragh McManus: Sad fact is Bird made a right Charlie of himself

IT IS appropriate that Charlie Bird featured in the first series of RTE's 'Who Do You Think You Are', back in 2008.

Because to a large extent that defines what went wrong with a broadcasting career that promised much -- and in fairness, delivered at times.

Who did he think he was? And what did he think he was?

Bird used to be a news reporter. Until this week he still was one, but only in theory.

He lost credibility as a newsman -- coincidentally, also around the late Noughties -- when he became a "personality", a celebrity of sorts.

He was prone to inserting himself into the story anyway; eventually this reached its logical (or illogical) conclusion and Bird more or less became the story.

He went to Antarctica and moaned about the cold. He went to the Amazon and moaned about the heat. He went to poverty-crippled India and moaned about the discomfort.

These travelogues made the viewer cringe, as did last year's documentary about his ill-fated stint as RTE's Washington correspondent.

Whatever traces of esteem that lingered for Bird as a serious reporter were blown to smithereens. He came across as solipsistic, apathetic, fearful and unimaginative.

Worst of all, for a newsman, he seemed to have lost his nose for a good story.

Seminal

Over the past few years Bird has flitted about from job to job, genre to genre, even medium to medium: he's filled in for Marian Finucane on Radio 1 and hosts a weekend discussion show.

But he's proven himself a jack of all trades and master, really, of none.

He isn't very good as a moderator, interviewer or documentarian. He's not Finucane and he's not Michael Palin.

He doesn't have the sparkling personality to cut it as a celebrity, nor the brilliant intellect of a Pat Kenny-type current affairs maestro. But he is -- or used to be, at least -- a good reporter.

Plenty of stories from three decades testify to that. The IRA ceasefires and the Peace Process, tax evasion at National Irish, the Gulf War, the anti-Orange riots in O'Connell Street: Bird was there for many seminal moments, and did a fine job.

But those riots saw him criticised for making himself the centre of the story after he was attacked, and it's been downhill ever since.

Those 12 months Stateside, and the ill-advised travel programmes, have shredded his reputation as a broadcaster.

There was even a satirical "Charlie Bird facts" trend on Twitter a while back.

This isn't something to be celebrated. You wouldn't want to dance on his professional grave. In fact, it's a shame that Bird the reporter became Bird the figure of mockery.

Charlie asked himself: "Who do you think you are?"

For some reason, it seems he came up with the wrong answer.

- Darragh McManus

Irish Independent