So Eddie Hobbs is tilting at the Government windmill, is he? He's dashing his gauntlet against the impassive face of the State machine?
This morning's Irish Independent is in quite a tizzy over Eddie Hobbs, with four seperate articles about the Daniel O'Connell of our times - the Great Calculator, if you like. Of course, it wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility that the Indo speaks with forked tongue - the Indo has been using whatever sticks it can find to hammer the current administration, and the looming prospect of a Sinn Féin / Fianna Fáil coalition, which would mean the end of life as we know it as far as Abbey Street is concerned, has caused the paper to redouble its whackage. Eddie is the current cudgel de jour.
And what a cudgel - Eddie is described in this piece in the Indo as "becoming a national hero." Says who? What evidence does the Irish Independent show to back up this alligation? The fact that 778,000 people watched his show on Monday? 988,000 people were watching the Rose of Tralee the week before - does that mean that the beautiful Aoibhíonn Ní Shúilleabháin is the people's choice for Taoiseach, with Ray D'Arcy taking over from Mary Harney in the Department of Health?
The Eddie Hobbs effect is this: he's something for the nation to talk about while waiting for their invariably late bus or while stuck in traffic on the M50. But this Friday the Late Late Show will be back on the telly, and Kerry Katona will inevitably be a guest and she'll tell Pat all about how much weight she's lost and how much she loves her children and what a lovely time she had in her addiction clinic and Eddie Hobbs will be put in the same section of Yesterday's News as Dorothea Dowling.
Who's Dorothea Dowling? Well, that's another story...
