charles darwin

Sorry RTE… this is Ireland’s greatest person.

Next month RTE launches its search to find Ireland’s Greatest Person. As usual when the national broadcaster adapts a successful format from abroad, the resulting mess will likely serve only to remind us of what a small and, in the wider scheme of things, insignificant nation this actually is.

The BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons list in 2002 included personages as august as Churchill, Shakespeare and Darwin. Our list runs to only forty names. But it still finds room to indulge the preposterous candidatures of Mssrs. Daniel O’Donnell, Michael O’Leary and fully three (three!) members of the Boyzone camp: Ronan, Stephen and Louis Walsh. Read the rest of this entry »