“No Job For A Grown Man”

In the early 1990s, Ray D’Arcy hosted a children’s show on RTE 2, called Den TV or The Den. Co-hosting with D’Arcy was an array of different puppets, Zig and Zag, Socky, and Dustin The Turkey were the most prominent ones. One day Zag appeared on the show with a ventriloquist dummy he had apparently found in a bin behind a magic shop, this dummy was called Podge. For a while Zag did some awful skits with Podge until one day of his own accord, Podge said to Zag, :”Aren’t you a smelly, stupid, ugly alien?” From then on Podge came into his own as an evil character who bullied Zig, and got him into trouble, trying to persuade him to steal a bike that was a competition prize etc. D’Arcy and his other co-presenters were oblivious to all of this and Podge would move in the background or be seen plotting and generally getting up to devilment, as he might say. Podge eventually revealed his evil and took over The Den in a coup d’état of sorts, before being defeated by the magician who gave him life. From this time on Podge would appear from time to time, usually around the holidays (especially Christmas), and try to spoil the festive fun. He would dress up in disguises and fool D’Arcy and the gang, before taking them out one by one and tying them up, he even kidnapped Santa Claus. After a while his identical twin brother Rodge was introduced. He posed as a policeman in order to free Podge after he had been caught by the Den gang. The two continued to show up around the holidays to cause trouble.

This all ended in 1997, when the dastardly duo, who were conceived and performed by Mick O’Hara and Ciarán Morrison, made a pilot. The pilot was a ten minute skit called “Lazybones”, in which Podge tells the story of the sinister and untimely death of a lazy man. The show was picked up by RTE, and A Scare At Bedtime was born. The show ran from 1997 until 2006 spanning nine seasons, the episodes were almost always structured in the same way, Rodge says something, which reminds Podge of a tale, which he launches into, usually to scare Rodge into staying home and prevent him from having any fun. Up until the last couple of seasons, the story would always be told from the twins bedroom in Ballydung Manor. The names of the characters and places in the stories would usually be related to bedroom, and or bathroom activities. For instance, names like Carmel Sutra and Lorcan Piles, or places called Lesbania or Ballybollick. There were recurring characters, like Penos, the lawyer, taxi-driver etc and detective Spunk Murphy of the Limerick C.I.D. Every so often their alter-egos, Fester and Ailin would be featured on Ballydung Radio, the terrible twins radio station, with songs about tropical diseases, Halloween antics involving fireworks and orifices, or murdering Santa Claus to mention but a few. They would also be joined on occasion by their cat Pox, whom Rodge stuffs for dinner one Christmas, and Spunky the cigarette smoking, Russian, communist, monkey who steals groceries for Rodge and smuggles them back for him. Granny O’ Lepracy (who is allegedly in league with “The Quare Fella”) is mentioned often, but is only ever seen once through the door in a silhouette.

The evolution of Podge and Rodge, from childish, bit-part villains on The Den, to foul mouthed, lecherous gobsheens is summed up perfectly by the creators :”When we started you couldn’t say the word ’arse’ on television, but by the end we were cursing like Mary Coughlan TD on a plane to Brussels.” The show also featured the late king of Irish talk radio Gerry Ryan as himself, and a yet-to-be-discovered PJ Gallagher as a dishonest taxi man who swindles hapless tourists, “Town, is it? I’ll take ye to town alri’!”. In the year 2000 the duo received the IFTA award for best entertainment programme and were commissioned by UK Play to do a Ballydung Radio music/comedy show and hosted a TV blooper show for the BBC, called Podge And Rodg’es TV Bodges. They also hosted the re-launch of RTÉ 2 in 2004. They have also sold out live performances in Vicar St, won other awards, hosted the Meteor awards in 2007 and published The Ballydung Bible the same year. The later episodes of A Scare At Bedtime are not up to the standard of the earlier shows, they tried to spice up these episodes by having Ireland’s answer to Ronnie and Reggie Kray, leave the bed and even the house, but by that point they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. In 2006 they scrapped A Scare At Bedtime in favour of The Podge And Rodge Show. This was a talk show which featured mostly B-list celebrities being ridiculed by the twins. Although it did have its moments, it never really impressed me. In 2009 they took an old Scare At Bedtime gimmick, The Stickit Inn (not to be confused with The Slipit Inn) and made a new show out of it, Podge And Rodge’s Stickit Inn. This show started off as a celebrity pub quiz, but regressed into a hybrid of The Podge And Rodge Show, and the Ballydung Radio show they did for UK Play.

Recently, they appeared on their old nemesis Ray D’Arcy’s 2FM magazine radio show to promote their new A Scare At Bedtime DVD box-set, featuring all 150 episodes including 50 which have never been seen. Also featured in this box-set are the infamous “outrageous outtakes” which were a gimmick that featured at the end of every “best of” video-tape collection that were released while the show was still running. On the D’Arcy show they performed a live episode from the series about grave robbers in which they incorporated D’Arcy and his co-presenters into the tale, having them act out parts. They also mentioned that they have a new show coming out soon. I think that part of the reason I like A Scare At Bedtime is the fact that, I had seen the two on The Den as a child and loved their characters. So when A Scare At Bedtime came out when I was seven, I naturally loved it. Partly because of the fact that I already liked the characters, but mostly for the dirty words (half of which I didn’t understand). And while I can now see how juvenile some of the content is, I still like it for the nostalgic aspect of it, as well as the fact that most of it is still funny.

So, if like me, A Scare At Bedtime is a part of your childhood (for good or ill), then buying the box-set is definitely worth your while. It costs no more than €30 and has lots of great extras like Fester and Ailin’s crappy jukebox and the original pilot. In less than 20 years, the Ballydung boys have done more than most real people, so much for ventriloquism being “no job for a grown man”.