Enda Kenny choo-choo chooses to take up a career in TV

Pat Stacey

The former Taoiseach goes off track with his new role as TV presenter in RTE’s ‘Iarnród Enda’

Iarnród Enda features the former Taoiseach jumping on his bike and travelling around the country in search of our lost railways

April 05 2021 07:52 PM

THE relationship between politics and showbusiness has always been a fuzzy one, especially in America.

It’s the only country in the world where two celebrities — one a second-rate movie actor, the other a second-rate reality show star and third-rate businessman — have held the highest office in the land.

Maybe we shouldn’t be as surprised as we are. If we’ve learned anything from the increased TV coverage of US politics in recent times, it’s that the House of Representatives and the Senate seem to have an unusually large number of showboating chancers for whom serving the electorate amounts to little more than playing to the cameras.

Given how easily so many voters in the US can be swayed by performative posturing, it’s no wonder so many actors, most famously Ronald Reagan, have been drawn to a career in politics.

The Gipper quit the movie business in 1964 and served two terms as Governor of California before becoming a two-term president. When you’ve been comprehensively out-acted by a chimpanzee in a comedy called Bedtime for Bonzo, I suppose a political career promises a smidgen more dignity.

The future leader of the free world reportedly declined to appear in the sequel, Bonzo Goes to College, because he thought the premise wasn’t believable enough.

California had a second movie-star governor in Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also served two terms and, for a Republican, surprised many with his progressive stance on gun control and LGBT rights.

Clint Eastwood limited his political career to one term as Mayor of Carmel, a small seaside town in California. Eastwood — whose campaign included a pledge to lift a ban on eating ice-cream outdoors — had shot his 1971 film Play Misty for Me in Carmel and also owned a home there.

Far more US performers than you might think have held some class of political office, including former child star Shirley Temple Black, comedian Al Franken, trashy talk show host Jerry Springer and wrestler Jesse Ventura.

The late actor Fred Thompson even managed to juggle his job as a Republican senator with his role as Manhattan DA Arthur Branch in Law & Order.

Outside the US, the traffic tends to move in the opposite direction, with former politicians carving out new careers as television personalities.

Perma-tanned smoothie Robert Kilroy-Silk was a Labour politician long before he landed his BBC daytime show Kilroy, which was yanked off air after 17 years because of the host’s remarks ridiculing the Scots, Irish, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Black people, French, Germans and probably Hobbits too.

Since then he’s ping-ponged between politics and TV, including an appearance on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

Former Conservative minister Michael Portillo ditched the formal suits for pastel-coloured jackets and reinvented himself as the presenter of a string of documentaries about history and his abiding passion, steam trains.

After a stint on Strictly Come Dancing, former Labour politician Ed Balls segued neatly into various other celebrity TV contests and has even fronted a few documentaries, including Travels in Trumpland, which saw him donning a leotard and taking part in a wrestling match.

And why not? Politicians are human beings too, you know. Well, some of them, anyway. Still, I imagine more than a few eyebrows were raised at the news that former Taoiseach Enda Kenny has turned presenter for a new RTÉ One series about Ireland’s lost railways.

At the time of writing, I hadn’t seen last night’s first episode of Iarnród Enda (ouch!), so I have no idea of whether or not Kenny is a TV natural. Let’s be honest: he never looked entirely comfortable in front of a camera when he was running the country.

Casting off the burdens of high office seems to have had a positive effect on him, though. He turned up on The Late Late Show last Friday sporting longish lockdown hair, dad jeans and an open-necked shirt.

Just the top button, mind; there’s only so much mad bohemian abandon a man can get away with at a certain age. What I’m saying is, don’t expect to see Enda in a leotard anytime soon.