Blindboy has since become a popular podcaster and author – all while wearing a plastic bag over his face. His fans love him dearly as a progressive figure with all sorts of outside-the-box ideas about the hidden societal ley lines rippling modern Ireland. But to most of the population he remains obscure, and it is quite a step up from podcasting to fronting a prime-time RTÉ history documentary, as he does on Blindboy: The Land of Slaves and Scholars (RTÉ One, Thursday, 10.
15pm). It’s a weird hotchpotch. At moments Blindboy comes across as an Irish version of Philomena Cunk , Diane Morgan’s English faux-documentary presenter, though without the laughs.
The biggest problem is that RTÉ doesn’t tell us why Blindboy is obscuring his features behind a bag and why he’s an authority on Irish history. Imagine Simon Schama presenting Civilisations while dressed in a bin liner. There would have to be a good reason – and the BBC would definitely offer an explanation.
RTÉ apparently assumes viewers will be au fait with the Blindboy persona when that is unlikely to be true for many tuning in. [ Blindboy: ‘I left my first day of school feeling great shame. The pain of that still rises up in me’ Opens in new window ] One upside is that it’s great to hear a Limerick voice on TV: it’s astonishing that regional accents are still such a rarity on the airwaves.
That said, Blindboy has an unusual method of delivery that makes everything he says sound sarcastic. Even whe.