Not ready for this decent exposure

IT DIDN'T have to be this way of course.

- Neil LESLIE

The nation struggling to stay awake on its sofa.

The political drama junkies shaking with withdrawal symptoms.

Virgin Media bosses wondering is it too late to slot in another rerun of The Chase instead?

Monday's humdrum opening debate of the presidential election campaign could have been so much more.

Just think of what we were denied.

Instead of the debate we got on the values of the tricolour between Catherine Connolly, Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin, viewers could have had the spectacle of Conor McGregor, wrapped in the flag and doing a ring walk through the studio to chants of "Ireland's Full".

He could have livened up a lacklustre back-and-forth about crime with an insider's account of his own brushes with the law and the evil conspiracy cult that is the Garda Traffic Corps.

Who wanted a socialist viewpoint of neoliberal housing policies from Connolly when there was a time we might have had Bertie Ahern and Bob Geldof go head-to-head on the merits of the banana republic economy?