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Sligo sketch on RTÉ slated as 'unacceptable'

RTE's new comedy show, The Fear, is shot around Ireland in Dublin, Sligo, Cork, Tralee and Killarney, the six-part comedy show has been produced by Second Tribe, staffed by the team behind ‘Republic of Telly’.

The show has Jennifer Maguire, Hilary Rose, Ross Browne and Chris Tordoff playing pranks on the general public.

However in its first airing a sketch shot on the streets of Sligo has been branded as 'unacceptable ' in the national media.

Independent.ie stated, Even leaving aside the ghastly news stories of the past fortnight from Wales and Melbourne, you would imagine that comedy sketches about the rape of children and the sexual abuse of young women would be deemed entirely unacceptable by any responsible broadcaster.

RTÉ clearly thinks otherwise and in its new RTÉ Two hidden camera show, The Fear, it serves up both of these horrible scenarios for our supposed merriment.

In one scene, actress Hilary Rose poses as an East European prostitute on the streets of Sligo, where she repeatedly asks a bemused local lorry driver if he has "girls inside". These, she informs him in broken English (the attempts at humour are distinctly racist, too), are friends whom she was due to meet after they were transported to Sligo and she instructs him to search the lorry for them.

Later, the same character goes into a local shop, left, where she seeks help in choosing a card for her niece. Asked by the young woman assistant if it's for a birthday or a Holy Communion, she says "No, she break her virgin" and the card is to congratulate her on "cracking your box". Her niece, she adds, is "13, but she late starter, you know".


Chatting to two charity collectors she enquires if they are too are 'in the business' referring to her supposed trade.

Created and written by Shane Mulvey, Derek Dillon and Peter Foott, this is a show that's as unfunny as it's rancid. In one scene, the aggressively resistible Jennifer Maguire tells a young woman in Galway about the violent accidents that have happened to her pets and, when the woman giggles, she shouts at her: "Are you laughing? It's not funny."

(Independent.ie final comment) No, it's not and RTÉ ought to be ashamed of itself.