Time for the minister to butt out

I see that the Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, has adopted the role of Ireland's unofficial censor. It isn't a hat that fits him any better than it did any other meddling Minister in the past. To say that he'd be well advised to ditch it as a fashion statement is to put it mildly.

At one time, Martin looked like one of he bright young stars in the Fianna Fáil camp, a man who would be Taoiseach at some time in the future. He hadn't often put a foot wrong, in his ascent to a prominent position on the party's front bench. And generally, he came across as a straight-forward, no-nonsense, individual, who was broadly reformist and intelligent in his views.

That veneer has begun to crack somewhat over the last couple of years with the slow and tortuous pace of change in the health services making him seem somewhat less dashing than might previously have been assumed. To be fair to Martin, this is the way things tend to go: in practice, the very nature of the behemoth that is the public service tends to make it difficult to push even the most practically-grounded schemes through to realisation.

What's clear, however, is that he still has a lot to prove if he is to fulfil the promise of his early career. He won't be helped in this endeavour by wasting time and energy, becoming embroiled in an attempt to dictate to television

drama producers when or how characters should be shown smoking, on-screen.

For those who missed it, the Minister has expressed concern about the extent to which the young stars of the RTE series, Bachelor's Walk, have been seen lighting up during the drama. Apparently, he plans to write to the RTE Authority on the theme. According to reports, RTE has responded by accepting that the level of smoking may be excessive, and suggesting that, if there is a second series, they will talk to the producers about the possibility of getting one of the more prominent smokers to give up the fags during it.

On the face of it, this exchange might seem harmless enough – but it is not.

In the first instance, the automatic assumption that merely depicting something on-screen acts an incitement to people to follow suit is flagrantly simplistic, to the point of absurdity. It is embarrassing that the Minister would seem to be operating on that hopelessly limited understanding of the nature of drama, and the way it works, or can work, whether consciously or sub-consciously, on people's perceptions and attitudes.

To take one example, there is a horribly real and (I imagine) intentionally grim, and therefore funny, scene in Bachelor's Walk, in which a drunken Michael seduces – if that is the appropriate word! – the

bar-maid from Mulligan's venerable boozing establishment.

On the couch back at his place, Michael is shown holding a big fat joint in one hand. And in the other, he produces an even fatter looking object – no, it's not what you're thinking, it's a chocolate swiss-roll, with which he proceeds to stuff his greedy face. Following which, he turns to his new squeeze and proceeds to give her a big, messy, pushy, slobbering kiss. Jesus! It is a moment of grizzly woefulness, rendered all the moreso because this, you know, is exactly the awful reality of so much post-pub sex in this country.

Did this 'love scene' make the

swiss-roll sexy? Will it turn the chocolate version into a must-chew for every young fella henceforth, who's desperately trying to get his leg over after a few scoops? I think not. (Come to think of it, I fervently I hope not or there'll be a terrible problem of obesity down the line. Minister! Can we not stop RTE showing people stuffing themselves with swiss-rolls? Think of the cost to the nation when our cardiac departments have to deal with the fall-out in twenty years time. I feel a national emergency coming on).

In the same vein, the fact that the three main (male) characters all smoke does not automatically make smoking more attractive. On the contrary, there is a large dollop of very effective satire in the programme, a sense that these boys are precisely not the kind of people that anyone in their right mind would want to emulate. It is one of the successes of Bachelor's Walk that the characters are believable, that they are convincing enough to make us care about what happens next. But do we want to be like them? Only if we're already very soft in the head.

One of the Minister's arguments is that it is unrepresentative, that all three of the blokes smoke. Sure it is, since two out of three of the population don't smoke at all. But for the very obvious reason that so many other people dislike smoking so intensely, smokers tend to seek one anothers company. In practice, three nicotine heads hanging out together is quite common. So even that complaint won't wash.

I say all this as someone who feels ill at the thought of fifteen or sixteen year-olds taking up the smoking habit. The fact that so many more girls are now risking destroying their health for what is essentially a dirty and unwholesome activity, that in the long run delivers very little in the way of real pleasure to boot, only makes it all the more galling.

I have no problem with the Minister using the machinery of the State in an open and direct way to do whatever he can to make people in general, and young people in particular, aware of the dangers of the habit. But the point is that he has huge resources available to him, and he and the Department have the freedom to put their own positive campaign in place. So why don't they stick to that?

Meddling in the editorial and creative aspects of a television drama has no place in that scheme of things.

If it has, why doesn't he go a step further. For example, does he think it is a good example to school-girls throughout Ireland that the series shows one of them bunking school, and having it off on a regular basis with a guy that has to be at least ten years older? Surely he should give RTE a good telling off for the scene in which the same Jennifer asks her boyfriend Barry for a spanking?

Or can we take it from the fact that the Minister has restricted his critical comments to the observation that too many of the characters smoke, that he approves of the rest of the goings-on in Bachelor's Walk?

The real point is that the series is a major success because it is bloody good. It is made by people who understand the milieu that is being depicted. It is smart, streetwise and funny, precisely because the writers and producers were afforded the required level of creative freedom. And the last thing that it needs – or that RTE needs – is the kind of meddling that might puncture its sense of assurance and adventure.

If everyone will forgive the Americanism, on this one, the Minister should Butt Out. For the good of all our mental health.