Dempsey's Den Club Membership

"As children, we watched children's television on the BBC. It was one of the things that distinguished Dublin people from people who only got two channels and it marked us off as either West Brits or culturally cosmopolitan sophisticates, depending on your point of view. BBC children's television was slick and well-funded and essentially paternalistic, the voice of the empire amusing and instructing its subjects. To us England was as familiar and recognisable as New York - a place that existed on television. It comes as a shock when you are grown up to discover that it really is like that. Anyway, Zig and Zag, represented the antithesis of that. It would be wrong to call them 'irreverent' because that would suggest that RTE was somehow, as the BBC seemed to be, a thing to be accorded reverence (an idea that is completely hysterical to anybody who has ever had any dealings with RTE.) But since they were on television they carried a certain clout or authority about them, and the manner in which they defied or squandered this was what gave them their genius. They slagged off their viewers with the same kind of affectionate gusto with which they slagged off Ian-o (and later Ray). The Director General of RTE, the DG, was a frequent target for their mockery, and even as children whose knowledge of the management structures of the national broadcaster was of necessity limited, we felt as if we were in on a particularly bold joke. It was clear that Zig and Zag were amusing themselves in ways that were incomprehensible to ten-year-olds. We felt like children in a kitchen where adults are being indiscreet - privileged, and privy to something we couldn't understand but which we knew was a bit bold. But the humour was never smart-arsed or too knowing, and it is one of the things that made it distinctively Irish, that a joke could be communicated between generations at different levels without condescension even if we didn't quite understand its terms. The books and videos (Fridge in a Denim Jacket and Nothing to do with Toast) never captured the spontaneous joy of the live broadcasts and it would probably be fruitless to try to explain or recreate the liveliness and wit that the Den represented, but I was delighted to find my old Dempsey's Den membership card (sponsored by Kellogg's 'Toppas') and if anybody wants to set up a WhatsApp group for members I'd be on for that...."