Irish Examiner Column 19/04/2021: The Extra Programme

Do you know what I miss? The Extra Programme.

Like power cuts, hitchhiking and warning hitchhikers that ‘that car window didn’t close properly so don’t open it, like a good man’, the Extra Programme was a feature of life thirty years ago, that we accepted as normal. I never quite understood where the Extra Programme came from. 

It wasn’t regularly scheduled and rarely advertised. It was as if the RTÉ scheduler checked the sums and realised that The Sullivans was ending ten minutes earlier than they’d thought, so someone had better go root randomly in the Extra Programme drawer because the News wasn’t ready yet.

Either way, when the announcer said “and now for our younger viewers, an extra programme” there was a certain tension in their voice. Like a waiter saying ‘And now sir, you ordered the Chef’s special?’, wondering how a Beef Man would react to the seafood, still-wriggling under the domed lid.

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