I’VE a regular walking route in Monaghan — a back-of-beyonds maze of laneways where, with traffic a rarity, I can stick in my earphones and listen to long podcasts without being run over.

The podcast medium is very different to radio.

5 Podcaster Blindboy Boatclub of the Rubberbandits

There are few ads, if any, and it never feels like there’s an editorial board or a team of lawyers interfering in and disrupting the content. It therefore feels rogue and timeless.

A great podcast meanders like my country walk, going through strange turns and down unplanned paths that delight and make you think.

There are trashy podcasts, like those self-indulgent true crime cold case series, but it is mostly renowned as a place for sophisticated thought-entertainment, plus sport.

A year ago, as I was strolling past poultry farms and a giant mountain of mushroom sh*te, I wondered whether I was one of the chosen few listening to Blindboy Boatclub’s bewitching podcast.

5 The Rubberbandits

It was surreal, listening to him jump from reading out Donald Trump’s tweets using the voice of a “drunk, perverted Limerick aunt” to chats about cognitive behavioural therapy or why the Virgin Mary was painted blue in Renaissance art.

I was beginning to think as the weeks went by, whether I had imagined this whole crazy series, tripping on the fumes of mushroom sh*te.

The podcast was so bizarre, but so full of off-the-cuff humour and brain-stirring amateur history takes, it became my obsession.

I wasn’t one of the chosen few, though. Blindboy’s podcast instantly became a monster hit.

It was only meant to last a few weeks to promote the release of his book of short stories. At that point, 12 months ago, people were just getting used to the return of the seemingly vanished Rubberbandit.

He’s a unique raconteur, delivering superlatively funny one-liners, mixed with serious messages about mental health or feminism, along with authoritative thoughts on music.

In the time since, his podcast is reaching a weekly audience of Late Late Show proportions. The book has spent a year in the bestsellers list, with a follow-up due out next year.

He made a pilot for the BBC on the housing crisis and it was so well-received in the Beeb a full series was commissioned before the pilot even aired.

This is extraordinary, considering Blindboy’s up-to-now low profile in the UK.

His podcast, gone from being a hobby out of his flat, now attracts sold-out live audiences and A-list interviewees like Spike Lee, Cillian Murphy and Roddy Doyle.

Its success is down to his sincerity and authenticity.

He’s a unique raconteur, delivering superlatively funny one-liners, mixed with serious messages about mental health or feminism, along with authoritative thoughts on music.

5 Blindboy on the Late Late Show

So yes, this comic thinker, who often sounds like a tiny D’Unbelieveable trapped in a bottle, and uses the c-word like it’s a hundreds and thousands sprinkling on his ice cream cone of word tornados, is a big f**king blockbuster hit.

Thing is, the mainstream media here don’t seem to have noticed.

Other than a few short pieces on his BBC commission, there isn’t much recognition in the traditional press for this gargantuan talent.

Absurdly, RTE, which has had Blindboy under its very nose for years, failed to spot his broader potential and have yet to notice his latest success.

Their biggest mistake was in failing to recognise his voice as RTE One, big audience content, with the ability to travel — a quality that was obvious in his seminal 2016 Late Late interview about male mental health.

The Rubberbandits first became known to us on Republic of Telly, RTE’s fondly remembered comedy series.

Horse Outside was a No1 hit and probably Ireland’s first YouTube hit, back in the Jurassic age of viral content, 2010.

The two frontmen went to Channel Four and did bits and pieces, occasionally releasing wonderfully weird music videos.

He is now a journalistic voice of the housing crisis through the medium of satire. Sadly for us, he’s doing it on the British housing crisis rather the Irish one.

The good tunes were underappreciated due to the comic element of their act. C4 didn’t stick, it was too soon perhaps.

Eventually, RTE commissioned the Rubberbandits to do an Easter Rising special, which was a brilliant irreverent antidote to the otherwise mawkish centenary programming.

Despite being made on a shoestring, it was applauded by critics, compared to the mega-bucks drama, Rebellion, seen as a flop.

A Rubberbandits Guides series followed in 2016, again warmly received but buried in the corpse of RTE Two, only receiving four episodes and a tiny budget. It wasn’t recommissioned and the Rubberbandits seemed to disappear.

Until now.

One half of the act, Blindboy Boatclub, has used social media and podcasts to showcase his talents on his own.

He is now a journalistic voice of the housing crisis through the medium of satire.

Sadly for us, he’s doing it on the British housing crisis rather the Irish one.

He says he would’ve loved to do the Irish version but RTE never asked. The BBC show is a triumphant piece of television for Blindboy and James Cotter, his ex-RTE writer-director collaborator.

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Few predicted his Limerick-lilted, ottery sense of humour would make any British TV commissioner sit up and take notice. Fewer still expected it would be the BBC itself.

His series is now filming and the podcast has remained top of the charts for more than a year now, making it one of the biggest in the world.

Turns out, Blindboy never really needed the recognition.

Tiresome poppy debate IT’S that time of year when trolls on both sides of the tiresome poppy debate raise their ugly egg-profile troll heads. As usual, James McClean, above, is at the centre of the row. He’s refusing to wear a poppy to commemorate the time when he refused to wear a poppy. Cue abusive, sectarian chanting from his own Stoke City fans, followed by a silly social media post by McClean. At the centre of the row for Irish people is whether the poppy represents only its origins — the soldiers, including Irish troops, who died during World War One — or whether it represents all British Army conflicts then and since, including the Troubles. This is the trouble with symbols. They are a fiction that can represent whatever you choose. There is no constitution for symbols that we can point to and say definitively what they mean. The poppy issue here is fraught because proto-Republicans wear their refusal to don the red flower with foolish aggression and, equally, some wear it to troll the refusers. None of it is in the spirit of commemoration or dignity. The debate has achieved nothing but more division, a century on from a conflict that divided the world. When will mankind learn from its past? There has to be a better way to remember the Irish war dead than simply copying British traditions or weakly adding a shamrock.

No need for second opinion, Simon

IT’S hard to agree with much ex-HSE boss Tony O’Brien has to say, but his comments on “frightened little boy” Simon Harris were a joy to behold.

It was lazy to attack the Health Minister on his youth, but it was funny.

5 Former HSE chief Tony O'Brien Credit: PA:Press Association

And his description of Harris as a weak minister obsessed with media coverage and “scared” of headlines had a lot of heads nodding.

Harris hit back meekly by saying he doesn’t apologise for holding people to account.

Tony O’Brien presided over the cervical cancer scandal and retired slightly earlier than planned on a full pension.

If that’s what Harris thinks is accountability, then things are worse than we thought.

5 Minister for Health Simon Harris Credit: PA:Press Association

The egomaniacal tit-for-tat between O’Brien and Harris this week demonstrates that personal pride might mean a whole lot more to these alphas than improving health.

Harris’ fightback is bit rich since he’s the latest in a long line of Ministers hiding behind the HSE during every scandal.

Beset with crises, Harris’ obsession is to constantly indulge in social media self-congratulations over his small part in the decades-long Repeal the Eighth campaign he joined at the last minute.

Oddly it was his predecessor, now boss Leo Varadkar, who struck the best note of the week.

He pointed out we often judge the health service on A&E queues and waiting lists, rather than focus on the improving results, especially on cancer and strokes in recent years.

Shucks, it’s hard to disagree.