For the last three or four months I have been given an additional (honorary) job by WLR as well as my cookery piece.
This is a book review, once a fortnight I am asked to review some current work of (usually Irish) non-fiction which we then discuss in the studio.
Up to this the books haven’t been exactly mind blowing, I found Colin Farrell’s biography a little underwhelming, The Mind Gym, a load of old cobblers, Sharon Osborne’s life was perhaps the most interesting because she is totally dishonest and a little careful examination of her attempts to show herself always the victim proved her to have been anything but.
Another interesting book I had to review was called Does Anything Eat Wasps, this taken from the correspondence of the New Scientist , related some of the fascinating questions asked of their readers over the years.
Unfortunately whereas most of the questions were riveting, most of the answers, to a layman like myself, were dull as stock market listings.

This weeks effort was without doubt the best so far.

This is a real attempt by one of Irelands up and coming media Gurus to give some explanation of the amazing changes which have happened in Ireland in the last 15 to 20 years, or as he would have it, since the advent of the arrival of John Paul in Ireland and today.

He rightly points that as we left our third world economies behind most of us saw our progress as towards a sound socialist template rather like Denmark.
However he demonstrates that it is not Denmark but Denver that we have arrived at in the beginning of the 21st century.

Mc Williams makes his points well, he talks of the Wonderbra effect as we are all being lifted upwards and closer together, He talks of our new emerging middle class as Kells Angels living in Deckland, and of our new intelligentsia as being Hi-Cos or Hibernian Cosmopolitans.
It is with these very cutsie nicknames that he loses me.

Bright and all as Mc Williams is (and there is no doubting his economic training) his Peter York(responsible for inventing the Sloane Ranger) style of nomenclature grates very quickly.

He also, I think gets a little carried away with his own cleverness and ends up satirising all of modern Ireland without permitting even himself a ditch to sit on.
Satire without some positive pointers becomes self defeating.

It is still an important book, the first of an attempt to discover why and from where came our new found rating as one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and the effect which this is having on us.

David Mc Williams