Bettystown: Where the Help Go for Their Holidays

Quentin Fottrell in today's Irish Times:

There was a bit of an argy-bargy on Tuesday’s Mooney (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays). Paddy O’Gorman, who made his name talking to social welfare recipients on his series Queuing for a Living, will happily interview the working classes – he just wouldn’t like to go on holidays with them.

“Would I go to Bettystown myself on holidays?” he said when a texter asked him to apologise for his “low-class” comments. “Sure I’m much too middle class for that.” But when prodded by presenter Derek Mooney, perhaps with one eye on his own demographic, O’Gorman apologised . . . sort of. “I am sorry if I offended anybody,” he said, before adding of Bettystown Del Sol, “It’s a big traditional Dublin working class, extended-family holiday.”

. . .

O’Gorman said, “It is a strong working-class Dublin accent that you find in the caravan parks.” He added, “Apartheid South Africa was black and white. In a Western country such as Ireland, class distinction is based on a thousand subtle distinctions.” O’Gorman’s attitude provided an accidental insight into how the middle classes long to differentiate themselves from the working classes.

Actually, if he wants to use apartheid South Africa as an analogy, he'd have been better off talking about Mosney Refugee Centre up the road.