In today’s Hospital Pass, there’s more straight talking from Colm Parkinson on Twitter, which is somewhere you will never, ever see the great John Mullane.
OK, first things first, let’s get this out of the way: we have developed a bit of a soft spot for Colm Parkinson.
There was always something of the rogue in Colm during his playing days. We remember the cut off sleeves, the sheer nerve he had to criticise the revered Micko (he labelled him a ‘bluffer’), and we’re almost sure that as a substitute for Laois, he once cut short a half-time interview with RTE in Croke Park to get involved in a fracas that was developing in the tunnel.
But while Colm the player was always good value for some entertainment, Colm the pundit is pure comedy gold and Newstalk have pulled off a coup in snapping up such a straight-talking analyst.
Parkinson wouldn’t bother patronising a journeyman corner forward with faint praise like ‘he may have shot nine wides, but he puts in a fierce amount of work tracking back’. No, no, this guy tells it like it is.
A couple of weeks after tweeting that he was ‘delighted for that knobhead MacLochlainn’ after Kildare’s loss to Dublin, Parkinson returned to one of his favourite themes and had a pop at the Kildare side named for the eagerly-awaited qualifier clash with his native Laois this weekend.
Under the guise @woolberto, Parkinson tweeted: “Saw the two teams……….Kildare full fwd line is brutal………Laois by 3 tomorrow….im off to Oxygen…..yeeaaoowww #tinytempah.”
This just a few days after he delivered his blunt verdict on new RTE GAA show The Committee Room:
“The committee room is some load of shite!!….really need a good gaa show.”
And Parkinson didn’t limit his straight talking to GAA either:
On Novak Djokovic and Manny Pacquiao: “Djokovic is on steroids like manny pac man….how can you just become world class in the latter stages of your carreer,” later retracted with: “Djokovic is not taking steroids as he is only 24 im informed,my bad..thought he was 28….pacman is drugged up to the eyeballs #takethetest.”
To David Haye earlier this week: “@mrdavidhaye hows your baby toe now little man.”
Nobody has ever really come close to replacing Colm’s namesake, Michael, as the king of chat show hosts and with Parkinson’s bullshi*t free approach a refreshing alternative to a lot of the arse-kissers on the box at the moment, the suits up in Montrose or across the water at the Beeb could do a whole lot worse than at least giving him an audition for the big job.
Mullane: I’ve no time for Twitter
While Parkinson is a fairly avid user of Twitter, you can virtually guarantee that John Mullane will never go next nor near the social networking behemoth.
We had a good chat with John earlier this week ahead of the Munster Final this week and asked him if he was into Twitter, Facebook and the whole social media thing.
“I’m totally, totally against it,” he told us.
“I had a situation where there was somebody pretending to be me on both Bebo and Facebook, so I got the Gardai involved and thankfully they were able to get rid of one or two of the pages off the internet, so I’m totally against it now, you know.”
As always, John will do his talking on the pitch, starting against Tipperary in what should be a cracking Munster Final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday.
