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David McWilliams is sounding like a populist politician

Bear Grylls is the man every male wants to be and every woman wants to be with 
Bear Grylls is the man every male wants to be and every woman wants to be with  Bear Grylls is the man every male wants to be and every woman wants to be with 

Ireland’s Great Wealth Divide, RTE 1, Monday at 9.35pm

David McWilliams hasn’t become a celebrity economist without being able to turn or phrase or two and draw a good analogy.

The ‘Breakfast Roll Man’ and ‘The Pope’s Children’ were sound ways of communicating economic arguments to a mass audience.

Essentially though, he made his name by identifying the Republic’s housing bubble and predicting the crash while Bertie Ahern was still asking why people like him were not "committing suicide" such, in the then Taoiseach’s view, was their negativity.

Since 2008 the McWilliams brand has grown and now includes four books, newspaper columns, television series, lectures and public appearances.

On Monday his latest project went out in the important slot after the 9pm news.

McWilliams wanted to explain that Ireland’s "trickle-down economics" (a phrase I hadn’t heard since the Thatcher years) wasn’t working and we were becoming a nation of extreme rich and poor.

Fair enough so far; except I kept waiting for the evidence, the numbers which would prove the theory.

In the absence of the evidence, perhaps we could expect suggested solutions or an answer as to how we might rid ourselves of this great wealth divide.

Rather we got more clever phrases. McWilliams gave us his 'Good Room' analogy again.

It goes something like this - his granny had a good front room that he was never allowed in because it was kept for important visitors. It was the face his granny wanted to show to the world because she felt inferior. It represented, said McWilliams, a "fear of rejection."

Now, it’s not a bad bit of pop psychology, but I have no idea what it has to do with the gap between rich and poor and why, in his view, we are getting more super rich and more very poor.

I suspect McWilliams used the analogy because he imagines it chiming with middle Ireland, the people who buy books and watch current affairs series.

Even if the good room did represent something significant it would only apply to a tiny proportion of the population because I haven’t seen a ‘good room’ in a couple of decades and I suspect there isn’t a single economically active household in the country which keeps the tradition.

No doubt McWilliams can also see the audience nodding their heads when he talks about bailing out of the bankers and that "austerity is the ultimate trick of the super rich."

He suggests that Ireland has a unique problem in the divide between rich and poor but surely Britain – a nation of landed gentry, public schools, inherited wealth, titles and Russian oligarchs – has a greater problem than us.

I’m afraid McWilliams has become a bit of a populist, an economist whose future probably lies in politics.

And besides how could you warm to a man who conducts some of his interviews in a pair of shades.

Britain’s Biggest Adventure, UTV, Tuesday at 9pm

Bear Grylls is another man who’s made a fortune out of understanding the market he’s serving.

Like all the great movie stars, he’s the man every male wants to be and every woman wants to be with.

That’s primarily the reason he’s replaced Ray Mears as television’s favourite survivalist.

Mears seems to think that people actually want to know how to like a fire in a wet jungle; Grylls knows that it’s just a bit of escapist television.

That and the fact that he’s prepared to get his kit off.

Britain’s Biggest Adventure had more slow motion replays of a man’s torso than a Take That video.