Was it for this?
Following the 1972 US Presidential election, the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael said she couldn't understand how Richard Nixon had won the Presidency since no one she knew voted for him.
Cue hoots of derision from Republicans about the cluelessness of the 'cultural elites'. Nixon had of course won 49 of the 50 states in the biggest landslide of the 20th century.
At this point, I must confess to feeling the same way about Brendan O'Carroll's sitcom, Mrs. Brown's Boys.
In the Year of our Lord 2015, more people in Ireland watched both the Mrs. Brown's Boys Christmas Day special and the Mrs Brown's Boys New Year's Eve special than watched both the All-Ireland hurling final and the Ireland-Germany Euro 2016 qualifier.
The sobering figures for the most watched TV events of 2015 were released yesterday evening.
We should caution at this point that the figures don't account for the amount of people who might be watching the one TV in a pub.
Unsurprisingly, the Late Late Toy Show powered to the top of the list with 1.55 million tuning in at one point over the course of the evening.
The figures confirm the nation's affection for the national rugby team. Three Rugby World Cup matches hold the 2, 3, and 4 slots.
Curiously, it is Ireland's win over France which sits in second spot with an average viewership of 1,15 million, while the following week's quarter-final against Argentina is in third spot with an average of 1.09 million. The Italy match came next where the average audience figures dipped below one million. The All-Ireland football final was the fifth most watched event.
Despite the game's well-flagged importance, Ireland's second leg against Bosnia was only the seventh most watched programme of 2015.
The Poland-Ireland Euro 2016 qualifier in Warsaw attracted an average audience of 772.1 meaning that 383,100 people watched the Ireland-France rugby match in the afternoon and then turned off the telly.
Indeed, in a mark of how of either how far the Irish football team had fallen in the affections of the nation or how much the personality of Charlie Haughey continues to fascinate, an unspecified episode of RTE drama series 'Charlie' (we suspect the opener) attracted a bigger audience and a bigger audience share than any Ireland soccer qualifier. Daniel McDonnell makes a good point here.
@ballsdotie doesn't factor in people watching on Sky though...and I can't imagine many people met their mates in pub to watch Haughey
— Daniel McDonnell (@McDonnellDan) January 12, 2016
This is not the worst news to emerge from this poll.
Mrs. Brown's Boys: Widow's Memories (aka, the New Year's Eve special) was the ninth most watched TV programme of 2015 while Mrs Brown's Boys: Mammy's Christmas Punch came 12th in the list.
The All-Ireland hurling final had to make do with being the 13th most watched sporting event of 2015. The Ireland-Germany Euro 2016 qualifier, which most assumed would result in a heavy defeat, is nowhere to be seen in the poll.
In mitigation, it could be pointed out that the All-Ireland hurling final held a bigger share of the television audience than did Mr O'Carroll's cross-dressing extravaganza.
Also, Sky Sports showed the All-Ireland hurling final and the Ireland-Germany game although the figures of people watching games on Sky over RTE in this country are typically very low indeed.
Still, the stark results of this poll indicate that 25,000 more people watched an episode Mrs.Brown (possibly the worst sitcom in history) than watched the most romanticised event in the Irish sporting calendar.
Read more: The Real Reason For Munster's Decline?
