Was Britney Spears's pop song Toxic written about Irish Supervet?
Noel Fitzpatrick returns for 14th season to heal a distraught couple’s grotesque fur-child
If you type “Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick” into Google image search you will be inundated by photos of the eponymous fur-physician cradling dogs and cats and penguins in his strong arms while staring intensely at you with his sad dark eyes.
Those are Laois eyes, designed to go with his still intact Laois accent and his solidly Laois name (You’re only legally allowed to call yourself “Noel Fitzpatrick” if you’ve considered setting up a small garage in the midlands). “I want to fix you,” say those Laois eyes. “I want to put splints on your limbs and give you lovely drugs and wrap you in a fluffy blue blanket.”
Oh yes! These images of Supervet remind me a little of those Athena posters from the 1980s like “tennis lady scratching bottom” or “muscular hunk holding baby” except Noel Fitzpatrick is a real vet and I’m pretty sure “muscular hunk” wasn’t really the father of that baby (it’s probably not even a real baby) and I’m also pretty sure “tennis lady scratching bottom” wasn’t a real tennis pro (it’s probably not even her real bottom).
If we at The Irish Times had paid more attention to the popularity of Supervet, I suspect we might have made a better fist of predicting Brexit and Trump
Anyway, Supervet came back this week for a 14th season (Weds, Channel 4) to do some more veterinary surgery for the cameras. In an age of uncertainty, there are few things more reassuring. Though, when you think about it, it’s a little baffling too. I mean, who knew that there was an audience of people who both liked seeing cute and cuddly animals and liked to watch a Laois man perform gruesome operations on those animals? (I mean, outside of Laois; I know in Laois that’s all anyone wants to do).
If we at The Irish Times had paid more attention to the popularity of Supervet and what this says about the human condition, I suspect we might have made a better fist of predicting Brexit and Trump and whatever else has happened by the time this paper goes to print.
All the ingredients in the new series are reassuringly the same. In this week’s episode, for example, a distraught couple arrive into the clinic with a puggle, Barney, who has been hit by a bus. They’ve bigger problems than this, though. “He’s our third child,” says the lady of the puggle.
Noel Fitzpatrick has seen it all and so is unfazed. He does not sit back in shock and say: “You. Gave. Birth. To. A. Small. Dog.” Instead he promises to heal her grotesque fur-child and then heads back to the surgery to poke around in Barney’s wounds and to say things like “the blood supply remains intact”.
“I like when he says things like that,” I say to my wife. “Things like ‘the blood supply remains intact’.”
