For the last couple of weeks Fatmammycat has been bemoaning the fact that Joe Coleman, the spoofing cunt who claims to be able to see the Virgin Mary, has been given free reign to spout his bollocks in the Irish media without anybody challenging him.

Nobody has just said ‘Look you, you’re a fucking liar and the claims you make are so obviously false. You’re using this to drum up business for your healing clinic. Fuck off’.

I realise they can’t quite use that language, but still. It’s maddening that such superstitious mumbo-jumbo has been given so much coverage without anyone disputing it.

What’s to stop anyone claiming to be able to predict the appearance of a made up deity? I could predict that I will see a vision of Zebedee in the snug in Ned’s of Townsend Street and I’m assuming I will get the same column inches and radio interviews as Joe Coleman. I’m sure when a bunch of knackers turn up and claim to see a miracle when the sun comes out from behind the clouds I can hand out business cards to ‘Twenty’s Instant Healing Clinic’ where I can cure anyone of anything they’d like once the small matter of my consultancy fee is paid. I can probably make contact with your dead dog too, if you’d like.

But Fatmammycat is right. The fact that the Irish media has given so much time to an obvious fraud is nothing short of appalling. It’s moving statues again. And we all know there’s no such thing as moving statues. We can look back on the craze, as it was, and laugh. So why didn’t we just laugh at this? Why didn’t we point the finger straight away and denounce him? Of course people can believe what they want to believe but that doesn’t mean we should just accept it or that we should provide a platform for frauds like Joe Coleman to cheat people out of their money.

Anyway, step forward Miriam Lord, whose Dail reports are always fantastic to read. In today’s Irish Times she reports from Knock where the ‘Blessed Virgin’ was due to make an appearance at 3pm on Saturday. Funnily enough she didn’t show up – apart from a secret flash of her holy knickers to Coleman.

It’s not as funny as Lord’s report though, which is bang on the money.