Ah Liveline, where would we be without you?
In one of the more bizarre moments from RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline – and there have been a few – a caller openly vouched for using valium as a good way of getting her driver’s licence.
Andrina from Mullingar told Joe Duffy of her secret to passing the driving test at the very end of an episode devoted to people who had failed their driver’s test multiple times.
Telling Joe that she had failed the test a total of five times, which included one instance when she “endangered the tester’s life on a bad bend”, it was on test number six that she decided to calm her nervousness by way of two Valium pills.
“My friend offered me two valium,” she said. “I sailed through it, because it was just nervousness.”
“I was just shaking, I couldn’t do it. So when I took the two valium, I was fine. I was just so calm.”
“I had lived in California for six years. I had a full Californian driver’s licence, but I couldn’t get the Irish one.”
Of course, a completely baffled Duffy asked if the current drug laws would not deter her.
To which she replied: “I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but for me it did the trick.”
Echoing the late author of Fear In Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson, when he said “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me”, she signed off to the speechless Joe with the classic line: “I’m a huge fan, I listen to you every day going home from work.”
“Safe driving Andrina” was all Duffy could muster up, after she basically said the only two things that make driving worthwhile are Liveline and Valium.
Safe driving.
Safe driving, indeed.
