Clearly there have been many things which were unfunny just for a few minutes, or maybe once a week, like Podge and Rodge.

But has there ever been anything as unfunny on a sustained basis, day after day for several weeks, with so many unfunny contributions from so many prominent people? No, I don't think so.

I just can't recall anything which was as unfunny as this, for as long as this, in every aspect from the beginning to the end. It was an unfunny idea, which became an unfunny song, which was performed in an unfunny way, and which generated thousands of comments, all of which were completely and utterly unfunny.

All of them.

Not just 99.999% of them. All of them. One hundred per cent of the things which were said or written about Dustin's Eurovision entry were unfunny, quite apart from being uninteresting, and unintelligent.

Most of us are aware now, of that deep level of mediocrity which finds its expression in the "funny" question at the end of Questions & Answers, the one that isn't actually funny, but which allows people with no sense of humour to say something which they hope will portray them in a humorous light. Something which invariably turns out to be horribly unfunny.

The Dustin episode has turned the plodding spirit of those sad little sessions into something of a national orgy of unfunniness, giving licence to a whole tribe of unfunny people to do their worst, safe in the knowledge that nothing is expected of them in this context.

And it has revealed at this juncture that the legendary Irish sense of humour is not just pisspoor. It is practically bankrupt.

And this is a very serious thing. Because we probably still think we're an hilarious bunch, we Irish. We're probably still under the illusion that no matter how bad things get, we can always have a laugh .

Unfortunately, our laughter is increasingly hollow, for the simple reason that as a nation, we apparently no longer have any idea what is funny, and what is not funny.

The Irish have lost that vital faculty, somewhere along the way.

There may be individuals in this country who are genuinely funny, who know the difference between good and bad in this area, between right and wrong -- I would estimate that at present, there are approximately four such individuals in public life, living and working in Ireland.

That's roughly four, out of four million

As for the rest, they have revealed themselves to be just like that Q&A panel, struggling to be funny, or at least to recognise funniness when it happens, but with no real idea of how it works.

Maybe the Irish are just too rich now, to understand what it takes to be funny.

Flann O'Brien was funny, but he probably wouldn't have been half as funny, if he wasn't a man of vast seriousness who devoted his best energies to the construction of funny things. And a character like The Brother probably wouldn't have been funny at all, if he was a successful businessman or the head of his own PR company, performing his works of genius in an affluent community.

Certainly the Jewish experience would suggest that the quality of a nation's humour is directly related to the depths of its suffering.

But the Irish too have a fair old back catalogue of suffering, and we drew heavily on that great store of misery for much of our finest humour.

We knew that humour wasn't an optional extra, that we really needed to be able to see the funny side, in order to survive.

And there was also a profound intelligence at work here, best expressed by Patrick Kavanagh who declared that the comic vision is the highest form of expression, that tragedy is just under-developed comedy.

Yes we used to send out a pretty high class of practitioner, to represent us in these fields.

Now we have lost it to such an extent, it took the Eurovision to tell us that the Irish sense of humour sucks.

And no, it wasn't a case of Dustin's hilarity being lost in translation, as a Q&A audience member feared.

It wasn't funny in any language, in any aspect, and those Eurovision fruitcakes knew that , and the Irish with their centuries of comic sophistication didn't know it until they were told in the most embarrassing terms.

Certainly the RTE "delegation" wouldn't have known it, and how could they? They exist in a culture in which the best energies are spent trying to figure out who will be the next Junior Minister for the Environment, in which the mere mention of the word "Dustin" is enough to make them laugh out loud, and the Emperor's New Clothes is the daily narrative.

And then, from a bunch of East European peasants, they hear the truth.