Cha and Miah discuss their concerns over Ireland joining the European Economic Community.

Cha has not seen any changes since Ireland officially joined the European Economic Community (EEC) on 1 January 1973.

We're in it now for a couple of weeks and I don't see no change nowhere. I'm exactly the same fella as I was at the end of last year.

While Miah always fancied himself as a continental, Cha believes that by joining the EEC, the Irish have sacrificed their individuality and discarded their sovereignty, tarnished their nationality and prejudiced their neutrality. Cha fears that there will be an influx of pornography and foreigners driving on the right or the wrong side of the road.

Keep to the left and your bound to be right.

They are amused by the fact that if the same rules and laws now apply across all EEC member states, the French will have to learn Irish at school.

Neither Cha or Miah are confident that the EEC will last describing it as a flash in the pan.

This episode of 'Hall's Pictorial Weekly' was broadcast on 13 January 1973.

Cha was played by Frank Duggan and Miah by Michael Twomey.

Frank Hall's amusing and satirical series began on 29 September 1971 with the full title 'Hall’s Pictorial Weekly Incorporating the Provincial Vindicator' which became known as 'Hall’s Pictorial Weekly'.

The series allowed Frank Hall to follow his own interest in the lives of viewers throughout the country. Regarded as RTE’s flagship comedy show, it featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture, as well as parody songs, comedy sketches, re-edited videos, cartoons and spoof television formats. The show ran for 9 series until 1980. In the RTE Guide on the week of its first transmission, Frank Hall wrote

The form and content of Hall’s Pictorial Weekly should be impossible to forecast until the last moment. It should be as varied and absorbing as life itself.

He further commented

I have an inexhaustible interest in the lives and times of the people who live in our country towns and villages; no event is too small to capture my attention, no community too out of the way... This programme is intended to be about you, your town, your friends, your local interests.

RTE Guide, September 24, 1971, Vol.8, No.9, p.2