'Right lady, right idea, just the wrong guests' - Pat Stacey reviews The Imelda May Show

The time was 1998.  The place was The Olympia Theatre in Dublin.  The occasion was the second of two gigs by Neil Finn, frontman of Crowded House, in support of his excellent first solo album, Try Whistling This.

A friend had been at the first show the night before and assured me my wife and I were in for a great gig.  Finn had played the new stuff, but also lots of old, crowd-pleasers by Crowded House and his previous band, Split Enz.

And it was a great gig, for the first 40 minutes or so.  Then Fin announced he was being joined on stage by a couple of "special friends".  Out walked Donal Lunny.  An audible sigh, and not the kind you associate with relief, went up from some sections of the audience.  Then came friend number two: Liam O'Maonlaoi.  The three of them commenced on a frenzy of trad-rock fusion, with Lunny battering the bejasus out of his bouzouki and O'Maonlaoi peeping his tin whistle as though trying to catch the attention of a distant and disinterested sheepdog.

This was the sound of joy being murdered.  We lasted two songs, headed to the Olympia bar for a drink and then moved on to Brogan's next door to nurse the wounds of a ruined evening.

The memory of that night came flooding back during The Imelda May Show on RTE 1 on Sunday.  Things opened brightly with a belting number from May and her band.  The first guest was Jools Holland - a big fish to land and the man who gave May her UK TV break on Later..., on which May's own show is directly modelled.

She affectionately ragged Holland, with whom she has toured and recorded, by copying his trademark "walking and talking" style.

And then things went a little pear-shaped.  The next guest was Mary Black.  With respect to Ms Black (who's not at all pear-shaped herself), she may have had a long and successful career, but it's not rock'n'roll - which is what a show like this should be - and I don't like it.

After a brief interlude by an actual rock band, Lucan quartet The Riptide Movement, who should turn up but our old friend Donal Lunny, this time accompanied by Zoe Conway on Fiddle and Mairtin O'Connor vigorously massaging his squeeze box.

Irish television is long overdue a good rock show of its own to counteract an excess of bodhran-banging; to be brutally honest, though, The Imelda May Show doesn't look capable of satisfying that need.  For one thing, it's already struggling to attract the right calibre of guest.  Holland and The Riptide Movement aside (and their like won't be available every week), the line-up of the opening show was lamentable.

For another, a Sunday night show on RTE1 is preaching to the completely wrong congregation.  Apart from the six weeks of the year when Love/Hate enthrals a broader than usual audience, Sundays have traditionally been the preserve of either dreary gabfests or tatty light entertainment shows featuring performers tainted by the smell of stale chicken and chips from too many hotel Christmas cabarets.  Call it the knitting-granny demographic.

There were moments when Sunday's show resembled off-cuts from The Late Late or Gay Byrne's For One Night Only, on which may herself was once a guest.

May is an incandescent talent and exuberant personality whose presence lights up any stage like an arc lamp.  Hanging out with the wrong sort of people in front of the wrong sort of audience risks rubbing the sparkle off her stardom.

The Imelda May Show is available on the RTE Player.

Herald