into the fictional Stickit Inn bar. Joining Podge and Rodge was "Sicilian barmaid Gina", played by real-life Chip-Shop Mafia Moll, Virginia Macari. who is apparently on the run from the Casa Nostra and rumoured to know the exact size of Silvio Berlusconi's assets. Resident music maestro at The Stickit Inn was showband has-been Johnny Dorgan, thrown out of The Indians in 1978 for pissing in their Wig Wam. Johnny Dorgan was played by real-life ex showbander John Keogh of Full Circle fame. The show featured three to four guests who joined Podge and Rodge for a chat. Other features included musical performances into the ad break; 'Rapper in the Crapper' and a music guest performance at the end of the show. On 24 November 2009, in what the show admitted was an "unlikely coup" for public interest, it broadcast for the first time on television in Ireland, the four controversial advertisements commissioned by employment agency FÁS, which cost the citizens €600,000 but were never previously aired. The programme's producers received the films under the Freedom of Information Act and managed to pip every other programme in the country, including the RTÉ News. Reception The show was initially a ratings success, regularly getting over 400,000 viewers a show during the first season, including 440,000 for the week beginning 9 April 2006 and peaking at almost 450,000 (40 per cent of those watching television at this time) for the season finale on 2 May. At this time it tended to have more viewers than Desperate Housewives and Lost, both of which are also shown on RTÉ Two. It was also catching up on RTÉ's flagship chat show — The Late Late Show — which airs on Friday nights on RTÉ One, and has approximately half a million viewers. However, there was a drop in viewership in later seasons, but the show continues to be the top rated home produced show on RTÉ Two. Following on from the success of their show, Podge and Rodge were asked to appear in several television advertisements for RTÉ which encouraged viewers to pay their television licences. They were also featured in a radio ad for Will Leahy's The Saturday Show on RTÉ 2fm, in which they described the show as better than "shit on a stick". Another spin-off saw them interviewing nemesis Pat Kenny for the People in Need Telethon whilst around the same time a