Published: Thursday, 28th January, 2010 9:00am

First an earthquake, now a media tsunami

by Maurice O'Brien

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GOD knows the poor wretched people of Haiti had more than their fair share of misery before the earthquake struck.

But, with the gangster followers of dictators past, present and still to come licking their lips at the prospect of all that incoming cash and aid, what did they do to deserve the Invasion Of The TV Monsters?

Every time they emerge from their makeshift shelters they are confronted by a perfectly manicured hand holding a satellite phone in front of a well-nourished, perfectly groomed, star face from just about any television news outfit with at least three initials in its title. At the airport in Port au Prince, which the BBC still insists on mispronouncing (but then round here, of course, their local outfit still makes a mess of Riseley), planes have to weave through TV reporters dotted across the taxiway like stray skittles.

The invaders appear to have endless supplies of clean shirts and apparently everlasting quantities of food and drink to sustain them while they're informing us how the Haitians are fighting each other for the next handful of rice.

But then came the final straw. Those flat, doom-laden monotones, the steel wool hairdo, cold eyes staring beyond the camera to where some broken body or shattered principle must surely be sprawled, and at last we had the conclusive proof that Haiti was officially overwhelmed. The BBC had run out of transatlantic smoothies, or they'd done a deal to give the Israelis a break.

Either way, Orla Guerin arrived.

- APPARENTLY it's not a "serious breach" of the rules but wee Georgie Osborne nominated a Cheshire pile as his main home in 2001 and for two years carried on claiming mortage interest on it as a second residence.

This "unintentional oversight" by the Chancellor of the Exchequer-elect will be healed once he repays £1,666. So that's all right then.

Except that in a few months' time this squirt could be running a financial system under which those publicly-funded leeches at the Royal Bank of Scotland can find £600m to finance a Cadburys buy-out nobody really wanted, while hundreds of small and medium-sized British firms are denied the working capital needed to run their businesses.

- SOMEBODY delivered a triple whammy on Sunday morning. There was a WORK FROM HOME Change Your Life Today! leaflet, an invitation to take part in a Community Weight Loss Challenge and a foot-wide, glossy, multi-pictorial, blue and green production from Tory candidate 'already working hard for Reading West' Alok Sharma.

What could they be trying to tell me?