Suppose you take Dermot Morgan away from the Scrap Saturday format. No bright writers and producers such as Gerry Stembridge to bounce ideas off, no chance to pre­record or edit down to half an hour. No sketches and not a sign of a decent script.

What’s left? In the case of Guten Morgan (Classic Hits 98FM, Monday­Friday), well, a low­budget, second­division chat show stretching over 50 minutes, five times a week.

98 FM boasts of its strong “Classic Hits” identity, its Big­ Mac­type branding. With Guten Morgan it has found its sauce. Morgan in his solo incarnation is hardly even a distant cousin of Scrap Saturday ­ more like The Best Man At The Worst Wedding. He sniggers whenever he mentions panellist Fiona Looney’s surname, calls Rolf Harris a git, uses occasional obscenities and christens the woman in the Ben Dunne case “Denise Wogeous”.

Everything is sprinkled with snippets of his impersonations ­ particularly Aussie accents and Michael Noonan­Night ­ but with no political focus or sharp­edged satire it descends into a vague, boring ramble. Friday’s show with Noonan himself was notable mostly for the confusion when both talked at the same time in Michael Noonan accents.

While the Limerick TD is well­known for his pithy analogies, once Morgan’s ego had landed he had no space to operate. Morgan also indulges in his second World War fetish as much as possible, from the show’s title to the unashamedly naff records: Tomorrow Belongs To Me and, The Dambusters sit side by side with general dross such as Norn Iron’s 1982 World Cup song.

Scrap Saturday itself was surrounded by enough hyperbole while it was running, and by rose­tinted memories when it was finally scrapped. But Morgan is no Dennis O’Leary: the one­liners are outrageous, they’re more like weak, watered­down, juvenile humour. His off­the­cuff solo show may have gone a bridge too far. Auf Wiedersehen Dermot.