Foster and Allen appearing on RTE travel show tonight 

When he answered the phone on Friday last, Tony Allen made it clear that he, like most people in the country, wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

"I can talk to you for a week, if you want!" he said.

There's probably a joke to be made about the Foster & Allen star having 'A Bunch of Thyme' on his hands, but let's not dwell on such cheesiness in a time of crisis.

Tony and Mick Foster, his musical partner, will be on our TV screens this evening (Thursday) when they appear on an episode of the RTE One travel series, 'High Road, Low Road' at 8.30pm.

The episode, which sees the duo travel to Malta, was filmed last December, when nobody here had yet heard of the Coronavirus.

If the pandemic had not happened, Foster & Allen would currently be on a 16-date tour of the UK, but those performances have instead been rescheduled for October.

As a result, Tony, a native of Mount Temple, is at his home in Armagh with his wife Triona, a backing singer with Daniel O'Donnell's band.  

He described the pandemic as "frightening" and said it was unlike anything he had seen over the course of his 68 years.

"We've seen a lot of hardships and ups and downs, and the Troubles here in Northern Ireland, but I've never seen anything that grounded every country in the world, to a standstill.

"Whoever thought you'd see Mass cancelled? I was chatting to my nephew, Fr PJ Hughes, and it's hard to believe that Church (services) everywhere have closed."

He spoke about how the music business, like many industries, was being severely impacted.

"Most of the Irish bands - the showbands and dance bands - are going to be seriously hit because they would normally have gigs three or four nights a week, and during the summer it might be seven nights a week," said Tony.

"We're all self-employed, and we all work day-to-day, so we're all out of business. The sad thing is that a lot of bands won't survive, and a lot of venues won't survive."

In the midst of the worries and struggles of the present day, people still need entertainment, and he was hoping to provide that in the episode of 'High Road, Low Road' which airs evening.

Foster & Allen are an unlikely pairing to star in a travel show. "Neither of us are great holiday people," explained Tony.

"In Mick's case, his wife Moyra is our keyboard player, so she travels with us. And Triona and myself travel a lot (to gigs), so the last place we want to go, for a break, is to an airport. But we said, look, we'd go for the craic."

They showed up at Dublin airport not knowing their destination, which turned out to be Malta.

"It was beautiful. I had never been to Malta and I didn't know anything about it, but it wasn't a very big place, it was pretty small. The weather wasn't too warm or too cold, and the food was just amazing out there," he said.

The concept of the series is that one of the visitors is given a luxury experience, while the other goes on a budget holiday. Tony was given the luxury treatment in a five-star hotel, but the demands of filming throughout the weekend visit meant he had little time to enjoy his gilded surroundings.

During the trip, he had a carriage journey with a private guide in the Silent City, a private food tour with a chef, and a vintage car transfer to a winery. He also visited part of an old town which reminded him of "Bastion Street in Athlone about 60 years ago".

Overall, he and Mick had a great experience and really enjoyed dealing with the production company which made the programme.

"Green Inc, the production company we were doing it for, were amazing. They were so well organised, and it was a pleasure to work with them," he said.

* The episode of 'High Road, Low Road' featuring Foster and Allen is being screened this evening, Thursday, March 26, on RTÉ One at 8.30pm.