AS an international bad news story, the Irish meltdown seems set to run and run. Now Vanity Fair , the heavyweight pop culture and politics glossy, has turned its gaze on us.

Bestselling financial writer Michael Lewis – The Big Short, Liar's Poker– has been in town recently to get the measure of what's been going on here.

He came to straight-talking estate agent Ronan O'Driscoll's office – right after quizzing Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan– to talk property (including ghost estates, of course).

Savills’ man rapped about Ireland v Iceland and Greece, unaware (’til he Googled him later) that Lewis had written in-depth features on both countries’ collapsed economies earlier this year.

Lewis is unlikely to go easy on us: "No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker, that now classic portrait of 1980s Wall Street," said a recent New York Timesarticle about his latest book, The Big Short, which tells how a handful of prescient traders profited from the subprime meltdown.

Lewis is also author of a Vanity Fairfeature which became hit Oscar-winning movie The Blind Side.

How about Ireland – the disaster movie? The Dark Side, perhaps.