Three weeks of moonlighting in this column and to my surprise the payback for wave-surfing is learning to sing along with B*Witched's pop success C'Est La Vie, a song which teases faint memories of what it was like to be joyfully 17, in love and having a great summer. The girl band's hit lasts about as long as fake strawberry juice on top of an ice cream cone, but you can't in all honesty expect more from it. The problem is when radio pretends to offer more than it actually does,, which is, more or less, what happened when Adrian Kennedy and his team decided to tackle the subject of refugees and asylum-seekers (The Phone Show, FM104, Monday).
Hatred always comes cheap, there being so much of it around: you don't need broadcasting talent to provoke it. Adrian Kennedy sounded badly-researched and badly-briefed that night and his attempts to stir things up were cheap as tin. A live studio audience of "50-60 people," participated vigorously in a rabble-rousing exercise destined to bring out the very worst in human nature: envy, jealousy, hatred, not to mention greed, that well-lubricated grease which creates audiences and pushes up the ratings.
Kennedy himself reckoned the official figures of 5000 seeking refuge here were underestimated - and other than on grounds of skin colour, it was hard to figure out how he had reached such a conclusion. That set the tone: Romanian people were called "scumbags"; racism was alleged to be the fault of refugees themselves because they forced Irish people to say things they otherwise would not have to say. "All of you are dressed very well," a man born in Ireland said accusingly. "This shirt cost me £3," retorted a man born in Africa. Raucous laughter crackled when another man born in Ireland challenged refugee speakers by asking "should we pity you ?" Familiar objections to refugees - they won't work, they can't work, they're taking our money - were repeated so often you wondered why Kennedy didn't react more strongly.
Sure, he challenged some of them, and brought in the odd generous voice by way of balance, but the more sensational the language, the more he let the bile spill over, which meant that the racists seemed to get most air time. An Irish woman engaged to a Somalian man was actually asked if he was "paying for it." Bad radio, worse politics, never mind integrity.
Powerful bonds of love and loyalty were beautifully explored in this week's Stories Of Irish Lives (RTE Radio 1, Wednesday), which revisited Colm Keane's 1988 documentary on Belfast's Ardoyne Kickhams. In 1969, this promising under-16s Gaelic football team from one close-knit area were photographed together, full of hope about their future lives as young men in Northern Ireland. But the times were against them: within 20 years, two had been assassinated in random sectarian killings, more were touched by the wounding or murder of family members and friends, and many had left Belfast for good. Team captain Pat Murphy saw curly hair tumbling out from under a wrapping sheet in Belfast City Morgue, and knew it was his brother Ciaran because they had shared a room all their lives. He told his story without self-pity.
Politeness, on the other hand, is so far strangling at birth Teresa and Matthew Parris's collaboration Mothers And Sons (Radio 4 Wednesday) where this mother-and-son team interview other mothers and sons about life and the special nature of their bond. Irma Kurtz, Cosmopolitan magazine's agony aunt and an occasional author, laughingly worried about her tendency to be "a Jewish mother" to son Mark Beers, born 25 years ago. She had conceived him deliberately during a passionate love affair - what other kind is there, you wondered - and then raised him single-handedly, at a time before such choices were commonplace.
Men and their mothers, or women and their sons, are endlessly fascinating subjects, yet to date, the Parrises largely shy away from the dodgy bits, making the exchanges sound like we are all tuned in to a rather jolly dinner party somewhere in Islington, with Freud safely tucked away on the book shelf. Parris fils favours anecdote; Parris merely sounds shrewd, but so far lets son take the lead. Kurtz tinkled when Mark spoke, but rather than confront the dangling issue of whether some sons might make better partners than do some lovers, the conversation dwindled into amusing yet predictable stuff about unconditional love - the best kind there is, but revelatory radio only if you explore what it entails. Perhaps future shows will.
