For a bona fide celebrity like Chris O’Dowd, embarrassing encounters with fans are presumably an inevitable byproduct of success: awkward as it surely is to meet otherwise sensible people who swoon into tongue-tied giddiness in his presence, it is part and parcel of being a screen star. Whether the rest of us want to witness such encounters is another question, but Miriam O’Callaghan doesn’t give listeners any say in the matter during her toe-curling interview with O’Dowd.
When the Roscommon actor appears on Miriam Meets (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) with his writing collaborator Nick Vincent Murphy, O'Callaghan is at her most inane. So fawningly inconsequential are her queries that one wonders if she has forgotten that she's on air. "What was your big break?" "Why do you love Roscommon so much?" "Is it a completely different way of life [in Los Angeles], say, to Boyle?" And those are the tough questions.
At other times, her approach is puzzlingly random. Noting that her guest’s mother was a psychotherapist, O’Callaghan asks whether “she kind of analysed you all when you were children growing up.”
In fairness, this elicits an amusing response from O’Dowd. “I could tell when she was slipping from mother to psychotherapist when she’d use two words: ‘I understand’.”
Nor does O’Callaghan ignore the self-consciously empathetic manner that has become such a lampooned element of her persona. Discussing Murphy’s decision to become a writer, the presenter observes that “people say it can be lonely, can’t it” before adding that “you have to keep believing”. The only thing missing is her trademark phrase, “genuinely”.
By the time O’Callaghan asks about the actor’s Hollywood career, she has all the gravitas of a tween One Direction fan quizzing her heroes. “How did [the part in 2011 film] Bridesmaids come about? It’s such a cool role.” Like, totally. Later, when the Los Angeles-residing Murphy remarks that his young son uses terms like “cool and awesome”, O’Dowd says: “You know what, that’s what the kids in Donnybrook say.”
“That’s so true,” says O’Callaghan, without any apparent sense of irony, given some presenters in Donnybrook have also been known to use such language.
Even allowing for the fact that the item may be tailored for a supposedly undemanding Sunday morning audience, it is bafflingly banal fare, as elsewhere on her show, O'Callaghan brings curiosity and even rigour to her interviews without losing any personal warmth. During a short chat with singer Adam Cohen, son of Leonard, she gauges the tone nicely – "People ask about your father, which I am about to" – yielding a portrait of her guest that is thoughtful and revealing, despite its brevity.
The presenter sounds similarly engaged talking to US writer Amy Chua. O'Callaghan wonders whether her guest's strict "tiger mom" style of raising her daughters, derived from her Chinese parents, pushes offspring too hard: the presenter notes that in the past Irish children had their self-confidence squeezed out of them by stern upbringings.
The result is a stimulating discussion about parenting in contemporary western society where, according to Chua, “we’re terrified to say no”. If O’Callaghan could say no to her inner celebrity fan, she might serve her audience even better.
She could do worse than follow the example of Seán Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays), who seems to treat all his guests in the same way. No matter what the topic, he brings an inquisitive intelligence to bear, all the while maintaining an air of wry detachment.
This approach doesn’t always work, however. A discussion with Dan Skye, from American marijuana-advocacy magazine High Times, takes an inadvertent and decidedly “unmellow” turn when the guest gets annoyed after misunderstanding a question about the potency of legally sold cannabis. This leaves the normally languid host sounding uncharacteristically discomfited.
He enjoys a more fruitful interview with Linda Tirado, whose book Hand To Mouth chronicles her life as a low-wage worker. Tirado's experiences relate to the US, but with Moncrieff the conversation takes on a wider resonance. Noting that most people don't want to be chief executives, his guest says that long, poorly paid working days prevent most employees in the service economy from being able to work and then go home to be with their family.
Moncrieff doesn’t give his guest free rein. He posits the conundrum so often posed by those who rail against “welfare dependency”, namely whether long-term recipients are “infantilised” by handouts and instead require “tough love” to incentivise them to work.
“That’s a horrible paternal position to take, which dehumanises millions of people,” Tirado says, her voice as calm as her outrage is palpable. “It says that those millions haven’t thrived in a system that guarantees a bunch of people can’t thrive.” It’s a white hot polemic, all the more striking for being aired on a show whose presenter sounds just as comfortable with items about giant kangaroos. In treating every topic with the same thoroughness, Moncrieff displays consideration for his guests; more importantly, he shows respect for listeners. radioreview@irishtimes.com
