It’s a tried-and-trusted routine, one that has grown familiar to listeners down the years. The despairing observation that the country is going to the dogs, accompanied by a weary sigh and an invitation for those tuning in to share their views on the matter.
In a week when Joe Duffy, that great conductor of complaints, exits the airwaves, radio aficionados of an Eeyore-ish disposition will be reassured that Newstalk Breakfast (weekdays) still serves as a reliable source for jaded grumbling.
It’s a tribute of sorts to Duffy that it takes two people to match his prowess in this department, with the morning show’s presenters, Shane Coleman and Ciara Kelly, acting as a tag team when it comes to generating on-air glumness.
On Monday Coleman gamely steps up, bemoaning the number of no-shows at driving tests as an example of Ireland’s lack of civic pride. “We’re really selfish,” he laments.
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His cohost suggests this may be a common trait elsewhere, too.
“It’s probably all people,” Coleman concedes, “but I think we’re pretty high up that league.”
Kelly, taking on the role of patriotic booster, points to the fabled generosity of Irish people, but Coleman is having none of it. “I think we’ve zero sense of civic duty,” he concludes, in a headmasterly tone of disappointment rather than anger. Duffy may be retiring, but Coleman merely sounds resigned.
In the Newstalk duo’s defence, their show’s template obliges one of them to adopt a half-empty stance during their daily riffs on topical subjects. Still, Coleman sounds authentically cheesed off at what he perceives as endemic gaming of the system here.
In contrast, Kelly sounds fired up by Wednesday’s news that Women’s Aid last year received the highest number of domestic-abuse disclosures in its history. While rightly disturbed by the volume of abuse reports, she also sees the alarming increase as evidence of a shift in Irish society.
“I think what women are willing to accept and what women identify as abuse has changed,” says Kelly, adding that things such as pushing and shoving were minimised in the past, as was emotional abuse.
Not that Coleman and Kelly are always huffing despondently or opining defiantly. For the most part they’re busy with interviews and analysis of various stripes. So Tuesday’s programme features the veteran PR consultant Terry Prone extolling the virtues of Botox and the former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy analysing the Israel-Iran conflict: “Israel is the most radicalising and destabilising force in the region.”
Similarly, Wednesday has Coleman gleefully talking to the former Formula One engineer Bernie Collins about speedy cars, while Kelly hears Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien discuss slow infrastructure projects.
“The pace of delivery is something we have to catch up with, and I believe we will,” says the Minister with the same Micawberish confidence he brought to the housing brief. At least someone on the show sounds optimistic, however irrationally.
Over on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), the underlying mood is uncharacteristically celebratory, as Duffy spends his final week in the hot seat of the phone-in show. (This column goes to press before he broadcasts his farewell show, on Friday.) True, the host largely mutes his festive urges as he listens to callers recounting their collisions with e-scooters being driven on pavements, and even being punched by the drivers of said vehicles. The show must go on.
But Duffy really hits his stride, albeit in emotive form, when he devotes Wednesday’s programme to the devastating 1972 fire at the Noyeks timber showroom on Parnell Street in Dublin, which left eight people dead.
Survivors and witnesses recall the tragedy, among them Geoff Peat, who weeps freely as he recalls his rescue efforts in the burning building. It’s an often heart-wrenching item: one caller recounts the marks on windows where victims had thrown typewriters in an effort to escape the blaze.
But the collective act of remembrance also seems to have an oddly cathartic effect on Duffy’s contributors. Liveline has increasingly relied on nostalgic items in recent times – a sure-fire pointer to an older listenership – but in this case it’s impossible not to be moved. The host appears in his element, too, his palpable sympathy notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, callers offer their good wishes on Duffy’s impending retirement. Mark, an Elvis impersonator, delivers a particularly memorable tribute. “Liveline without Joe Duffy will be like Vegas without Elvis, the Vatican without the holy father, the Late Late without Gaybo.”
The pernickety among us may note that The Late Late Show has been soldiering on without Gay Byrne for as long as Duffy has been hosting Liveline, but the point is well made. Joe will be a tough act to follow.
Some other veteran broadcasters show no signs of slowing down. Pat Kenny (Newstalk, weekdays) remains a conspicuously vigorous presence behind the mic, throwing himself into topics great and small with equal alacrity. So while one expects him to be well briefed when discussing Nato conferences or interviewing Brendan Gleeson, it’s gratifying to hear the host apply the same standards to less obviously engaging items, such as the labelling of food products.
On Wednesday Kenny examines efforts in the European Parliament to restrict vegan and vegetarian food producers from using terms such as burger and sausage. Or, as Denis Drennan of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association puts it, “hijacking or piggybacking on top of the names that are well established”.
Drennan, whose stated target is multinational food companies, approvingly compares the move to regulations preventing plant-based juices being labelled as milk: “I don’t see any mammary glands on oats.”
Kenny pushes back. “Doesn’t the use of language change?” he asks before examining the etymological origins of the hamburger in exacting detail.
His guest sticks to his guns: “We should put the correct label on the foods, so the consumer is well aware of what they’re buying.” (By the same measure, meat might be accurately labelled “dead animal”.)
At the same time, Kenny gets caught up in the minutiae of his own ruminations to glorious effect, suggesting that offending terms such as veggie sausage could be replaced by, ahem, “vegan cylinder”.
As long as he’s in this idiosyncratically inspired form, one hopes that Kenny will stick around for a long time yet.
Moment of the Week
Jonathan Healy, an experienced current-affairs presenter, is a natural guest host of The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays), sounding comfortable when discussing the aftermath of the US bombing of Iran with the journalist Alistair Bunkall.
So as reports emerge that Iran has retaliated by firing missiles at Qatar and Bahrain – the latter state later transpires not to have been targeted – it’s surprising to hear the usually accomplished Healy make a basic error as he comments on the news: “This is an Arab country attacking two other Arab countries.”
His guest is too polite to point out that the Farsi-speaking descendants of the Persian empire are not, in fact, Arabs.
