UPFRONT:I'VE BEEN spending a lot of time in the company of Pat Kenny over the course of my pregnancy, which has been very pleasant, I must say. Being able to work from home means I catch him most mornings on his radio show, where he, his pundits and his texting listeners offer consistently clear thinking and accessible commentary on the slight blip currently affecting the nation.
I don’t sleep much at night thanks to the two pairs of feet River Dancing on my bladder, so his signature tune has been doubling as an alarm clock. (What? During the slight blip currently affecting the nation, 10am with Pat is the new 7.30am breakfast meeting.)
Kenny’s recent barracking of TD Michael Kennedy about portraitgate is worth checking out on an RTÉ podcast, especially the part where he said if someone did a naked portrait of himself, Pat Kenny, he would merely chortle and hang it for posterity in his downstairs loo.
He is, for my euro dollars, the best current affairs radio broadcaster we have: intelligent, precise, instinctive and fearless. He embodies just the right amount of terrier-attached-to-a-bone crossed with righteously indignant citizen-warrior that every decent current affairs radiohead requires. I’ve even come to enjoy what I like to call “Nerd’s Corner”, where he hosts science boffins for a chat about nuclear physics, say, and then proceeds to demonstrate how he knows more about their subject than they do.
PK:"And isn't it true that quantum molecules . . . blah blah . . . space time continum, blah . . . Darwinian extrapolation . . . ?"
Boffin:"Excellent question!"
So that's 10am til noon weekday mornings sorted, but every Friday night P-Ken also has my full attention. I hope he doesn't mind the nickname, but it was used during an internet discussion recently to assess whether he deserved a place in the beaut.ie website's Fifty Fine Things,their definitive roll-call of handsome Irish males, in which P-Ken didn't get a look in, damn you Rob Kearney.
The truth is, as presenter of The Late Late Show P-Ken has been responsible for a few of the most entertaining TV moments of my pregnancy. This is some accolade as I’ve been watching a lot of quality TV – smirking rottweiler Vincent Browne on TV3 is unmissable – especially now that getting up off the sofa requires a crane and at least one supervisor overseeing the manoeuvre.
As anyone who has been following the houseboat-based adultery action on Coronation Streetwill attest, Ken Barlow's banter with Stephanie Beacham's character, involving lots of red wine and steamy home cooking (real leek and potato soup as opposed to his wife Dear-Dree's muck from a tin) takes some beating in the entertainment stakes. And yet somehow P-Ken is still way ahead in the "made me laugh so hard I nearly went into labour" league.
Example 1: P-Ken is on Th e Late Lateinterviewing a seven-year-old breakdancer. A breakdancer who came second in the All-Ireland Talent Showwhich for some reason only children with what the judges kept calling "the awwwww factor" were allowed to become finalists. I think they meant "awwww, is it really legal for a child to wear that much make-up?".
So there he is, one of our finest broadcasting minds, talking to this pint-sized breakdancer who, had he won the €50,000 prize, says he would have spent the money on a trip to New York for dancing lessons. “There’s a lot of breakdancers in New York,” suggests P-Ken. “Yep,” agrees the wee fella. “But the great, great breakdancers are mostly black,” says P-Ken. “Yep,” nods the small boy, wondering, like the rest of us, where this conversation is going. “And would you put a little colour on your face?” asks P-Ken? “No,” says the sensible little chap who incredibly doesn’t jump at the chance to audition for P-Ken’s black and white breakdancing minstrels.
I nearly had to be resuscitated and airlifted to Holles Street it was that good, by which of course, I mean horrendous.
Example 2:P-Ken is interviewing an American man known by his many female fans as "the Vagina Doctor", with whom, early in the interview, he has cause to perform a High Five. The Vagina Doc charges women thousands for something you don't need to know about called the G-Shot, and P-Ken is only dying to talk to some women in the audience about the procedure. He is asking how much it costs and then he inquires, "Do you get more bang for your bucks?" and then his hand is covering his face and he is laughing and cringing at himself, and so is the rest of the country, and if you saw it on Alan Partridgeyou would think Steve Coogan had gone too far this time, except this is for real. This is P-Ken. High five!
So it was with mixed emotions that I watched him deliver the news that he was stepping down from The Late Late. He had just done an interview with a former soap star of English extraction which demonstrated perfectly why his not inconsiderable talents are wasted on certain aspects of this programme. Letitia Dean used to play Sharon Watts on EastEnders, back when it was watchable, a fact which I'd say the real life Pat Kenny finds about as interesting as the tidbit that your woman off Fair Cityfavours a certain brand of washing powder.
“You had a breast reduction when you were younger?” said Pat, trying to kick-start a conversation about body image. It was another big bowl of wrong which stemmed from Pat Kenny trying valiantly once again, because of the demands of his job, to be something and somebody that he is not.
I can't say I won't miss all the unintentional entertainment, but having developed a sort of protectiveness towards him ever since he pronounced Jerry Seinfeld's name wrongly on the Late Late toy show, I am relieved that he can go back, courtesy of a new current affairs TV programme starting in the autumn, to being exactly who he is. A person who doesn't know Seinfeld from Garfield. A person who cares about serious current affairs, not the affairs of a grotesque "professional mistress" who wants to flog a how-to book. A person who has chaired some seriously great Late Latedebates in his day, but who was never going to cut it in a five-way with a burlesque group called The Satanic Sluts.
So, thanks for the memories P-Ken. Long live the great Pat Kenny.
