Radio ReviewPaul Cullen War, unexpected and brutal, rained down on the radio schedules this week, filling the airwaves with eyewitness reports, punditry, analysis and fairly predictable side-taking.
The distant whistle of flying rockets made for a sparse enough soundtrack though the silences were more than adequately filled by the accounts of the residents of Beirut, both those fleeing and those staying put. While Today with Tom McGurk (Radio 1, Monday) reached first for an inevitable dose of Robert Fisk, Philip Bouchier-Hayes's reports from Lebanon formed the staple of the station's war diet. On Five Seven Live, fill-in presenter Con Murphy did his best to keep up with all the weighty talk of international diplomacy, though as a sports reporter you suspected he'd be more comfortable dealing with Serie A than Syria.
Amid all the good work, there was a sense of excess, prompted perhaps by the closeness of the silly season. Did we really need Donncha Ó Dualaing's reminiscences about the Golan Heights (Fáilte Isteach, RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) or Derek Davis's breathy compassion on Liveline? (Davis: "So you're safely back in Limerick now." Caller: "Yes, I'm back four years now.")
The dusty winds of time blew through Rumours from Monaghan, an investigation into the murder of Fine Gael senator Billy Fox in 1974 (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday). The only member of the Oireachtas to be killed in the Troubles and the first to die violently since Kevin O'Higgins was gunned down in 1927, Fox is a forgotten figure whose memory has been soiled by allegation and counter-allegation.
Peter Woods and Sean Rocks's investigation sought to establish what happened on the night of March 11th, 1974, when 13 Provisional IRA members raided the house of Fox's girlfriend Marjorie Coulson near Clones, and hunted down the 35-year-old senator, a member of the Church of Ireland. Elderly neighbours recalled how he ran a quarter of a mile through the fields before being downed with seven bullets to the chest and foot. The gang then burned the Coulson house to the ground.
But why was he killed? The programme sought to recreate the air of paranoia that existed in the Border area as a low-level war played out as a background to the Troubles. "You always felt something was going to happen," one neighbour recounted ominously, while noting that the local Protestant farms were bigger and had the better land. There was a Last of the Summer Wine quality to the recollections of local people; you could imagine them clutching tea-cups around the kitchen table as they recalled Fox, "dressed to kill" in his dark pinstriped suit, trying to keep all his constituents happy. As for motive, there was little elucidation; one theory had it the Provos were looking for guns, another rumour - which went uninvestigated in the programme - linked friends of Fox to the UVF. The consensus of contributors, however, was that the attack on Fox was planned to teach local Protestants a lesson, but that matters "got out of hand". Five IRA members were convicted of the crime - the remaining gang members were never identified - but none would break their silence. "Much of what happened on that night remains a mystery," the programme concluded, disappointingly.
Scoop of the week was Newstalk 106 reporter Aisling O'Riordan's undercover investigation of a "self-styled" pregnancy counselling centre run by anti-abortion activists (podcast at www.newstalk106.ie). This was unashamedly opinionated journalism, as O'Riordan accused the centre of manipulating and intimidating women seeking advice and routed its arguments with the help of a cancer specialist and the head of a rival agency. A pity, then, that the title of her investigation, "Abortion: My Story" (she wasn't pregnant) offended advertising standards almost as much as the supposedly non-directive counselling delivered by the clinic to which she brought her hidden microphone.
Here's Johnny (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday), a farrago of Mafia cliches and ham Italian-American accents, is RTÉ's latest foray into radio comedy. Chronicling the adventures of New Jersey "wise guy" Johnny Schillaci on being sent to Ireland on a witness protection scheme, it's about as funny as, well, the station's last flop. This week saw Johnny and his wife Maria head for Connemara to escape a hitman. Cue predictable encounters, lacking in humour. Johnny's gormless Dublin neighbour Fiachra sounded like Bouchier-Hayes, but the reporter can count himself fortunate to have spent the week in Beirut rather than in this mess.
Bernice Harrison is on leave