So: one of our most trusted, important and influential current-affairs presenters is in the pay of a major player in one of the State's most competitive and politically sensitive industries. Scandal or not? Well, don't expect to hear the tribunal of inquiry re-enacted on Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday). (And no, I'm not talking about the fact that Not-My-Cousin Vinny writes a column for The Irish Times.) Eamon Dunphy's relationship with Esat is not, after all, a secret one: he's right there to be seen, in most of his glory, stalking around in a dressing gown in the very slick new TV ad for Esat's mobile Internet service.
Dunphy is not, apparently, a member of the National Union of Journalists (why not, Eamon?), which has a code of conduct that takes a dim view of such endorsements. I do know he - like the other celebrity lads on the ad - earns enough money from his day job that any Esat paycheque is unlikely to have been the decisive factor attracting him to the gig, and is equally unlikely to cloud his editorial judgment. Nonetheless, The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday), in the course of becoming arguably the most vital forum on national radio, has for some time skated close to the thin ice of commercialism, its balance maintained only by the force of its righteousness. Navan Man and the Drunken Politician are still pretty funny, but how much buckin' satire can you be gettin' up to in a poxy Nissan Micra?
And the programme's competitions - their prizes jacked up by Dunphy's merciless on-air rejection of goods and services not cushy enough to merit his airtime - often bring out, once they measure up, that awful fawning streak in the presenter, who chooses to confuse virtue and calculation on the part of the givers. Now, I think Dunphy and Shane Ross have emerged as one of radio's magic double acts - their piece on company directorships this week spewed forth brilliantly corrosive populist bile; but in light of the Esat ad, would Dunphy leave himself open to speculation about his impartiality on business matters?
In fairness, Dunphy has rarely made "objectivity" his selling point. He was at his most blatantly, absurdly biased this week interviewing Richard Harris about Limerick and Angela's Ashes.
Yes, publicly excoriating Angela's Ashes could be described as a corrective bias. (I can recall, three years ago, on a rare visit to the RTE bar - oh damn, yes, I admit it: RTE has bought me drink - I pointed out, to exalted media company, that certain episodes in McCourt's book were clearly, cringingly fictitious. The exalted companions were clearly, cringingly embarrassed for me.) But for Dunphy to devote a half-hour to Harris telling us that a gentleman doesn't write about his mother that way, and anyway a true Limerick man doesn't bad-mouth the city, was both savagely boring and profoundly unfair.
It's unfair to any art to subject it to such provincial criteria. But just how unfair it was to Angela's Ashes became clearer only after the interview was over: Dunphy had egged Harris on to ever-more-sweeping condemnations of McCourt (who, it seems, punched Harris in New York 30-odd years ago and had the good sense to run away) and of Alan Parker; but the host then admitted in reply to a listener's question that he'd neither read the book nor seen the film. (However, his mammy did come from Limerick.)
But then, there too was the beauty of The Last Word. I'd compiled easily a dozen objections to the Harris interview; probably 10 of them, plus a few more besides, were enumerated by callers to the programme whose comments Dunphy read on-air.
In the same province of Ireland, but by no means provincial, was much of the conversation between presenter Theo Dorgan and another Harris, Eoghan, on The Invisible Thread (Lyric FM, Sunday). Since I'm into declarations of interest this week: Theo Dorgan is one of a fingerful of people in and around the media whom I knew socially before I got into the business myself - I've hardly seen him for years, but still as a reviewer I'd have avoided an old acquaintance, just as he probably avoids this column. Eoghan Harris is on the other finger - someone who has actually had a go at this column in print, ever-tempting me to return the compliment.
Now, after this absolutely fascinating half-hour's conversation between the two Corkmen, I suspect that the thing Harris accused me of - "consistently bad politics" - was a sin in his eyes mainly because of the consistency. Harris told Dorgan about his restless intellect, and his yearly re-thinks of his own political outlook.
I wish I could quote chunks of their exchange, but really this was radio for putting down the pen and listening - to an open-minded, open-ended, deeply generous, sweetly revealing interview. They were at their most affectionate and probing as they talked about Cork, where the Dublin-dwelling Harris said his inner life resides. (It resides there some time between 1900 and 1922, which sounds like some trick, but also sounded deeply, rather sadly plausible when Harris explained it.) Was the Corkonian sense of constantly being under the scrutiny of fellow citizens part of the psychology that took Harris into a life of secret political conspiring? Dorgan wondered, and Harris, not in the least defensive, was quite unabashedly taken with the idea.
Still in Munster, but we move out the road to Kerry - that's if you dare to essay the roads this weather. County engineer Tom Curran spent a morning in the studio of Kerry Today (Radio Kerry, Monday to Friday) to answer questions about the shocking state of the 4,000km of roads in the county.
The weather in Kerry hasn't changed much over the years. The size and volume of vehicles has, while the engineer's maintenance budget has declined in real terms. Curran talked about the Exchequer money he needs in staggering detail; but the real detail didn't start until the callers came on the line, offering not so much local colour as local moisture.
Self-consciously aimed at Dublin-based listeners - the relevant ministers got the tape, along with the irrelevant radio reviewer - it was local radio as parish-pump, making vital political points along the way. How, it was repeatedly asked, can the State fail cars for the condition of their suspension, brakes and bodywork, when that condition is caused precisely by the State's negligence in funding road repairs?
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie
