Radio Review: There's usually a clear distinction between the programme styles on RTÉ Radio 1 and 2fm. It's probably not put quite this way in the stations' mission statements, but it very broadly boils down to quiet, reasoned Radio 1 versus shouty, fun-lovin' 2fm.
So it's a complete mystery why two whole hours of 2fm-style broadcasting is now plonked in the middle of Radio 1's Sunday schedule, unless of course it's one of those periodic cack-handed attempts to lure younger listeners in. Even the name, The Late Late Breakfast Show in place of the plain old Sunday Show, has the ring of someone groping for a youth magnet - although, on second thoughts, recycling a programme name last used by Noel Edmonds on the BBC in the 1980s isn't exactly cutting edge.
It's not entirely the fault of presenter Evelyn O'Rourke that the programme sounds like a wall of babble, but she is a bit too excitable for what surely is, for most listeners, the laziest, most relaxing hours of the week. Put her on a weekday 2fm breakfast show and her style would make perfect sense but for the moment her giddy pace does have a way of tripping her up, introducing a former Miss Ireland as Olivia O'Leary (that would be Olivia Tracey) and getting the name of the newsreader wrong. There have also been several technical hitches in the first two weeks of the show, which added to the jarring sense of mayhem.
The curious thing is that while RTÉ has gone for a presenter of a style very different to the usual one (Tom McGurk) they've kept the basic format but stretched it to snapping point. Half a dozen panellists have an hour instead of an entirely adequate 30 minutes to discuss the Sunday papers, and as if that's not enough newsprint comment, they return to the glossy Sunday supplements later in the programme. O'Rourke jollies the thing along, but in a way that's reminiscent of an over-anxious party host who periodically shouts "Are we having fun yet?" For my ears it's too frantic for a lazy summer Sunday.
In the first in a new series, New Wealth, New Issues (Monday, RTÉ1) Shane Kenny asked the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, whether he was concerned about the enormous wealth gap that has developed in the country since the booming 1990s. We are, according to contributor David Begg of ICTU, the second most unequal country when it comes to distribution of wealth - the number one is the US. The Minister's answer was a version of that irritating economic metaphor of rising tides and boats - it would have been clearer if he'd just said yes or no.
The Minister seems to think anyone who is concerned with the wealth gap is just jealous. "A fella from the back roads of Mayo shovelling cement one month that's a millionaire five years later, people are desperately uncomfortable with that." From the way he said "people" you just knew he was talking about "media types" and "liberals" who persist with the pinko notion that everyone should have access to decent health care and a rat-free classroom. It was interesting that when he was looking for an architype of the new wealth he picked a builder. Brian Carey, who compiles the rich list in the Sunday Tribune said one-third of the people in the top 100 get their wealth from property and it's not the calloused hand, hard-graft image that the Minister tried to convey. Most of the property moguls made their millions in the last 10 years by a stroke of the pen - theirs or someone else's - through land rezoning and canny deals.
The man from the Revenue, Sean Moriarty, said his office has come up with a list of 250 individuals who are each worth more than €50 million and is now taking a closer look at where it all came from. Alhough, given that so many of the nouveau riche hop in their risen boats and sail offshore, it'll be interesting to see what the Revenue can do - something that will be touched on next week in the six-part series.
The image of all that money sloshing around a country that can't manage to provide a decent health service was depressingly surreal, so a dose of comic surrealism was called for and Dylan Moran served it up. In The Expedition, (BBCR4, Wednesday), introduced as "the first in a series of character monologues by the top UK comics", the Navan-born writer and stand-up told the story of a doomed Arctic explorer in a place "that's minus enough to want to put hats on everywhere" with "a travelling companion that's acting like a tetchy, self-righteous orang-utan, though they'd probably be quicker with the map." It was a perfect 15 minutes of radio that proves funny doesn't have to be frantic.
