Radio Review: Having an obesity task force is a bit like joining a gym in January. Deep down you know that picking up the pen and signing the form is about as much exercise as you're actually going to do in the place, but you still get the nice warm feeling that by simply handing over great wodges of cash you're doing something about your blubber.
Plus, you can show your mates your swanky membership card - in much the same way that at election time the relevant politician can wave the obesity report around as a sign that something's being done.
Listening to the extensive coverage of the Government task force's report on obesity this week made it sound like a bad case of all talk, no possible action.
The report's recommendation to remove junk food vending machines from national schools looks like a grand, radical thing to do. That was before Rachel English on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) pointed out that there aren't really many of those machines in national schools anyway; they're mostly in secondary schools as a means to raise funds.
Nobody mentioned that it would be far better if fast-food was removed from the curriculum. A workbook currently used by children in second class teaches eight-year-olds about menus. And the menu chosen by the Department of Education and reprinted in full colour in the school book? TGI Friday's restaurant and bar. So our children are taught how to order a burger and fries washed down by a fat-filled milkshake.
Economist Moore McDowell on Today with Pat Kenny (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) could hardly contain his disdain at the task force's idea of a fat tax (not on people incidentally, on fatty, mostly fast-food) pointing out that as obesity is caused by poor diet and is in fact a class issue, taxing that diet is only going to hurt the poorer sectors of society not help them.
Morning Ireland took the report's recommendation of an hour's exercise a day for schoolchildren and showed subtly but very clearly how pie in the sky it is by reporting from schools in Donegal and Dublin which are so lacking in school facilities that they have difficulty implementing the current PE curriculum.
A head teacher from Ballincollig, Co Cork, explained on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Thursday) how having applied to the department for seven consecutive years for funds to build a gym for his 1,200 students he finally got so sick of waiting. Working with the local community he fundraised and built one in nine weeks. Seven years mind you. In people terms, that means hundreds of teenagers passed through their entire secondary education without seeing the inside of a gym hall.
One teenager who would have been in school swotting for his Leaving Certificate this week if Eurostar hasn't shone on him, is Joe McCaul, who with his sister, Donna, is in Kiev representing Ireland in the Eurovision.
Gerry Ryan had Kiev coverage all week - with an enthusiastic Larry Gogan and a hopeful Carl Broderick, the writer of the song - and Ryan showed himself to be a bit of a Eurovision anorak. By Thursday morning he said he had listened to all 39 entries, which is going above and beyond the call of duty.
But if Ryan is a fan of the annual kitsch extravaganza, Paul G. Sheridan is an anorak of sumo proportions. As he showed in Derek Mooney's curiously sober toned Documentary on One: Europe Guru (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) there's nothing he doesn't know about Eurovision, from who gave who nul points in 1978 to the convenient amnesia of Julio Iglesias about performing in the contest. Hearing Paul G. talk about Eurovision is, said Mooney, "like two Solpadines dropping in a glass".
Former MEP Dana, still our most famous winner, now thinks the whole thing is "an ordeal". She doesn't watch it because it goes on for far to long these days. Pat Kenny, who can be as gaff-prone as Prince Philip, recalled his Late Late interview with transexual winner Dana International when he got into trouble for referring to her as "he, she or it". As the woman who phoned Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) calling for Conor Lenihan's resignation over his kebab remarks said, "stuff like that isn't an accident, if it's not in your head already, it can't come out your mouth".
Derek Mooney was also involved in another musical project this week, one which was a superb example of what public service broadcasting can do. His Mooney Goes Wild: The Dawn Chorus (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) was an entire night, from midnight to 6am, of avian-themed content, culminating in his live broadcast from 4am of the dawn chorus from Cuskinny Marsh nature reserve in Cork.
It was fantastic. Even Paul G would have to admit, that's proper singing.