Radio Review Bernice HarrisonFrom his tone of voice it was clear the Taoiseach meant to insult Aer Lingus's Willie Walsh when he called him selfish in the Dáil on Wednesday, but, according to Michael Rosen, selfishness redefined might be a virtue (On Being Selfish, BBC Radio 4, Sunday).
Sometimes self interest, a perfectly natural survival mechanism, gets wrongly labelled as selfishness, even though, according to philosopher AC Grayling, self interest springs from a different impulse altogether. In the highly entertaining Me Me Me, the first in the three-part series examining the subject, there were some spectacular examples of selfishness, the best being the man who took the money his mother-in-law had left in her will for her daughter to buy a much-wanted piano and bought a Porsche for himself.
With babies, the survival instinct is so strong that self-interest and selfishness are tightly bound up in one needy bawling bundle. It's up to parents to "garden the mind", said Grayling, conjuring up a wonderfully rich image, letting the good things grow and suppressing the bad things like weeds. That way a balanced adult emerges with equal amounts of selfishness and self-interest at opposite ends of an egocentric-driven spectrum. Absolute selfishness, Rosen suggested, has its own reward and its own punishment. "You'll get everything you want, but all you get is nothing like you want."
Getting exactly what you want was the message in the sex therapy slot on Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday). On TV, there's a notional watershed which suggests that programmes of an, ahem, adult nature should be broadcast after 9 p.m. On radio, the watershed appears to be 9 a.m., which must have caused many a mammy with a car-full of children a bit of a hot flush on Wednesday as she tried to explain what all that cheery chat about vibrator choices, not to mention the accompanying loud whirring sounds, were all about.
A very frank weekly sex slot with therapist Mary O'Conor is a good idea per se and O'Conor is an inspiring communicator - the calls from listeners would suggest that there is a demand for such information - but, and at the risk of appearing like a pursed-lipped conservative, is an early morning magazine slot the place for it? And as it's plonked in cheek-by-jowl, so to speak, with the increasingly arbitrary mixed bag of items that make up the Marian Finucane programme these days - Monday's mind-numbing feature on mediums and Thursday's bizarre interview with an American man incorrectly diagnosed with AIDS being prime examples - it doesn't really make sense editorially.
While little ears are being positively encouraged to tune to radio with a new children's programme, Funday (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday), persuading "tweens" - the marketing jargon for children who aren't quite teenagers but think they are - to sit and listen when The Simpsons is on TV is always going to be an uphill battle. Katriona McFadden presents a lively, upbeat programme and she's got the enthusiasm to carry off a diverse range of child-friendly subjects. At the very least, the station should be applauded for trying to encourage the next generation of listeners to get into the habit of radio. If the public service broadcaster didn't do it, no other station would bother channelling resources into an area that is bound to have a small and uncertain audience. The main listenership survey and the bible for advertisers, the JNLR, doesn't even count children in its figures.
At least with Funday we get an inkling as to where the licence fees goes, with other programmes, it's a complete mystery. Aside from plugging a tour operator that flogs holiday packages to the region, what was The Gerry Ryan Show (RTÉ 2fm, Mon-Fri) doing broadcasting for three days from South Africa? Subjects featured included the townships, Robben Island, and Conrad Gallagher, all items well-aired and superbly handled by Pat Kenny broadcasting from the Cape earlier this year.
Ryan sounded like he was having a great old jolly - and good for him - but there wasn't a whole lot in it for listeners. The stint in the Cape ended on Wednesday with a very lengthy wine-drinking session which had as much audio value as a mime show.
At one point - it was when Ryan told a male guest that he was very attractive - the guest suggested that Ryan had his "wine goggles" on and you couldn't help but think that it might have been true.
The winemaker supplying all the plonk, a sober-sounding Afrikaner, was treated mid-interview to such insightful questions as "do you make wine", and when Ryan noticed the winemaker was wearing shorts, he asked him if he was heterosexual.
Strange, that in all the measured and mature discussions on the High Court challenge on same sex couples, no one has mentioned a link between being gay and wearing shorts.