Radio Review: 'A big shout out to my new Presbyterian friends, I met some lately and they're very nice." I think it's safe to say that's the first time that particular line has been used by a DJ chattering away between songs on Irish radio, writes Bernice Harrison
It was on Spirit fm, a new Christian music station, on Saturday and Sunday. It appears to be a trial run - Spirit is broadcasting on weekends only, operating under temporary licence for the next couple of months. And who knew Christian music could be so, well, loud? Dipping in and out of the station on Saturday and Sunday there wasn't a sign of Kumbya or any other happy clappy number for that matter. Instead the main musical influence for one entire set seemed to be Eminem - it was only when the singer kept rapping "One nation under God indivisible" that I twigged it wasn't your standard blinging rap.
For all that (and there was non-Christian-specific music; Beth Orton, Tori Amos and Johnny Cash made the playlist), there was a tangible wholesomeness about the station. At 11.30 p.m. on Saturday, the soft-voiced young American DJ suggested that the listeners were probably on their way to bed. Content aside, there was no indication, on air at least, of who's paying for it all and there are no advertisements. There are no newsbreaks either, so listening to it at the weekend there was a sense of being insulated from the world.
Tom Doorley did a really good job of conjuring up a delicious sounding foodie world as the presenter of Food Talk (RTÉ1, Saturday) and in his first programme in a new eight-part series, he sounded like a radio natural. Doorley is a food and wine writer but his enthusiasm for his subject come across clearly in his voice and all one of his guests had to mention was a particular dish and he was in quizzing them on how they make it. As it was Valentine's night the programme was appropriately themed; this could have gone cloyingly wrong had Doorley and his guests not been so funny and natural. Singers Camille O'Sullivan and ex-Fat Lady Sings Nick Kelly were entertaining in all sorts of ways. They sang and talked about the importance of food in their lives. O'Sullivan is half French and by way of explaining how food matters to her Gallic relations she said that the family still talks with horror about "the day her cousin missed his lunch". Kelly (and this really would be a great chat-up line) admitted that he didn't fancy women who don't have an appetite - and if you subscribe to the body language theory that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they eat, you can see what he's getting at.
A very different food series began with Breaking Bread (BBC World Service, Wednesday). The idea is that in each of the four programmes someone will introduce their culture and society via the kitchen. The first programme came from Rita Pankhurst in Addis Ababa, home to Africa's largest market. While there is plenty in the city with an abundance of spices, meat and vegetables there is a reluctance to talk about food and the history of scarcity in Ethiopia means that it is considered the height of bad manners to visit someone while they are eating or to look at someone who is eating.
Bread is the great leveller in this society. Everyone buys their own locally-grown grain and takes it every day to their local mill, of which there are hundreds dotted around the city. Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion and there are 200 fast days - the 40 days of Lent, and every Wednesday and Friday. If the hospitality industry here thinks the imminent smoking ban is the death knell for their business, consider what it must be like running a restaurant where fasting is part of people's life for nearly two-thirds of the year. One restaurateur explained that it doesn't affect her business because every working person treats themselves to a restaurant meal once a week and like other restaurants, hers offers a range of vegetarian "fast food". "The kitchen is the backbone of the country," said Pankhurst, who interviewed an Ethiopian TV chef who hopes to introduce simpler, quicker food, offering up a depressing Nigella/Jamie vision of people turning away from spicy dal in favour of drizzling olive oil on ciabatta.
In the capital steeped in abundance there was evidence, in the lines of begging women and children, of the scarcity rampant in rural parts of the country. Thirteen million people are suffering famine in Ethiopia, mostly small farmers who have been driven off the land by the collapse in the worldwide price of coffee. That's something to think about as you sip your Saturday morning cappuccino.