Radio Review: On Wednesday's The Last Word (Today FM, Monday-Friday), Matt Cooper led with an item that sounded as if it had strayed in from Liveline or the Gerry Ryan show.
Cooper interviewed Marie Connelly, the Kildare mother of seven who spent last weekend in Mountjoy women's prison for non-payment of a €160 TV licence-related fine dating from 1997. Cooper felt the need to interject "I understand" several times as she told her story in a way that Duffy or Ryan never would - their empathy would have been implicit.
Her story began the previous Thursday with the gardaí arriving at her door looking for payment of the fine. By Saturday, the woman who lives on social welfare, including a carer's allowance for her six-year-old autistic boy, still could only come up with €80 and she was driven up to Mountjoy where she spent two nights. Connolly spoke without any sense of victimhood or dramatics, all she was concerned with was her children. She had to leave her 12-year-old in charge of the younger ones, including her autistic son and an eight-month-old baby. It was this that most concerned callers to the programme - how the instruments of the State, the guards acting on a warrant, could leave small children alone in a house. "I don't know what this country's coming to," said Cooper.
He had a chance to tease out that very question in a new slot where he interviews a different government minister every day - and maybe in his head he's doing just that, but it doesn't sound that way.
For the interviews, Cooper adopts a blokey tone that jars with his normally tight formality - referring to the Minister for Defence, Michael Smith, as "a political dead man walking" (Tuesday), calling the health service "crap" in a question to the Tánaiste (Wednesday). Maybe the matey language is an attempt to jazz up a boring idea or maybe it's to make the whole thing sound more punter friendly but the various ministers have all simply grabbed the chance to trot out personal political broadcasts - swatting away Cooper's questions only to gas on, inflated by the oxygen of airtime.
The 11 a.m. slot in the weekday summer schedule on RTÉ1 is proving to be one to listen out for, if only for the variety on offer. This week, Curiousear (RTÉ1, Tuesday), a new series presented by Ronan Kelly, was easy-going, summer stuff. The programme was made up of three feature items, a young bell ringer in Wicklow, a mini-steam train in Dublin's Marlay Park and a shop in Temple Bar where the owner's dog takes the money from shoppers and gives them back their change. Dog lovers were probably swooning with ahhs but the thought of all that dog drool sloshing around on the money made me queasy. Kelly's light touch and his experience of putting together magazine-type shows is there to be heard and this is a well-made, light entertainment show that should throw up unusual slices of Irish life as the summer goes on.
Another new series, this one on everyday inventions, The Indispensables (BBCR4, Saturday) began this week. Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, is the presenter, and as she managed to turn a book on grammar into a bestseller, Elijah Otis's safety lift was hardly going to give her any problems.
Lifts aren't just "vertical highways", as the architect contributor called them; they're an easily understood metaphor. Apparently one of the reasons so many of us are nervous in lifts is that the idea of being suspended by a wire rope in a sealed metal box over a deep black hole is a bit too close to the image of a coffin plunging into hell for our unconscious minds to happily handle. That's according to Martin Raymond, who has one of those curious 21st century jobs as a "lifestyle analyst". Author Anne Enright described a lift "as a machine like a toaster that loves suspense, there's always the sudden feeling that anything could happen". The thing of course is that nothing much ever does - despite the Hollywood-invented equation of elevator plus cruel twist of fate equals white-knuckle drama. Lifts may, however, get more exciting in the future - a building set to open later this year in Taiwan has lifts that go travel at 40 miles per hour. Now all that has to be sorted is the descending speed, which can't be too fast without "violating inner ear protocol". And speaking of such violations I didn't make it to the radio to switch off John Creedon (RTÉ1 daily) - usually I'm like Fanny Blankers-Coen hurdling over furniture to get there in time - so on Tuesday my inner ear had to cope with the most cringe worthy intro of the week: "It's Johnny C back at the mic, and mad for action." That extra half hour of broadcast time he's been given as a filler during the summer is clearly an elevation too far.
