RADIO REVIEW:PEIG SAYERS was many things, but she was never dull. Vacuum-packing her folklore into one bite-sized, dioxin-free Leaving Cert booklet didn't do her any favours, even though academics have tried restoring her image as an irreverent, tough old broad, writes Quentin Fottrell
On the 50th anniversary of her death, let us be clear, the lady of the headscarf had some serious moxy.
Despite the expected flood of anti-Peig texts, Louis de Paor told Monday's Moncrieff (Newstalk 106-108) that Peig was one of the greatest storytellers in the oral tradition in Europe, though the edited stories dictated to her son repackaged her as a holier-than-thou figure, useful as a politically subversive tool to teach Ireland about enduring hardship.
Fasten your seatbelts. "Night after night in the middle of darkest winter she could bring people back to her fireside to hear her stories," de Paor said. "When she was dying there was a pilgrimage to be at her bedside. Isn't it funny the way people don't mention Henry James's Portrait of a Lady as an excuse for extinguishing the English language?"
On Cathal Póirtéir's Documentary On One: Blasket Island Reflections (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday), Declan Kiberd said she was a "tremendously beautiful" woman: "It's been very hard on the Blasket writers to stand sponsor over the baptismal font for Dev's Ireland." Peig was a hostess and trailblazer. In folklore terms, the Margot Channing of her time.
Another storyteller who has spent years perfecting his craft is Bill Cullen, who appeared on Conversations With Eamon Dunphy (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday). It is a big challenge to get a new nugget or two out of Bill, something, anything we haven't heard before; listening to Cullen is like getting a bedtime story read to you again and again, and again.
He didn't mind saying "You're fired!" on The Apprentice, but of his own business he called it "reducing head count" - 46 people since April. "It's hard. It's very difficult," he said. But in 1982 he had to let 60 of his 80 employees go. That was harder. Some told him, "The best thing you ever did was fire me," as it forced them to set up on their own.
"We are going through some very, very tough times. There is a fear and anxiety economy out there right now. Molly D'Arcy told me years ago - she was an auld granny of mine - she said, 'Listen, if worry is going to help you, sit there and worry. I'll tell you something. It will give you grey hairs, son.'" His hair is dark. And he still has all his.
For those who didn't read his memoirs of life in Dublin's inner city, his boxing instructor in 1952 was Sir Anthony O'Reilly; he wrote 750 job applications when he left school but only got a response when he used a Clontarf address on his opening letter; he's going into space with Virgin Galactic; and has booked Drumoland Castle for his 100th birthday.
Dunphy asked callously: "Losing the Renault franchise. Was that a failure?" Talk about pouring salt into a wound to see him yelp. Cullen didn't bite. "They were cutting out the middleman . . . I learnt that with my granny, Eamon, in 1949: 'We're not going to buy the fish in the fish market son, we're going to get the train to Howth and buy it off the ship.'"
On Sunday, pork not fish was the plate du jour. Or not. On Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, weekends) Dr Tony Houlihan, chief medical officer at the Department of Health, got uncomfortably personal. He made ham sandwiches for his kids last week. He won't be doing that this week, but added, "I'm not worried about the health of my children."
Pat O'Flaherty, whose pig farm in Rathangan was not contaminated, said an expert told him that eating a pack of rashers would be like smoking one cigarette and running the risk of lung cancer. He said the papers were sensationalising the story. "It is toxic," Finucane said. RTÉ thought so. Its website had a "toxic" sign . . . with skull and bones.
Matt Cooper had a real squawker with Minister for Food Trevor Sargent on Monday's The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays). The withdrawal of pork "is as much to do with consumer confidence as it is to do with the logic of the amount of meat affected," Sargent said. "Traceability works!" Cooper protested. Sargent then mentioned blended food products.
But, Cooper asked, why slaughter 100,000 pigs if he knows where the dioxins came from? "I know you've asked me that question a couple of times know and I'm endeavouring to give you the answer clearly," Sargent replied. He said if a producer can "absolutely verify" the purity of its feed they could "quite possibly" avoid slaughter. Possibly? Quite!
Getting him to say that shops would categorically - not possibly - refund customers was like delicately unpeeling vacuum-packed ham: "A number have made it quite clear that to ensure their own customer loyalty they are going to give a refund." Cooper said they must refund on faulty goods. "Absolutely." Sargent chirped in. "That's what I say."
Tony Fenton (Today FM, weekdays) and talkless radio was one of the few safe harbours. Then, on Wednesday, he played Lily Allen's The Fear. "I don't know what's right and what's real anymore/ I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore/ When we think it will all become clear/ 'Cause I'm being taken over by fear." Quorn or tofu, anyone?