RADIO REVIEW:WHAT. A. WEEK. As the Americans voted for the 44th President of the United States, The Gerry Ryan Show (2FM, weekdays) got its teeth stuck into other news. Gerry, meandering, was rifling through the papers on Tuesday. Rustle. Rustle. He opened the Daily Mail. "Oh, there's me!" he said.
He turned to another tabloid. "And there's me jumping across a hurdle on the running track with Evelyn O'Rourke." More rummaging. Next up, some deft political commentary. "If Obama got it, it would make Bruce Springsteen's day. It would make REM's day." Regarding Kerry Katona, Gerry thinks she should keep her Iceland gig, despite her recent troubles. I bristle at ads marketing frozen foods to mother and child. Surely, that's a far bigger issue.
Still, whatever you say about Gerry, he certainly offers a different menu to his competitors. If he was a foodstuff he would be foie gras . . . dipped in coarse-cut marmalade, sprinkled in sugar and the finest wine money could buy! Tom Dunne would be a hamburger with a green salad, and Ray D'Arcy would be pork chops . . . with apple sauce.
Later, Rocky Redmond from food importer Vanilla Venture and chef Thomas Haughton were on for an item entitled "Eight Things To Eat Before You Die", a foodie event to be held at Harvey Nichols's First Floor restaurant in Dublin. They sounded miniature-like and far, far from the mic, getting swallowed up by an armchair, like Denis Waterman in Little Britain. However, we could hear every morsel of food being chewed by Gerry. He ate red king crab, munch, munch, foie gras, slurp, slurp, pearl caviar, lip-smack, lip-smack, carpaccio of Japanese Wagyu beef, mmm . . . This was Gerry, force-feeding his own caricature. It's bad enough when someone eats loudly at the dinner table, but listening to someone lick their lips into the mic before 11am was too carnivorously self-indulgent for me.
More heavy breathing, speaking with his mouth full, the clanking of fork on plate, name-dropping, savouring, swallowing. "Mmmm . . . Fantastic! When you put the risotto in your mouth . . . I'm going to try some of the consommé now . . . " They need to have a media intervention, stop feeding this monstrous ego and get their presenter back. "Three more courses to go. We'd better take a break for the news." It was like he was willfully pushing us to the edge of the dial like a spoiled child from a Roald Dahl story. How far could he indulge himself with this conspicuous (and loud) consumption before his listeners were finally put off their breakfasts? The child had locked himself inside the candy shop and gorged himself on live radio. No-one could or would stop him.
On Wednesday, the world awoke to the news that the presidential reign of George W Bush, a spoiled child who had locked himself in the White House for eight years, come hell or high water, in Iraq or New Orleans, would finally come to an end. Both Newstalk and RTÉ Radio One played American National Public Radio overnight. The Breakfast Show(Newstalk, weekdays) started at the Godless time of 4.45am to give you President-elect Barack Obama's speech live. Later, Áine Lawlor on Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) said: "Charisma is not going to sort out health care, charisma is not going to sort out Iran." Correct. His name is Barack. Not Charisma. Cian McCormack did some sweet vox-pops Stateside to soak up the jubilation. A girl with a musical American "Valley Girl" lilt said, "I'm really happy because Obama is the best guy ever." She was asked why that was. "He just is," she replied, "I mean, 'Hello?'"
The conservative American political commentator Cal Thomas told Matt Cooper on Wednesday's The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays) that no Republican could have won this American election. He cast asparagus on Obama's university and medical records, saying they were not fully disclosed. Cooper tackled him on that. Thomas said politicians promise to heal everything except tooth decay to get elected. "They want to change the world and the world ends up changing them."
Eamon Keane on Lunchtime(Newstalk, weekdays) scored a coup with Mayor Lawrence Douglas Wilder of Richmond, Virginia, the first elected African-American governor in the US. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was actually the first African-American governor in 1872, after his predecessor was removed from office. Eamon asked Wilder how important Obama's victory was in light of the fact that his own grandfather was a slave. "We are still struggling in our evolution," Wilder said. "We have begun to match our preachment and our words with deed. I believe when I was elected governor of Virginia that it was just a short period of time before that would open up greater doors and greater opportunities because I thought Virginia was microcosmic of the nation. I predicted that Virginia would go for Obama. People thought I was crazy."
Wilder said his schooling was segregated. "My elementary school did not have a cafeteria, it didn't have an auditorium. It had outdoor toilets, even in the late 1930s. The opportunities for moving ahead were not there. We didn't have the same curriculum, the same courses." His teachers were African-American, his headmaster was white. "My grandparents, I can tell you - I never knew either of them on my mother's or my father's side - but they would be saying, 'Thank God, at last'." Amen to that.
qfottrell@irish-times.ie