Radio Review:One man's Spam is another man's ham explained the techie guy, and as reasonable as his tone was (Click On, BBC Radio 4, Wednesday), you just knew he didn't mean it. Working for McAfee, a company that produces anti-spam software, Guy Roberts's days are filled with devising strategies for blocking unsolicited e-mails offering dodgy Viagra, cut-price breast implants and instant wealth. Among the many millions of spam e-mails dumped into computer in-boxes daily, there were very few he considered to be on the truly tasty side.
It was the last edition of the programme that, throughout its run, has managed to demystify technology while at the same time making it slightly terrifying. Every week there has been a story scary enough to bring out the Luddite buried deep within us all.
This week we heard about the latest form of viral hijacking, whereby hackers get into a home computer, remove files and hold them hostage. One woman told how hackers broke into her computer and removed all her files - private documents, work stuff, personal details, the lot - and when she turned it on, a message popped up saying that her files would be returned to her if she went to a certain site and "bought" something. Feeling she had little choice and not wanting all her personal stuff to be floating around in cyberspace, she tapped in her credit card details, which released her files. It sounds like a subplot in a Bond movie, not an everyday hacking in Milton Keynes.
The whole Spam/ham worldview threw some light on why the bulk of my radio listening this week wasn't entirely to my taste. RTÉ has rejigged 2FM, prompting a dutiful week's worth of tuning in - although, in fairness, I am outside the 15-35 demographic that the station is chasing.
In an effort to shore up its falling listenership figures and to - oh dear - get down with the kids, the national broadcaster has poached a programme team from one of Dublin's independent commercial stations. For the past six years Colm Hayes and Jim-Jim Nugent have presented FM104's popular breakfast show The Strawberry Alarm Clock, and they've basically moved their programme - without the catchy title - to replace Marty Whelan in the 2FM breakfast slot.
It's all a bit on the frantic side - chart music, celebrity gossip and non-stop banter between the presenters. For a new show it sounded oddly stale, a textbook "pop station breakfast show" with a predictable line-up of "hilarious" quizzes, prank calls and a "Kids go Crazy" slot whereby some terrified sounding child gets to do his or her party piece down the phone to the shouty prompts of Colm and Jim-Jim and the manic whispered prompts of a parent. That sort of stuff either sets you up for the day or is all so busy it makes you want to have a lie down - it's a Spam/ham thing.
If, going by the radio scheduler's mantra of "win breakfast and you win the day", The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show catches on, it'll be good news for The Gerry Ryan Show, which follows it and whose listenership has been in decline for some time now. His show hasn't been changed in the station's rejig, but he has a new daily feature, Nob Nation (which itself has been moved around to several programmes since it first appeared on 2FM last year).
This supposedly comic slot, by voice mimic Oliver Callan, is quite astonishingly stupid and vulgar and to say the humour is puerile is to insult schoolboys everywhere. Callan's one trick is that he can do a reasonable impersonation of Bertie Ahern.
On Monday, the sketch was a version of the TV talent search programme You're a Star, with Callan as Ahern, David Norris and Enda Kenny, each singing about their sexual fantasies - this on a pop radio programme at 10am. Recounting the lyrics here would be to give the whole crude and pathetic sketch too much attention, but suffice to say just because Harney sounds like horny doesn't mean it should, and fat jokes are about as funny and dated as Bernard Manning.
This week the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland ordered an advertisement for social justice campaigners Trócaire off the commercial airwaves, as it was deemed to be "political". Apparently some people took offence.
A well-crafted ad promoting global gender equality or a Nob Nation sketch (Thursday) featuring Callan as Bertie Ahern singing "I've got one hand in me pocket and I'm playing with me 10-inch knob"? Spam or ham? You decide.
